Rule of Three Writing Contest

I've been invited to join in on the Rule of Three writing contest, in which a short story is written over a period weeks using the rule of three. The setting of the story is a town called Renaissance, and it has a history. If you're interested in taking part in the contest, go to http://amloki.blogspot.com/p/sign-up-for-rule-of-three-blogfest.html . I haven't written a short story in years, maybe ten years or more. So it will be a challenge. I'll be using the story I started on the Platform-Builders Campaigner in a previous post of mine. At this point I have no idea where this story is going, but I'll do some thinking, planning, and executing soon. It'll be a challenge for me, but one I think I'll enjoy. It looks as if I'm going to be writing in a genre I've never written before (except for a story I wrote in high school back in the 60's--that tells you how old I am)--horror. Yikes. I would never have believed it. But, what the heck. I'm so fascinated by Roland Yeoman's blog http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-do-you-get-when-you-cross.html that I want to try it. Anyway, I'm hoping some of my friends will take part. See you there if the forces are with us.

First Campaigner Challenge.

The first challenge for Rachel Harrie's (http://rachaelharrie.blogspot.com/2011/09/first-campaigner-challenge.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RachaelHarrie+%28Rach+Writes...%29) Platform-Builders Campigner Challenge is to write a 200 words or less flash-fiction short story. It must start with the words: The door swung open....

Here is my entry.

An Open and Shut Door

The door swung open even though I had locked it. What the…? I pressed my back to the wall. Footsteps in the darkness. One foot dragging along the floor. What the…? There was grunting with each footstep and drag.

“Jack?” I said, barely audible. “Is that you?” My chest heaved, my breasts stiffened.

Another footstep and foot drag.

“Jack, if that’s you, I’m going to kill you for this.” I slid along the wall until I bumped into a side table, knocking something over, breaking it. Without looking at the table, I felt around in the darkness until I felt a saucer-sized piece of broken glass.

A large shadowy figure with large shining yellow eyes appeared before me in the darkness. What the…? “Jack, this isn’t funny.”

The yellow eyes were beautiful. They were alluring. I couldn’t stop staring at them. They offered warmth. But I knew they were alluring for all the wrong reasons. “What are you?” I muttered. “Keep back.”

“I want you,” the gravelly voice said. “Please let me have you.”

What the…?

“I need you,” he said.

Those yellow eyes…I wanted them. They were beautiful. “Okay. I’m yours.”

All of a sudden, the door swung shut.

That's it. Exactly 200 words.

Which is your favorite T.V. show?

I used to practically never watch television. But, since I've retired, I've watched a few programs that I enjoy. One is Ancient Aliens, another is Dancing With The Stars (I've only watched one series, but I enjoyed it quite a bit; I would love to have been a dancer, I guess.) But, as rediculous as it sounds, my favorite show is...Project Runway. Can you believe that? I mean, how lame can I be? But the show is just so full of interesting human interactions, tension, stress, hopes, dreams, true emotions...I love it. I've only watched one series (I'm now watching the new series that started a couple of weeks ago) but I looked forward to each show and who would win. Oh well...what's your favorite T.V. show, and why? Let us know.

Thank you, Valentina Hepburn!

The most amazing things happen when you're blogging. One of those is receiving awards, and I've received two from my British blogging friend Valentina Hepburn, http://lettersfromvalentinahepburn.blogspot.com/.
Valentina is one of those multiple personality types, only each one of her personalities is sweeter than the other. I think she has a little bit of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell in her. She sprinkles pixie dust wherever she goes.
The Versatile Blogger Award and Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

Seven random facts about myself:

1) I'm a versatile blogger
2) I'm irresistibly sweet
3) I lived in New England for fifteen years and loved it
4) I was not validictorian of my high school class.
5) I served in the US Naval Reserve
6) The first car I ever bought was a  canary-yellow Chevy Nova, back in 1972 or thereabouts.
7) I've been white-water rafting; it was amazing.

