Spent most of today writing...
Jan. 25th, 2003 09:10 pmAs 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...
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...