Work-in-Progress Wednesday

I did get some writing done this past week, thank goodness. Carolyn saved me, and we wrote at Panera, and I cut another 3400 words from Outlaw Song. My goal was to finish reading and cutting by next week. I don't think that's possible anymore, because I still have over half of it to read, so I'll just shoot for end of September. In the meantime I want to work more on my short story, which I did revise a bit today. I want to have another draft of that ready for my writing group in two weeks.

I've also been critiquing a screenplay by someone in my writing group, and I edited two chapters of Carolyn's nonfiction book about using psychology right in your writing, and it is going to be awesome. It's packed with information and very well-written, and I can't wait to read the rest.

So, not a bad week, really. How was yours?

Blog Chain: Advice for Writers

Yes, the Blog Chain was established to dispense advice to you, the blogging writers of today. And this round is no exception. It is perhaps the most advice-filled episode yet.

Cole wanted us to, "In one sentence (no more than 20 words), please summarize the most important words of wisdom you can impart."

Thusly,

Everyone else is writing a book, which means you can, too.

Sarah let forth with her wisdom yesterday, and Abi will give you all something to think about tomorrow.

Work-in-Progress Wednesday #026

I only wrote one day last week, which is another day down from my previous week, so I'm going backwards. Must get more serious about this! But, work has been insanely busy (at home), and truth be told, I've not had a happy week. Until today, anyway, when I went to the grocery store and found these:


I love Cheetos. Love. Mostly I'm into the crunchy ones, but these are pretty good. I can fit them in my mouth, but it takes some effort to crunch down. And, I kind of sprained my tongue trying to dig out Cheeto bits from my back teeth. But that doesn't mean I probably won't finish the bag tonight. Hey, there are only like 40 Cheetos in there! They're giant!

Anyway, writing. I am still deleting, and I cut another 5400 words. I've read through the first half (NaNoWriMo 2005), some stuff I wrote about a year after that, and now I'm reading what I wrote last November. I noticed an improvement in my writing between both halves, and that made me feel good. I think the second half will be far less rambling, and I don't remember what I wrote, so I'm excited to unearth some good prose in there. I have to find something, right?

But, so as not to take forever with this deleting project, I think I should give myself a goal. Because next comes the hard part of figuring out what story I really have, and you know I've been procrastinating on that. Thus, my goal is to finish reading and deleting by the end of August, so in September I will begin, essentially, writing the 2nd draft. Whew. I'm already scared.

Blog Chain: I Can't Make up My Mind

When Terri started this chain I thought I'd have a simple time answering her questions. She asked,

Do you focus on one project at a time, or do you have many irons in the fire at any given moment?

But I've been writing the post in my head for the past couple days, and I've been rambling. Then I'll sit down to start writing, feel discouraged after a few sentences, then walk away. That's pretty much how it is with my writing projects, too.

Yes, I have "many irons in the fire," and they are too many, and it kind of holds me back. Plus, in case you've blacked out while reading my posts and somehow missed this: I am a procrastinator. I think I have too many projects on purpose just so I can stoke my procrastinating ways.

I have stories I started in college and just after graduation that I sometimes go back to and play around with. I have 5 novel drafts written in the last 5 years. Well, I guess one is complete, but I know it could still be revised. I have a handful of notebooks going at once, in which I'm either freewriting or trying to get some of my stories down in longhand. And I have pocket notebooks in which I'm always putting new ideas.

I have parts of stories and pieces of prose literally everywhere--on my computer, in various emails, on lists buried under clutter, and in all those notebooks. Nothing's organized. And I'm always telling myself I'm going to organize it. Yeah, right.

Too many projects, which means now I'm trying to focus on one at a time. So I've been working on Outlaw Song. And, in the event that Outlaw Song isn't going well and I want to jump on something else, I've recently created a spreadsheet of writing projects, where I'm simply noting the date, the project, and what I'm accomplishing on the project at the moment. I'm hoping this will be the start to some organization, and I can stop feeling so overwhelmed by all my "starts."

Because, that is the real pitfall of too much going on at once: nothing get's finished. And that has to stop.

Check out Sarah's post before mine and B. J. Anderson after me. And, if anyone has tips on organizing projects, I'd love to hear them!

Work-in-Progress Wednesday #025

Why, hello there, Wednesday.

I wrote two days last week, which I see is down from my three days the prior week. Hmm.... Well, it's something. And I cut another 12,000 words off my first draft, bringing me to a total of 28,000 words chopped since I started chopping. If my math skills are good (they're not), I think I've cut roughly 27% of my 101,300 word novel. I'm kind of hoping to cut like 70%. I think then I will find an editable story in all those words.

What else... Oh, I've been writing lots of story ideas down in my little notebook while staring at my computer at work. I don't know if I'll ever use any of them, but it helps me to feel creative during the dull work day.

And, I've been reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. It's okay. The characters are selfish, and I don't really care about them. I'm trying to figure out if Yates wrote them that way on purpose, for some kind of social commentary, or if he thinks they're really great and that I should be cheering for them. I imagine only bad things will happen to the two main characters.

Anyway, that's it! Stay tuned for next week when I tell you again that I hit the delete key a lot.

Work-in-Progress Wednesday #024

There is still a bit of Wednesday left.

I didn't post last week because I was up in the north woods of Wisconsin, and I stayed off the Internet entirely, and it was so wonderful! I could've brought my eeePC into town to the Java Lodge and used their wifi, but I resisted, and I know I made the right choice.

