Melissa:
*peeks around corner* Don't throw anything at me...K... Please...
I failed at anything and everything in October. I seem to be terrible at juggling my time these days. I hope November brings this back into focus a bit.
The one awesome thing of the month... My Workshop on a story at The Roundtable Podcast. If you are curious as to how I divided the hosts on my topic, please stop over and check it out. And please let me know what you think.
The few words I got in on project:
Um...well... looking through my records it appears I did nothing in October toward the project. Oops.
I did do Flash Fictions: (yes three as I made up for the one I missed last month.)
FF 1: 550
FF 2: 739
FF 3: 657
What are my plans for November in NaNoWriMo?
Well, I'm feeling a bit down on myself. I've not truly completed anything and I hate that feeling. I'm going to do my own Nano with a twist - NaNo-Re-WriMo. Yes, RE-WRIte MOnth. I'm working on projects I just can't get through to a rough ground-zero draft.
As much as I love the rush of NaNoWriMo, I need to take a step back and complete something. It's needed. I have great ideas in the works and great ideas to come, but I need to stop the new stuff and finish what I have, or I'll never get anything out of this dead form it's in.
Another obstacle I'm struggling with is seeing the speed at which others work... I know, I know. Don't pay attention to that. I get it. Everyone works at different speeds and rates, but still, it's hard not to. And I know authors work, and have families, and, and, and all sorts of things going on. But... *sigh* It still is a weight on my mind.
So I'm going to be a bit quiet, even for NaNoWriMo. I'm not going to be around to socialize as I HAVE to get somewhere and understand what I'm working towards in these stories. I'm probably going to skip out on the sprints and wonderful camaraderie between all the people participating. It all ends up being a distraction from what I want to do.
Jackie:
I had to go back to make sure I didn't make any wild promises in the last update for what I would get done this month. Thankfully, I didn't :)
Plugging away at an essay for school took up most of my month along with the reading that needs to be done for the same class. I had another short story that was due for the beginning of November and I thought I had a great idea. The thing with me is if I don't do it right away and if I don't allow for an organic flow (ie. typing the narrative out as I want it to appear,) I can't seem to make a story bend to my will.
The additional issue was that this story needed to be created around the idea of form equaling the content. It took me a while to figure out what the concept even meant and when I did, I thought I had the perfect plan to make it happen. The ideas seemed good and I even found a way to not end the story on a sad note, like I always tend to do when not working on genre fiction. By the end of the month, I had the 1300-ish words as noted below but nothing complete. (What I handed in was a last minute thing that will show up in the November count.) So, here's what my month looked like:
FF 1: 976
FF 2: 790
Abandoned short: 1362
Misc. in-class writing:750
Total 3878
(If it counts, I wrote an essay, which amounted to 2551 words and would bring my total to 6429)
It's more workshopping in November then nothing due until January, so will probably only have in-class writing and flashes to account for over the next month. Then again, you never know what will happen. For sure, NaNo is out though.
In the mean time, if I can squeeze in time for a post here and there, I would like to explain the form equals content style of story writing and maybe even some other valuable lessons that have popped up in my creative writing class. Between my two classes, I think I'm amassing a fair amount of knowledge on how to make my work more original and more complete. I'd like to share at least some of that with you.
Here's hoping you all have a productive November, whatever you choose to do with it :)