Five deserving bloggers:

http://catbirdscout.blogspot.com/  Deb Shucka is without a doubt one of the most thought-provoking bloggers I know of.

http://pk-hrezo.blogspot.com/ I've always wondered what the p k stands for

http://amandabarratt.blogspot.com/ Teenagers like her give us hope for the future.

http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/ KLo is a survivor

http://writerwriterpantsonfire.blogspot.com/ Mindy McGinnis just seems to be so alive.


There you have it. Thank you again, Valentina Hepburn. Sprinkle a little of pixie dust on all of us.

Creativity is messy.

This is a page from my work in progress. And this is perhaps the fourth draft of the novel that I'm working on. You would think that by the fourth draft, there would be nothing to change. Yet, there you see it. It looks messy, doesn't it.

Yes, I've come to believe that creativity is messy--all kinds of creativity. From painting, to sculpture, to writing, to photography, to music, to dance, to sex, it's all messy. Yet for the people involved, it's the greatest thing in the world.

What do you think?

Word Count

I haven't posted anything lately for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that I'm concentrating on revising my novel. I've never counted words before as a method of tracking or motivating myself. But I feel that at this point it's beneficial.

I'm working hard now on the final draft of a novel I estimate to be 110,000 words. I started reading the book aloud as the final draft a couple of months ago. Earlier in the year I had hoped to finish the final draft by the end of August, but that became unrealistic. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I estimated I had about 90,000 words to go. I calculated that if I could finish 692 words a day six days a week (I don't work on my writing on Sundays), I'd finish the book around December 31. Then I figured that, if I could finish about 1,153 words a day, I could finish it in three months or around the end of October. So I decided to keep track of the words each day and week that I finish. Thus far, the results look like this:

August 1-August 6- 2,621 words
August 8-August 13- 3,766 words
August 15-August 18- 7,036 words.

It looks like I'm accomplishing more and more as the weeks go by. Part of the reason for that is that the remainder of the book is already highly polished. I added quite a bit of new material to the beginning of the book when I started the final draft, so I needed to do more work to polish it than on the rest of the book. I'd certainly like to continue at the 6,000 to 7,000 word mark each week. If I can finish the chapter I'm revising now, which is over 1,000 words long, by tomorrow, I'll have finished over 8,000 words for this week. That's probably about the best I'll do on a weekly basis. But that should finish the book sometime in October.

Another reason I'm accomplishing more each week appears to relate to the fact that I am keeping work count. I feel motivated during the day to work on my book rather than do other things. Yes, I appear to have a goal.

Another reason for accomplishing more is that the modem on my computer died and I had no internet for over a week. At first, I was totally lost. But then it became easier to find time for writing. It's only common sense that eliminating as many distractions as possible frees up more time for writing. It reinforces everything you read about controling your time. And, putting writing ahead of all the voluntary distractions we indulge in is a huge benefit.

So, at least for the next two or three months, I'm buckling down to writing. I'll try to blog every so often, and I'm still reading a lot of blogs I follow, but in this case less is more.

Ideas

I haven't posted anything lately. I'm just not into it right now. Busy with revising my novel and too many family issues to think about it. I do look at the blogs I follow and try to think of something relevant to say. I guess right now I'm in a blog-funk. I have a few rough drafts of posts, but can't decide about posting them yet. I want to do a review of someone's blog, but I just haven't had the time to read all or most of her posts, yet. That is something I like doing (I've only done it once, thus far: "The Wit and Wisdom of Tanya Reimer."), but I want to do it right, so I'll wait until I have more time.

I'm really enjoying some of the blogs I follow. I mean, you girls are something else. Some of the ones I love are http://lettersfromvalentinahepburn.blogspot.com/ , http://nancysthompson.blogspot.com/, http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/, and http://talliroland.blogspot.com/, just to name a few. Don't feel bad if I left you off the list; I enjoy you all.

Oh well, maybe I'll think of something neat to write about someday.