Inspiring Things Like Skeletons and Experiments

     Two other bloggers have recently posted things that I have found inspiring. One was a post by Rachel Heffington called Skeletons, Blog Design, and a British Holiday . The other was a post by Anne-girl called An Experiment .
     The Skeleton post was inspiring because it talked about building on your first draft. Sometimes I cringe part-way through a project as I realize that it is nowhere near publishing quality. But Rachel points out that this is okay -- no one writes a story that is perfect on the first draft. Instead we should view our first draft as a sort of skeleton to then build the story on.
     This was also an encouragement to start building more into Dungeon, which has been sitting rather idly this week.
     The experiment post was about writing separate storylines for each of your main characters and then putting them together at the end. I have really been thinking about doing this for BB, as I have multiple strands swirling in my head. So it was neat to see that someone else is trying it, and that is an encouragment to go ahead and try it myself. We will see how it goes.
     By the way, BB currently has almost 19k words. I am pleased with its progress...even if it is just a skeleton. :)

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Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning. I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that. And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send." Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story. And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it. I wrote them. And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....

The Countdown: Eight Days

Eight days. Do you know what that means? Barely over a week. Tomorrow will be one week from the announcement date. Are you excited? I am. So, today, I want to talk to those who wrote something for the contest, whether or not you entered it in the end. What made you start writing your story? What was the first inkling of an idea that tickled your brain? What was it that you liked about your premise? As you wrote, did you have a favorite character or a favorite scene? And are you glad you wrote it down? Do you feel like you learned and grew in your ability as a writer as you tried out things for this contest? And, if your story isn't included in this year's Rooglewood anthology (either because you didn't submit it or because it didn't fit with the other four stories selected), what will you do with it? Will you market it elsewhere? Or will you lock it away in a drawer?

Wherein I Still Have My Nose and Ears

I decided to take the plunge. I was going to chop a plot thread out of AAM so the story would fit in the contest word length restrictions. I saved my old version and set up a copy for me to modify. Stories are like woven cloth. Each plot thread is woven into the entire story. So if I decide to cut a character or a side-theme, I have to go through the whole book, chopping out the references to it. This leaves gaping holes and sometimes it looks like the whole story is going to unravel. Everywhere I chop, I have to readjust the whole scene to keep the flow. It's a rather ticklish procedure. Over the dinner table, I mentioned that I was chopping a sub-plot. My younger sister protested loudly (she hasn't read it, but I previously told her the general idea). Then my mom (who also hasn't read it) offered to read it and tell me what she thought could and couldn't be chopped. ...

The Pen of a Ready Writer

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