Spent most of today writing...

[capri0mni]

As those who have been following the bouncing ball know, I have made a new year's resolution to write some fiction every day, and the first piece of fiction I committed to finishing is a story for alryssa. As some of you may not know, I've been writing each scene as something I call a drabble square: a passage of exactly ten lines, with each line having exactly ten words. This means two things: 1) I've been spending as much time counting as writing, and 2) I have to choose my words very carefully...

A few scenes have come to an end at some infuriating number less than 100 -- like 97 or 89 (::::Aaahhh!::: and I've had to reword bits in interesting ways to make it come out even -- and then, I'll realize that I need to put in a vital bit of info 4 drabbles back, which means cutting out what I had written and inserting the exact same number of words that I had before, but packing two bits of info where one bit had been before -- all while using correct (if a bit esoteric) grammar.

If nothing else, it forces me to really think about which words I choose, and not be sloppy with them, and really stretches those unused storyteller muscles. Good thing this is a "fairy" tale... not much angsty musing and introspection in "fairy" tales ... musing and introspection guzzle words like SUV's guzzle gasoline...

Anyway, this is all a pre-amble to a boast:

I added a whopping 300 words today!

At first, I thought writing in drabbles would keep this story short, and maybe it is turning out shorter than it would have turned out if I'd written in my ordinary, rambling style, but so far, it's 25 drabbles long, when I thought it would only end up being 10... and we're not near the end yet, either...

But however long it ends up being, you know the number of words will end in double 0's...

Comments

[gordon-r-d.livejournal.com]

It's always the same when you start writing something and you end up enjoying it, it stretches on and on. :)
The one I'm currently writing in quiet periods in the shop was supposed to be a one-off rip-roaring adventure thing, but could well end up being an ongoing series.

And at some point I *will* go back and finish off the other stuff I've left unfinished...honest!

:::Scribble, scribble:::: (or: ::::tappity, tappity, tap::::)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

It's always the same when you start writing something and you end up enjoying it, it stretches on and on. :)

Well it's not that exactly, since I knew when I began what the beginning would be, what the middle would be, and what the end would be, so it's not growing because the story itself is growing a more complicated and ornate tail (tale), but that I miscalutated exactly how many steps it would take to get from beginning to middle, and middle to end.

It's kind of like having a jigsaw puzzle in front of you, with three sections of the picture completed, and you have to fill in the rest of it around them. ...Only there's a misprint on the box -- instead of being 500 pieces, it's 1500... :-/.

Take this morning, for example: rereading the three drabbles I wrote yesterday, I realized that, in order to make the epiphany at the end sensible, I'll have to explicitely spell out information I only alluded to in one ten word line. So that means redifining the parameters of a scene, and expanding one drabble into two... and then I realized that, aesthetically, it would be better if I reversed the order of two of the scenes...

So last night I had 2500 words... by this afternoon, I hope to have 2600 words, and I'll still be in the same "place" I was in the plot...

Now I know how Alice felt, running in place to keep from going backward...

But it is fun... jigsaw puzzle, crossword, and make-believe all in one! Can't get much better than that!