I NaNoWriMo

[SinbadEV]

After the coke and the sugar from my fuzzy peaches added their influence to my already coffee-adled brain I started talking to myself at the bus stop... as it turns out, I was wrong, the underlying theme of my story and the "main idea" (the pinball machine) acctually mesh perfectly together without the need for a cop-out... I just hadn't realized it yet

[MidKnight]

After the coke and the sugar from my fuzzy peaches added their influence to my already coffee-adled brain I started talking to myself at the bus stop...

This is how all true classics are written!

[TradeMark]

This would be cooler if we could read the thing... and perhaps add ideas etc... opensource book project, anyone?

[SinbadEV]

This would be cooler if we could read the thing... and perhaps add ideas etc... opensource book project, anyone?

Let's put that idea on the shelf for next month... I'm having enough trouble getting motivated to write as it is... and constantly thinking about my story has caused me to start missing bus stops.

[SwiftSpear]

According to the books on writing I've read good writing comes from practice which is why a program that encourages quantity over quality is useful.

I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree... There are mass volume writers out there who just don't "get" it and never produce much in the way of quality work. And then you have your writers like Patrick Rothfuss, who writes his first novel and very nearly produces an epic of Tolkienesk proportions.

Practice certainly doesn't hurt, but good writing comes from thinking about writing and understanding writing. I'll agree in as much that perfectionism should be avoided as a reason for not getting started in the first place. If you write something, and it doesn't work right, then you've learned something about how to write. But I don't think being introspective on your work, and actively attempting to learn outside of the universe of just writing in mass volume, is a waste of time either.

The advice from David Bjerklie is REALLY GOOD. Not only for writing but for almost any creative pursuit. When sitting down infront of the PC and trying to churn out words just doesn't work, approach the problem from a different angle. Make an outline of where your plot is going, develop a character back story, summarize the flow of action for the section of plot you are approaching next. Much writing can be done sentence by sentence, but those kind of activities help out immensely when things get more sticky.

[PicassoCT]

Tolkien is bad exampel swiftspear, the man basically did everything wrong you can with a book. Wrote, it, finnished it, started allover again. What makes tolkien so good is not his way to write or his descriptions, or his characters, its the fact that lordoftherings is just the tipf of the iceberg that is his lifeswork, and you can feel it, every second, every moment, every shit the hobbits step upon has history back to the days when arda was still flat and morgoth didnt shatter the northern lights.

That said, lotr is his weakest work, the simarillion has tons of more interesting - and often more tragic heroes. Beren and Luthien, Sauron who is basically Melkors groom

[Panda]

According to the books on writing I've read good writing comes from practice which is why a program that encourages quantity over quality is useful.

I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree... There are mass volume writers out there who just don't "get" it and never produce much in the way of quality work.

I agree there are some very good short stories and poetry that tell a story and these works composed are of fewer words are, in my opinion are just as high quality as novels are. They just can't generally be made into movies or anything like that.

And then you have your writers like Patrick Rothfuss, who writes his first novel and very nearly produces an epic of Tolkienesk proportions.

I've never heard of Rothfuss, but after reading "The Hobbit" I remember thinking that his writing style was a little dry and much to drawn out even though his story had a good plot. There weren't enough exciting descriptions in the book and he just kept going on and on about the same thing for a very long time.

The advice from David Bjerklie is REALLY GOOD. Not only for writing but for almost any creative pursuit. When sitting down infront of the PC and trying to churn out words just doesn't work, approach the problem from a different angle. Make an outline of where your plot is going, develop a character back story, summarize the flow of action for the section of plot you are approaching next. Much writing can be done sentence by sentence, but those kind of activities help out immensely when things get more sticky.

Yep, that's why my initial writing activity idea involving the list of descriptive words or phrases relating to a certain topic and sense was a good idea too.