My family (as in parents, siblings, nieces and nephew--my husband stayed home for school) and I were in Crivitz on Lake Noquebay, where my mom's family has been vacationing for 49 years! I've been there 10-15 times, as it's far from Indiana where I grew up, and it's amazing because it's remote and wilderness-y, and it never seems to change, even though it is a different experience each time.


I didn't write last week, but I got to know my nieces (4 years and 14 months old) and nephew (18 months old) a lot better, which was awesome, and we had lots of campfires and boat rides and just sitting on the grass and staring at the lake. And a big thing I took away from the trip is that I don't need to read all the web sites I read all day, like CNN and Slate, that just depress me and make me feel helpless. No matter what I think about those stories, I can't change them, so why worry? Why waste all that time and mental power?

As a result of my Internet realizations, I've done lots of writing this week! Like, real honest-to-God writing, and it feels so nice. The last three nights each I've written for an hour, working on Outlaw Song and writing odds and ends in my notebook. I never feel like I want to write, at the beginning of the session, but once I get into it, it's enjoyable, and then I'm really proud of myself after I'm done.

Right now I'm slicing and dicing Outlaw Song. I've deleted 12,000 words in the last three days, 16,000 total since I started chopping away a few weeks ago. This was a 2-year NaNo project, so there is excessive crap.

One thing I've noticed is that during NaNoWriMo my writing is very wordy (huh) and repetitive, and I'm always throwing all these stupid roundabout phrases in. I was reading it yesterday, just slogging through, listening to the voice of my writer self from 4 years ago, and I just wanted to scream at the novel, "SHUT UP!" There is a lot of blabbering being fed to the delete key.

But then tonight I read a scene that I just loved, and it even made me sad (it's a sad scene), and I was almost on the edge of my seat. So, the whole novel isn't a bust.

Anyway, that's my week! Please share your progress, too!

Blog Chain: I Have This Great Idea, But Is It Really Mine?

The blog chain is back, and this time it's my turn to pick the topic. Argh! I'm so nervous! I know what I want to say, but I don't know how to say it. Hmm, sounds like writing.

But first! Please welcome back two people to the chain who have been away for a while. They are Senshi and Terri, and it's nice to have them here again. I'm new to Senshi's blog, and I read some of Terri's when I first joined the chain, so I'm looking forward to getting to know them both better.

Okay, what I want to talk about has a bit to do with inspiration and a bit to do with research. Kat started a chain on research not too long ago which is what got me all worried about my worries. These include:

Do you ever get inspired by a real-life event or news story and fear you're ripping off the story too much? Do you ever get inspired by a song or poem or line from a book and worry you're stealing that original person's idea? What if your research is overtaking your originality?



Okay, maybe I am projecting worries into my future, and if I just kept going with a story, it would develop into it's own thing, and all my worries would become unnecessary.

But maybe I really have something to worry about! Like ending a sentence with a preposition!

Anyway, some examples may help. I started my novel Outlaw Song from a song I heard, called "Outlaw Song." (Mind-blowing, isn't it.) I'm not going to really title my novel that, when it's done, and my novel is not about the story of the song, but I feel very inspired by the song, and other songs on the album, and sometimes when I'm stuck I will start writing around lyrics in the song, and then I AM just writing what is happening in the song (when I'm stuck), and I worry, is that a kind of plagiarism? Does this mean I have no creativity? Will anyone even notice anyway? Am I supposed to contact this band (which is no more), and ask them if I can quote, if it comes to that, their music?

Or, I was watching a show on Food Network one night, and they were talking about this restaurant somewhere, and I thought the story behind the restaurant's creation was interesting, and then I started thinking what about the restaurant owner's life made him open this place, and my mind was coming up with all this morbid stuff. I was just joking around with my husband about it, and he said I should write a story about it, but immediately I felt I wasn't allowed to do that. Is that original enough, to make up the first half of this guy's story? I mean, I can change the name of the restaurant, but what if someone else saw this episode on Food Network, and they call me out on it? Or what if the restaurant owner finds out, and he doesn't like what I made up about him, and sues me?

Again, all these fears are probably unfounded. I know writers get inspired by everything all the time: stories in the news, conversations overheard, family stories, other books, movies, songs... I'm sure the list is endless. I guess my problem is, where does inspiration end and originality begin? Do you have to credit your sources of inspiration? How do you do that?

And, if you are inspired by something, a news or historical story, maybe, and you go researching it more, where does that end? What if the more you research, the more trapped you feel? Maybe I wouldn't worry about this if I actually researched a novel one day, but what if??? How many questions can I ask in one blog post?

I need your advice. I think this has a lot to do with confidence, maybe with voice, with knowing yourself as a writer. Knowing your story well enough that it actually becomes yours, separate from whatever inspired it. Probably I should just keep writing, and all this will iron itself out. But I have to admit my worries of ripping off someone else's idea stops me a lot from writing.

I know that if I put a song lyric up and asked 20 people to write a story inspired by it, I'd get 20 different stories. But I guess I'm just afraid, for me, that maybe I will accidentally plagiarize and write the story too close to the song. Kind of like when I was little and writing stories, and only when I was older did I realize that I was pretty much writing exact copies of my favorite stories. I didn't know it at the time, and it was an honest mistake, but still.

So, yeah. Help! How do you know your stories are your own?

Please see Sandra's answer to this question, as she's going right after I am. (Sorry, Sandra!)

*I know "plagerism" is misspelled on the poster. I don't know how to fix it.