What are you writing?

It’s definitely a risk - I deliberately haven’t read Styles of Yrth to avoid being influenced. I’m hoping they might like the idea of multiple styles for each (I have 3-5 each so far). But if not I can always see if The Path of Cunning would like them.

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This week I wrote 17,439 words — of e-mails to Jon Zeigler commenting on his 40,600-word draft Architect of Worlds. To work out what to say I built an Excel spreadsheet that instantiates steps seven to 31 of his star system generation procedure.

That counts, right?

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Definitely. He probably owes you a credit for assistance.

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He has already made a gracious statement on his blog.

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Nada. No progress for a week, and that’s simply unacceptable. I don’t have time to spend a week with no progress.

Little progress, fine. But nothing? Unacceptable. Which, of course, makes it worse, because now I feel the pressure of why I didn’t write anything this week on TOP of having to write twice as much next week.

Gah.

Going to finish my English course’s required reading of Chaucer tonight, and then write tomorrow. Stamped it, no erasies, blackball beats 'em all.

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I’ve made some progress on revising a supplement I published and then rapidly realised needed example NPCs. So that revision shot to the top of my writing list. Creating Pathfinder NPCs is slow though, at least for me, and particularly as these are all non-adventurers - you can’t just slap on the most generic options and call it done.

After a lot of pondering I finally cracked and bought a walking treadmill, which I’m very excited about. In hindsight I have to advise against this if you, like me, live up seven flights of stairs. Anyway, it’s in now, I’ve constructed a rudimentary standing desk out of many cardboard boxes. Looking forward to getting back to writing now that I have a week off, so obviously I’m ill now. Sigh.

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Late here. And this was touched on in the other responses but I want to distill to emphasize:

  1. Both are fine.
  2. “said Morgan” is more archaic. You’ll see this more in older English language books. (older meaning 1950 and earlier).
  3. “Morgan said” is the common modern usage.

Use 3 as a default unless you have a specific reason to use 2. Both are fine, 3 is “more invisible” to a modern reader.

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Hey folks. New here. Love this thread - there’s no way to keep writing alone.

Quote from James Baldwin: “Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.”

This thread caught my eye because I’ve been working at something since 2014. Babies and family tragedies have put months-long gaps in the process. I’ve been blessed to have a friend struggling down the same journey and we’ve kept each other going. Of course, he’s finished maybe 10 books in that time, but hey, mine is longer : )

MLK was a good day, got a couple of hours in and the hardest part of the final draft is behind me.

Keep writing.

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So I have a week off, as of last Saturday. I wanted to get this novel finished.
Today was the first day I sat down to do any writing.

I managed to get about a thousand words written (about 500 were cut immediately).

I go back to work at my paying job on Tuesday. I want to get my novel’s first draft done before I go back to work, and instead, I spent about two hours watching Mass Effect videos and sulking in the fact that I will probably never write a character as awesome as Shepard.

Blargh.

Oh well. At least I wrote a thousand words. Tomorrow will be better.

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I get character envy … i don’t know Mass Effect at all but I have my own characters that I wish I could write.

in other news: I’m not finishing my November novel. not now anyway. went back to reread and the beginning is good and then the middle sucks so badly I cannot bring myself to write the end.

I’m probably trying to go for some short fiction in a world I have already created and written nearly 200k words in :smiling_face:

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Yeah, it’s still progress, and maybe tomorrow will bring the right inspiration.

That’s a shame. Maybe after some time on the back burner it’ll be ready for another go. Either way, good luck with the short fiction!

I finally finished writing up NPCs and got the revised version published, so that’s a relief. I need to get back to my lizard. I’ve been spending a lot of time proofreading job applications for family so I’m hoping that will let up for a while!

I can confirm walking treadmill is good, although I do need to address the problem that above minimum speed, it seems to be building up static from brushing on the nasty plastic rented carpet and causing my monitor to glitch out unless I hang on to something metallic. Unexpected hazards…

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In case you don’t already know, anti-static wrist straps are a standard thing.

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After some detective work, I’ve solved the problem. The shoes I’ve been wearing recently were quite worn and exposed some rubber under (above, really) the sole which appears to be the culprit. I’ve switched to another pair and all seems fine. Apologies to my nasty plastic rented carpet.

I do have a wrist strap somewhere, but I don’t think I brought computer parts with me on the last few house moves. Probably buried in my parents’ loft.

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I always have to wait for a break in the clouds, but President’s Day (in the states) netted me about 2 good hours editing.

Bit by bit.

The hardest part was revisiting a passage that I remembered being weaker. I’d actually worked it into a good piece of writing. But the story still didn’t NEED it. But it was now good writing. But it wasn’t necessary.

Finally cut it.

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Writing is always an uphill battle. I wanted to share some resources in case people haven’t seen them:
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
On Writing by Stephen King
Keep Going by Austin Kleon

It’s never easy or as quick as you’d hope. Sitting down to write and spending the time doing something else is all too frequent. These books, I think, both calibrate your expectations on your own strength of will and provide a foundation to push through anyway.

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I am at 12,987 words this morning. Want to be at least over 15,000 by the end of the day.

Gotta pick up the pace. I need this novel done by the end of the month to keep on pace (4 novels in 2021… I only managed 3 in 2020, and I gotta step that up if I ever want this to become a full-time gig).

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that’s 2k words. how long do you typically need for that? how long on a good day? I hope you succeed :relaxed:

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Variable. On a good day I can crank that out in a little more than an hour. On a bad day I won’t hit it all day.

My writing is very feast-and-famine in this regard. The real goal is to write something every day so that when the mood to write 10k in a few hours hits I am at the computer with my fingers on the keyboard.

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well I hope you have a good day then :blush:

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Well, my novel is sitting just shy of 20,000 words today, and that’s… bad. That’s real bad. I want it to be done by the end of the month, and that involves not only writing the silly thing, but also at least a preliminary editorial pass before sending it to my professional editor on April 1st.

Gotta get the move on the writing. 20 days, 60,000 words. That’s… uh… carry the two… 3k words a day, every day. And really, I need more than a day to edit it, so I’ve got to manage 4k words average.

Hope everyone else is progressing better on their own work than I am!

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