[realologist]

I'm going to take on this challenge but start at 500 words per day as I haven't written anything in a long time.

Does anybody have any experience with writing biographies?

I wrote one about my Grandpa when I was in 4th or 5th grade and want to rewrite another about him. He gave me back the original copy and I want to get this one written so he can read it.

[Monolithic]

Is it OK to join now? I write reports for my work (thousands of bureaucratically phrased words a day) but I would like to write something of my own. Even if it's shit, it would be good to have a novel in a drawer or on a memory card to revisit. I think I have something to say.

[Sooth]

I wrote about 10k words in total but then started a side business and have been putting all my spare time into that.

[mickeytee]

I'll start doing this too.

Had a brief period at the beginning of the year when I was convinced that I had to become a pro writer somehow by the end of college, and wrote 500 words a day for 2 months. I was primarily motivated by fear; I didn't want to end up in a meaningless, soul sucking career with no way out. My life took an unexpected turn and the source of fear is gone now (I'm no longer going to med school), but I still want to be a writer.

Now, my life is quite uneventful at the moment and I don't have many experiences to draw on, but I also have a lot more free time than you guys so I have no excuse not to do this.

Every night after dinner I'll shut off my internet, take a shower, and write in my journaling software. I can't fit the writing into my morning routine because it already takes too much time, and my sleep schedule is getting really outta hand nowadays so having a pre-bed routine might help with that. Starting tonight!

[Beyond Borders]

My bad disappearing on you guys with this. I ended up diving deeper into my freelance stuff and was working crazy days - income leapt exponentially but stopped working on my own stuff again.

Trying to get back on that balance again, so going to renew this very worthy challenge starting tomorrow. Need to decide what milestone I'll set first and then will update.

Any of you guys still waging the war with this? Sweet Pea?

[Architekt]

Gonna jump on this and take a rather new approach to writing. I'll keep y'all updated

[Wahawahwah]

Aight so as a writer, I alternate between writing in a vacuum and getting feedback.

This purpose was somewhat served via blogging, and it really helps when you have a lot of people commenting on the story. The more people that comment, the more you are able to see your story through multiple perspectives and that has, in my experience, helped make the story richer. That being said, if you're an attention whore like me and enjoy writing to a crowd, blogging is a painfully slow way to build readership, and a lot of people just give up on writing because there is no "recognition", or that they have to resort to getting it reviewed by people they know of. The major issue with getting reviews from people who know you is that you self-correct, filter your ideas and essentially, sanitize the writing to keep up appearances.

The joy of anonymous feedback is freedom -- that you can explore different ideas, writing patterns, without fear of judgement or censure.

A week ago, a commenter lead me to this website --

Anonkun

I only checked it out today morning, but here are a few thoughts -

- Helps you reach out to a potentially large community (dependent, i'd guess, on how often and how well you write), as opposed to a blog where you need to spend time doing the grunt work, sharing it on social media, promoting your blog on a hundred sites, commenting on other people's blogs etc, that takes away from time, effort and thought that you could spend writing.

- Get instant readership from multiple genres, so even if you decide to switch from, say fantasy to drama, there would still be an instant viewer base.

- The Hawthorne (observer) effect -- Grossly over-simplified, when someone is watching you (or you feel yourself being observed), your productivity (and creativity) usually improve.

The website has a built in chatroom to your storyboard, so if you publish your post and select "Go Live" people are able to view your story in real time and chat with you. I think this can be turned off, or you can also schedule to be live at some time in the future (Something like "Going Live in X Hours) -- this is excellent because it gives your readers a mild sense of anticipation and allows you to have a conversation with multiple people at the same time.

Caveats -

- The community seems a little limited (I could be wrong, havent really explored it in depth as yet).

- Continual attention might lead to authors whoring out their stories to pander to the reader base for virtual hi-fives and validation (there were a few stories that started out really strong, but then just meandered and went nowhere and essentially became a circle jerk)

- People stealing your stories if they become popular (this is an issue with blogging or posting on any public domain also).

