Live From the Writing Desk

Larry L King Writing Quote

So far April hasn’t been a good month for writing (or beta reading!). I’ve gotten only one post done for [NULL] and zero chapters completed on the beta review project. Wisdom teeth removal is not a good way of getting words on paper… *sighs*

But there’s not much I can do to change yesterday or tomorrow… so time to see if I can change today! πŸ™‚

So let’s make some plans! (And some bullet journal pages.) ((Because reasons.))

Write

[NULL] April Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 eBook cover

[NULL] – Obviously the Camp NaNoWriMo project is going to take point this month. I’m quite a bit behind and don’t actually have much of the actual story written yet (just MuseFic) so I need to get back on track asap. I only had a 15,000 word goal, so that’s still winnable, but I want to win with a proper story… and I’m not sure if I can pull that off.

*rolls up sleeves* To battle!

Challenge Responses – I want to get back into the habit of writing at least one prompt response per week. I’m going to look back over the communities I found in this post and see which are still active. If I really want to make writing into a proper side hustle, I need to… you know… actually write. πŸ˜‰

Rewrite

Writing Prompts - Saturday Story Prompts Book 1 eBook Cover

Saturday Story Prompts (2008, 2009, 2010) – I’m in the middle of a drastic rewrite of this prompt book. I’ve already redone the introduction as well as a new section on the various ways to use prose prompts. I’m in the process of removing ‘bad’ prompts to a new ebook and creating new prompts to bring the total up to 195 to 265.

Once this book is complete I can use it as a template for the other books in the series, so folks know what they’re getting when they pick up one of the books. I’m just not quite sure what to do for the folks who already bought one… the polite thing to do would be to give them a free new copy, right? I’ll have to see if Amazon and Smashwords will let me do that. *makes notes*

Read

No Plot No Problem, Bird by Bird, Writing Down the Bones, Page After Page
Book, book, away!

One of the things I have been doing is trying to get back in the habit of reading again. For the most part I’ve been focusing on fan fiction, both rereading old favorites and finding some new ones. (Random pause to link once again to Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose, because I love that fic goldarnit.) ((And here’s the FanLore link about it’s impact in case you want to get more meta.))

Oddly I haven’t been drawn to reading any of the nine thousand paperbacks in my ‘to read’ pile. For some reason a 180,000 word fanfic seems ‘shorter’ in my head than a 100,000 word paperback. I need to fix that. *adds notes to list*

I’m also going to go through all of the various books and ebooks I have on writing and start making attempts to learn from them properly. Which means book reports are incoming! πŸ˜‰



3 responses to “Live From the Writing Desk”

  1. Lois E McMahon Avatar
    Lois E McMahon

    You need to add bird by Bird by Anne Lamott to your reading list. She is funny and inspirational!

  2. Lois E McMahon Avatar
    Lois E McMahon

    Oh, you already have her!

    1. Martha Bechtel Avatar

      Yup! πŸ˜€ But I am planning on going back and rereading all of them– I’ve got a whole bunch in the stacks that I need to go back through.