Saturday, November 6, 2010

Rolling Into Day Six

Tonight the Literary Society held a writing workshop. Our turn out wasn't spectacular, but it was better than expected. We all contributed writing prompts to a bowl and started the night by sitting around talking about what we're working on (or not as the case may be, then we pulled from the bowl of plots and took a minute to write a few sentences about it.
One girl has obviously not been taking enough creative writing classes, she seemed liberated by the idea that an essay format was not expected. We all felt a little liberated actually.
After the initial prompt exercise one of my friends and I excused ourselves to a separate "quiet writing room" to work alone. I brought my laptop and broke 10,000 words, my goal for the night.
Later, when I got home I found I wanted to keep working and I've been writing for a little while now, breaking 12,000. There was a quotation by Geoff Nicholas I heard once that equates writing to drinking and I think it's always important to leave the table while you could still maybe write a little more. Sometimes if I let ideas and words fester for a little while it's easier to put them all down later.
Surprises so far? I, the plotless wonder has actually constructed a pretty tight story (maybe a little too tight, so I still might have a little issue with word count). Some interesting gender dynamics have occurred unintentionally. My protagonist walks that fine line where she could either become a great force against crime or be quite a good criminal herself- she picks more pockets and locks than I originally anticipated. I like her though. She also reminds me a lot of her sister in some ways.
Oh, yes, her sister. While I was plotting out my protagonist's back story (even if it won't all be revealed in this particular story I like to have it well fleshed out) and while I was wondering about her siblings a character from last year's NaNo (the only good thing from that story) burst in and told me she was my protagonist's sister. I'm unutterably pleased with this. I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to use this character due to some botch-ups in last year's story, but she fits so well in this "world", family and genre I believe. Maybe she'll appear in the sequel.
Now, it's two a.m., I must get to bed.
I am also swearing off NaNo for the next 24 hours to catch up on school work.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, sounds like you're doing great! :) Don't forget to check in on the NaNo thread on the board! :)

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  2. Hm, for some reason that link did not show up ... here:

    http://robinhoodbbc.yuku.com/topic/645

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  3. Ha, I'll be checking in shortly.

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