I think I screwed myself up

When I first challenged myself to write from prompts I went looking around LJ and copied down the prompt lists from drabble comms.  But I was almost never able to keep my word count near "drabblish" lengths.  But since I wasn't joining the community or participating in the challenges it didn't concern me.  I just needed something to spark my imagination.

With a few prompts I found I made a concerted effort to keep the word count under 1000.  It worked okay for the first 2 but the third took off on it's own.  I was still having issues when I started doing landcomms and the writers30days .  Most of the challenges had a minimum word count of 100 words.  And I noticed most participants kept their counts near the minimum.  Makes sense especially if you have a lot of smaller stories to write.  Me... not so much.  My first attempt at writers30days was a failure partly because I refused to adhere to a word count limit (self-imposed).  I only finished 4 stories out of 15 but my word count total was 14k, lol.

But when the 2nd round started of that I got inspired and set out to keep my word count under 500 for each story.  I mostly succeeded (I think 2 went over that limit by a few words).  Since then I've had a much easier time plotting out stories to keep them under 1000 words.

My problem, though, is now I have several challenges that require much bigger word counts as their minimum.  het_bigbang is 25k, hc_bingo  has a ton of prompts with 500 word minimums on each story (minimum of writing 5 stories to finish the challenge), sg1friendathon only has a 1k minimum but my prompt is about the end of the world and I can't see fitting that into 1000 words, and now I get a challenge in fictionland to use a prompt table (a la writers30days) with each story having a minimum of 1k words (so grand total of 15k words).   I saw that and nearly freaked out.  Then I saw it's not due until August and calmed down some.  

Funny thing is I actually suggested a longer challenge because I always like writing longer fics.  It wasn't until that moment that I realized I broke myself by learning to write shorter fics.  Now all my story ideas come truncated to fit under 1000 words and I can't figure out how to get out of that habit and learn to think bigger.  And longer.

Busy, busy, busy.  Which is what I wanted.  Just still trying to figure out the logistics of it and keeping up a house and dealing with 5 kids and a husband every day. 

Right now I'm wishing for a nice comfy lawn chair so I can go out in the sun and write.  We have some seats out there but they are old and the "waterproof" cushions aren't so waterproof anymore as the kids found out (wet butts!). 

Six sentences on Sunday

~*~Each Sunday, post six sentences from a writing project -- published, submitted, in progress, for your cat -- whatever.~*~

In Progress:
("off the clock" story for stargateland --missed the deadline)

"I was thinking burgers."

He opens one eye to watch as she twists the hem of her shirt and looks at him questioningly. "I could eat."

She smiles again—something Cam could get used to looking at—and jumps up. Reluctantly he gets up, moving stiffly after his run and the work on the car, and follows her inside the house. The kitchen is clean but disorganized.

(Daniel/Vala story)

"It means sex. S. E. X."

Mitchell cringed, his face flushing slightly.  Sam snorted but said nothing.
 

(apocafic--probably going to rework this into a different story, though)

"There's a long silence after then the message repeats."

"A recording?"

"Sounds like it."

Jack wandered back to his corner, Davis on his heels.  "What should we do?"

"Without communications..."

30 Days of Fanfic Writing Meme (day 2)

Apparently... I'm a lemming.

2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.

That 70s Show: I've finished 2 stories (each about 22k words) and have 2 more that are still unfinished.  One I started in Nov. 05 for NaNo and is around 40k words.  The other is much shorter.

Firefly/Serenity: just and handful of drabblish stories

Angel: started for NaNo in 2008.  It still sits at 60k or so waiting to be finished but I've lost the story, sigh.

Stargate SG-1: my main fandom.  I started writing for it late October 2010 while prepping for NaNo.  Still haven't finished the NaNo novel piece but I've written so many stories since then I've lost count. It's somewhere up past 30 finished stories and about a dozen that I haven't found an ending to.

Millers Kill Mysteries:  At least that's what I call them, based on a series of books by Julia Spencer-Fleming.  So far I've finished 15 drabbles that I published in sets of 3 as part of a challenge.  Another much longer story is still unfinished.



( the rest of the days )

writing quirks?

When I was writing up my freak out post over word counts I thought of this (I swear there was some relation between the two at some point).

Do you have any strange writing quirks?

Like having to be in a certain place to write, certain music playing, no noise, lots of noise, etc.

A few years ago I realized there were certain criteria that needed to be met for me to actually succeed in writing.  #1 is quiet.  Which is all but impossible with five kids, lol.  I have noise sensitivities and issues processing the normal, everyday noise around me.  Stuff that most people probably just ignore grate on my nerves and give me migraines.  If I want to write I almost always have to have near absolute quiet in the room.  Therefore I'm stuck writing very late at night once everyone is asleep or I have to lock myself in my room with my fan going (white noise is sanity saver).

My 2nd quirk I discovered relates to writing by hand.  Yes, I still do that.  It relates back to the first quirk.  I tend to lock myself into my room a lot.  Problem is I don't have a computer in there and we don't have laptops so I have to do things the old fashioned way.  There are two methods of writing that work well for me that I find just kind of strange.  One is to write on the back of printed stories.  I've always been a hybrid writer (since getting a computer in college).  I'll type some stuff up, print it and edit some then continue writing on the back of the papers, type that in... rinse, repeat.  The other way that works is a certain style notebook and pen.  If I don't have one of these 2 conditions met I rarely get anything done.

For the notebook/pen it's pretty specific and took me awhile to figure out.  First the notebook has to be like a half-sized one.  Well I guess they aren't really half sized since they are like 8x5 size or something around that.  And be college ruled.  These are surprisingly hard to find--college ruled in that size--at least with the pretty designs on them and that I can afford.  As for the pen... has to be a gel pen or something like that.  I can't write with ball point pens (the average BIC).  It takes too much pressure to make a mark and my hand starts hurting before the end of the page.  The gel pens flow much easier and I can write much faster with them.  I also prefer blue pens.  I found I write more if I use blue.

Although recently I've started writing in standard sized spiral bound notebooks.  I find it more difficult than the half sized ones, though but I persist.

My 3rd quirk is that I write best while lying on my stomach.  I try to write long hand while sitting on the couch, at a table, on the floor with the notebook in my lap (on a pillow or clipboard) and I rarely get anything done.  I tend to just stare at the page or I get distracted by everything going on around me.  But if I drop to the floor suddenly the page comes into focus and my thoughts just flow.  I find that pretty weird.  It's such an arbitrary thing.  I'm guess it has to do with being at floor level limiting my stimulus input or something.  There's less going on down there to distract me (except for dust bunnies---which aren't as cool as plot bunnies).

So, yeah, if you were to walk in on me writing you'll probably find me lying on my bedroom floor with a notebook or printer paper on a clipboard and a gel pen in hand (recently got them in pink, purple, green and red... still prefer blue but I accidentally broke the blue one that came in the set).

ARGH... decisions

Watch Star Wars or work on fic due Tuesday... tough call.

I'm thinking either is a win so probably Return of the Jedi because I'm exhausted from running around on Father's Day.