- The writing quality of the membership is pretty average, in my limited experience.
--------------
Anecdotal - I've hit a rich vein of writing form today morning since I discovered the site and have written close to 7000 words (and its barely noon).
Was going to just drop a small note about the site here to check if you guys were on it, but ended up with this longish post.

Okay gotta go fap now

[ColSpanker]

^^^Bookmarked for further study. My problem is that I like getting paid for what I write. It tends to turn me into a writing machine, but there are days when I wonder why I am killing myself for one or two people. I suppose if the client is happy, it's all that matters. Better to have one person like an 8K story and pay you for it than no one read your 200K epic fantasy political novel.

[Moma]

Anyone still on this? I am going to enter the challenge. Did 1000 last night.

[pitt]

We are a bunch of lazy cats.

I just read about this guy who writes 30 to 50k words per week, his close friend writes few thousand words a way. I felt insulted that I can't even make it consistent to write 500 words a day. I am taking triple action from now on, no more slacking.

[Fortis]

Getting back on the horse. I wrote a few smut stories to sell on amazon, but then I moved and forgot all about this tawdry adventure.

[Chunnel]

Bump.

I have been suffering from wicked writer's block while trying to write b-school essays, so I said fuck it and just started typing whatever came to my mind. Unfortunately, I still have writer's block, but it was still great to write without boundaries and constrictions.

Count me in starting 10-19-15

[Moma]

(08-14-2015 06:55 AM)Fortis Wrote:  

Getting back on the horse. I wrote a few smut stories to sell on amazon, but then I moved and forgot all about this tawdry adventure.

How did that work out?

[redbeard]

I think I'm going to get into this. I want to expand my writing skill.

My question is:

What kind of outlet are you using for your writing?

I like using a journal (I'm old school like that) but counting words becomes tedious.

I started using EverNote for all my writing...but now it's clogged with various ebook ideas, RVF posts, and lifestyle design pointers. There are quite a few word processors out there that offer an alternative to Word (which is worse than blue hair in my opinion). Ulysses and Scrivener seem to be the top dogs.

[Fortis]

So,

For the past 30 days, I've written 1000 words a day.

It's been a pretty fun experience. The most noticeable effect:

I've built a cool, new habit.

How do I know? Well, I get this urge to write. Like, I came in from a late dinner with some buddies at 10pm. I let my buddy use my wifi for a bit while I was typing away. I didn't mean to be rude, but I just felt that my need to write was more important at that moment. Of course, I failed at writing while entertaining my guest and ended up with only 200 words after 2 hours. I kicked my friend out (courteously, of course) and began hammering away again at 12am. I'm finally done and it's about 1:30am. A month ago, I would have just gone to bed and went "ah fuck it. I'll write 1000 words tomorrow." But at this point writing is a lot like going to the gym. Even when I don't particularly feel like I have anything to write, I'll sit at the keyboard and pound away until I have 1000 words in front of me. It's almost effortless at this point just because my brain expects to do it.

That said, a lot of what I've written is absolute loony tunes shit. Just crazy, stream of consciousness, journal-esque type writing. I am happy, though, that I can essentially "talk with my fingers" now--if that makes any sense. I'm decent at rambling in person, and I can now do it on a keyboard. I can just keep typing and typing and typing as though I'm talking. It's sort of trippy, actually. I used to be able to do this when I was in high school, so it's strange to see that my brain can go back to doing that.

I Definitely haven't written anything publishable, but I'm happy that I sat down and did this for thirty days. I'm going to continue to do this well into the foreseeable future, but I'll focus on more productive types of writing.

----

Moma, I wrote a couple of smut stories back in August, but I felt discouraged and didn't publish anything.

[johnbozzz]

I do it. I write 1,000-1,500 words a day in an email to my deceased grandfather. Obviously, this message is never send, but it's fine practice.

[Fortis]

(02-25-2016 11:37 PM)johnbozzz Wrote:  

I do it. I write 1,000-1,500 words a day in an email to my deceased grandfather. Obviously, this message is never send, but it's fine practice.

