Wednesday 1 September 2010

Just a quick one

Just so you know that I haven't given up on this whole journal idea.

Here's what happened; I'm working on a post about how to write a good main character. When I'm starting a new story the characters are usually the first thing I come up with, it makes sense that I start my writing journal off by talking about character development.

Ideas? I've got plenty of the bastards - far too many for just one post. You see, it's not enough to just talk about my opinions, I have to explain them, give plausible examples, trample any potential arguments and stick a few stupid jokes in there for good measure. Like a fat man on a cinema seat; it takes up a fair bit of room.

So I did three little ideas - three is, as I'll get to at some point, a magic number in writing. I expanded these three and then started work on the main body of the post, and I've been there for the past couple of days. I'm not one of those guys that can conceive, plot, draft and produce a new idea every day, I'm just not that good. My first drafts usually come out like sandpaper and I need to smooth down all the rough edges before I'll even consider letting anybody read them.

Things were going well - I looked set to finish it off tonight. I spent an hour and a half plugging away in this blogger window until I had the entire article written out sans jokes.

I tend to write the main body of this stuff and then add the jokes in later. It's easier for me to be funny if I'm reacting to something and I don't feel as if I'm being entertaining if I'm not being funny. So the joke writing stage takes a fair bit of time (which is why this entry has had no jokes in it so far - this is just stream of consciousness stuff).

I thought I'd be prudent and copy and paste the entry into a word document. I use a dinosaur of a laptop that tends to stutter worse than me on a date. When I use hotmail this thing shimmies so much that just picking out one e-mail is like picking out a single vein from a still-beating heart.

I highlighted my whole character article, right-clicked and waited.

I kept on waiting.

Maybe the machine hadn't registered my right-click properly, it's happened before.

So I right clicked again.

And my character article vanished. Two days of work gone and I couldn't get it back.

So I did what I usually do in these situations - namely, I panic, cry, drink half a bottle of mouthwash and then write about my problems. That last bit is what you've just read.

Now I have a back up. It's just that my back up has everything I've written up until today, so all I'm missing is the hour and a half that I put into it today - and most of the jokes.

So I just thought I'd drop by real quick to let you know why there hasn't been anything new here, even though I promised you all (Hi Mum!) that there would be. I'm not one of those weekend writer types that I'm going to be moaning about a lot in the future, no sir! I take all my writing very seriously. Perhaps too seriously.

There'll be something new here tomorrow - either I'll get the character article done or I'll post the other entry I've been working on (one that I had originally planned to be third up, since it's shorter than my other two). Either way drop back tomorrow around this time and see what's here.

Update on what I've been doing: P.I story that I'm working on is crawling along. At the moment my main character is getting his arse thoroughly kicked by life and some of the other characters. It's great fun to write something like this - it's totally different to anything I've written up until this point.

I also discovered a website that pays for decent short stories. My only problem is that there's a word limit of 1,500 words, and most of my shorts are way over the 4,000 word mark (they're short by comparison to the bible). So I need to work on something new, been plucking away at an idea which might fill their needs.

I got a rejection letter from another agent. This one didn't even take the time to send me a form rejection notice, apparently all they've done is scrawl 'No Thanks!' at the bottom of the letter that I sent them. All my writing stuff gets sent to my parents house, along with my bank statements and wage slips (it's the only address I've ever really learned) so I'll need to go visiting before I can see which agent it was. Suffice it to say it doesn't look like this agency can act like proffesionals, so I don't think I want to deal with them. It's like asking out a pretty girl and discovering that she's a horrible person - it's more of a relief than anything else.

I also don't have a day job anymore. This is a shame, but it's also an opportunity to try out something new so I'm not complaining (much). I just hope I get another job soon. Until I start making money from writing (which might take a long time) then I'll need a day job to pay my rent and fund my myriad addictions.

I've also been killing some time here http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/creepy-pasta it's a little collection of short horror fiction. A lot of it is well-written, some if it is quite light in tone and there's quite a few stories here that are unsettling. It's great. Fair warning though, if you don't like those chainmails that threaten you with ghosts if you don't send them to a million people - you'll hate the stories 'WITNESS' and 'I used to be fearless.' By reading them you apparently invite the ghost into your home. So far I'm relatively ghost free, but just thought I should warn you if you're one of them nervous temprament types.

Other people collect stamps, I collect ghosts that are trying to kill me. Maybe I can get these ghosts, Bloody Mary and that TV chick from 'The Ring' to battle each other for the right to kill me. They might all do it at once. I'll keep you posted in any case. It might make an interesting youtube video.

On that note, I'm off to sleep. I have to be up fairly early in the morning to go canvass the city centre with my CV. I plan to fling copies from the rooftops and see what happens.

Peas!

- Writerman

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