[weambulance]

I have not being doing this lately as I've been focusing on programming, but when I have the time to focus on my fiction I can write 5000 words a day consistently. I could probably get that higher with better discipline, because I've written 1000 words in an hour or less loads of times.

I should really publish something. I have a number of short stories done and I could finish up a larger project with a few weeks of part time work, but I've been holding back because I want to have decent covers for them and I haven't really figured that out yet.

...And looking at what I just wrote, that's a pretty lame excuse for putting off publishing my writing for months now. New goal: put up at least one short story on Amazon this weekend. I can update the covers as I get better at making them.

[Ben]

(11-05-2015 09:56 PM)redbeard Wrote:  

I think I'm going to get into this. I want to expand my writing skill.

My question is:

What kind of outlet are you using for your writing?

I like using a journal (I'm old school like that) but counting words becomes tedious.

Before using a paper journal, I used 750words.com. 750 words is three pages of normal handwriting. 750words is good for motivation in that it you earns badges for writing everyday.

[robreke]

(02-26-2016 12:42 AM)weambulance Wrote:  

I have not being doing this lately as I've been focusing on programming, but when I have the time to focus on my fiction I can write 5000 words a day consistently. I could probably get that higher with better discipline, because I've written 1000 words in an hour or less loads of times.

I should really publish something. I have a number of short stories done and I could finish up a larger project with a few weeks of part time work, but I've been holding back because I want to have decent covers for them and I haven't really figured that out yet.

...And looking at what I just wrote, that's a pretty lame excuse for putting off publishing my writing for months now. New goal: put up at least one short story on Amazon this weekend. I can update the covers as I get better at making them.

How do you just put up a short story on Amazon? Don't you need to go through the rigamarole of finding a publisher and getting published first?

[weambulance]

Nope, the publishing world has changed. I can put together an ebook and sell it directly through any number of online stores. High quality print-on-demand services are available for selling paper books without doing a 10,000 book mass market print run, with the up front cost, storage, and distribution problems that involves. In doing that, I retain all rights and completely control my intellectual property, while making 5-6x more per sale than I would if I went through a traditional publisher, while also being able to bring my work to market immediately instead of waiting 1-2 years... et cetera.

Traditional publishing is nothing but downsides from where I'm standing, as I don't care about being able to say that I got published by some fancy publishing house. I can hire a copyeditor and proofreader or trade services with another writer, I can either make a cover or commission an artist to do so (I have a list of artists I want covers from eventually), and I can easily design and format an ebook. I can design the paper book myself. I can do all those things for much, much cheaper than what a traditional publisher would want without giving up any of my control over the product.

Actually though, selling short stories to magazines is about the only bit of traditional publishing I'd consider, because they usually pay pretty well and the publishing rights revert to the writer not too long after publication. Then I could put them up on my own site, or in collections, etc to keep selling them. I want to put something out on Amazon now just because I think it's a step I need to take to get motivated.

I'll look around and see if there's a fairly up-to-date comparison of going the traditional publishing route vs independent publishing on the forum, and if not I'll put one together.

[The Man w/ the Golden Gun]

After reading some Delicious Tacos, I decided to get back to writing-this thread was lurking in the back of my head. Guess I'm in.

[Beyond Borders]

Bump.

Time to revisit this old challenge.

10/11/2017

Cranked out 5,239 words of fiction today. Onward.

[Beyond Borders]

7200+ today. Solid momentum picking up.

[yankeetravels]

I'm actually working on a novel based on a true story at the moment so this would be a great challenge for me. I'm going to try to keep up with this as my goal for this week before I even found this thread was to improve my time management to work on this novel.

Yesterday afternoon and last night I got 3800 words done. Kind of slacking for me considering on my best days, I can get around 7K words in. Not sure what's really considered a good word count per day of work for a novel (this is my first one) so I'm just hoping I can get back to around 7K in the upcoming days.