Writing Discussion

[The Rich Port]

Has anyone actually tried writing autobiographical accounts?

Difficult as it is for me, it's also very enlightening, not only about myself, but about other people.

Are you referring to personal essays?

Eh, I wasn't thinking of those, but maybe they count?

I meant more autobiographical accounts.

I brought up Alison Bechdel's Fun Home as an example.

[Bezombia]

I've always had a hard time writing about myself at length.

How come?

It's difficult for me because... Well, my life is difficult to write. Painful.

Is it for the same reason?

I always had a problem writing about my own life because most of it is stuff that I don't want to have to read, and the rest of it isn't worth writing.

[Nazi Flower Power]

How come?

It's difficult for me because... Well, my life is difficult to write. Painful.

Is it for the same reason?

I always had a problem writing about my own life because most of it is stuff that I don't want to have to read, and the rest of it isn't worth writing.

Back when I worked at Aetna (and actually a few times before that), I would tell people I drew comics and they'd ask if the comics were about myself. I always wondered why anybody thought I would draw a comic about how I sat in a cubicle processing insurance enrollments for 8 hours a day. What did they think I was doing that was interesting enough to be worth putting in a comic? And if you walk into a comic shop, how many of the comics are going to be autobiographical? I never understood why people kept asking me if my comics were about myself.

[Nordengrund]

What does one do when they run out of steam for NaNo?

[Laerod]

I always had a problem writing about my own life because most of it is stuff that I don't want to have to read, and the rest of it isn't worth writing.

Back when I worked at Aetna (and actually a few times before that), I would tell people I drew comics and they'd ask if the comics were about myself. I always wondered why anybody thought I would draw a comic about how I sat in a cubicle processing insurance enrollments for 8 hours a day. What did they think I was doing that was interesting enough to be worth putting in a comic? And if you walk into a comic shop, how many of the comics are going to be autobiographical? I never understood why people kept asking me if my comics were about myself.

Maybe Dilbert is the only comic they know?

What does one do when they run out of steam for NaNo?

Cut off one's hands and become a nun.

[The Rich Port]

I always had a problem writing about my own life because most of it is stuff that I don't want to have to read, and the rest of it isn't worth writing.

Back when I worked at Aetna (and actually a few times before that), I would tell people I drew comics and they'd ask if the comics were about myself. I always wondered why anybody thought I would draw a comic about how I sat in a cubicle processing insurance enrollments for 8 hours a day. What did they think I was doing that was interesting enough to be worth putting in a comic? And if you walk into a comic shop, how many of the comics are going to be autobiographical? I never understood why people kept asking me if my comics were about myself.

Ahem... Didn't Harvey Pekar make a thousand dollars doing exactly that?

Shit, Harvey Pekar didn't even draw the frickin' things XD

[The New World Oceania]

Back when I worked at Aetna (and actually a few times before that), I would tell people I drew comics and they'd ask if the comics were about myself. I always wondered why anybody thought I would draw a comic about how I sat in a cubicle processing insurance enrollments for 8 hours a day. What did they think I was doing that was interesting enough to be worth putting in a comic? And if you walk into a comic shop, how many of the comics are going to be autobiographical? I never understood why people kept asking me if my comics were about myself.

Ahem... Didn't Harvey Pekar make a thousand dollars doing exactly that?

Shit, Harvey Pekar didn't even draw the frickin' things XD

Creative non-fiction is a ridiculously massive genre of writing. I am in a creative writing program and will have a concentration in it come the following year. It isn't particularly novel a concept and I dare say I can name a few other people who've become known by writing about themselves.

[Zeinbrad]

After reading the script to The Father of the Bride there was a section advertising new plays.

I remember NWO saying something about writing new plays nowadays.

[The Rich Port]

Ahem... Didn't Harvey Pekar make a thousand dollars doing exactly that?

Shit, Harvey Pekar didn't even draw the frickin' things XD

Creative non-fiction is a ridiculously massive genre of writing. I am in a creative writing program and will have a concentration in it come the following year. It isn't particularly novel a concept and I dare say I can name a few other people who've become known by writing about themselves.

... I feel like someone's mentioned this to me before for the same reason...

After reading the script to The Father of the Bride there was a section advertising new plays.

I remember NWO saying something about writing new plays nowadays.

... NWO?

[The New World Oceania]

Creative non-fiction is a ridiculously massive genre of writing. I am in a creative writing program and will have a concentration in it come the following year. It isn't particularly novel a concept and I dare say I can name a few other people who've become known by writing about themselves.

... I feel like someone's mentioned this to me before for the same reason...

After reading the script to The Father of the Bride there was a section advertising new plays.

I remember NWO saying something about writing new plays nowadays.

... NWO?

Moi, c'est moi.

[Forsher]

Are you referring to personal essays?

Eh, I wasn't thinking of those, but maybe they count?

I meant more autobiographical accounts.

I brought up Alison Bechdel's Fun Home as an example.

I haven't. The closest would probably be something I wrote in my first few months of school because, from as far as I could tell, we had to describe something that happened in both pictorial and written forms. Due to being five, this was basically two sentences or something like that.

My primary school was quite keen on personal reflection actually. Whenever we went on a school trip we'd have to do a recount, which basically involved writing down what we did on the trip. Hell, we even did this for swimming sports (unless my memory is lying to me). I guess if one's literary output was based purely on the recounts one would be categorised as a diarist who wrote entries a handful of times a year.

[Bontavation]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

[Nazi Flower Power]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

Lately, I haven't been writing a lot. I finished my short story for the contest, then tried to get into NaNo, but just wasn't feeling it. I've got 3 novels in progress, but I'm having a hard time committing to one and sticking to it.

The three novels are:

Heart of Gold -- a fantasy novel about a bandit who finds a powerful talisman and leads a slave rebellion. I started this 4 or 5 years ago, wrote a page, then abandoned it. In January of this year, I came back to it and wrote about 60 pages, but then got distracted and abandoned it again in April. I think it has some beautiful images and concepts, and some of the characters are developing into interesting people, but I've had trouble pulling it all together and making a cohesive plot. I've also had trouble just transferring my ideas from my head onto the page.

The Bloodseekers -- a science fiction novel about a guy who works at an embassy in the capital of a 26th century Nazi dictatorship. The embassy is sheltering some shipwrecked Jews, one of his countrymen gets busted for espionage, and he gets tangled up in some intrigues among the local officials. I need to come up with a new title because I threw out my original plot and the original title has nothing to do with the new plot. I started this a couple of years ago, but abandoned it because I realized it was just sort of rambling without a clear purpose. Then a couple of months ago, I thought I would convert one of the subplots (the one about the shipwrecked Jews) into a short story to use for the contest. I couldn't get it under the 6000 word maximum, so I wrote something else for the contest, but then I realized that the subplot from Bloodseekers had a lot of potential if I used it for something that didn't have a limit on word count. So I kind of want to get back to that at some point, but I need to clean up the mess I made when I was trying to convert it to a short story.

Ebola and John -- the novel I started for NaNo. The goddess of Ebola and the god of smallpox fight Jesus to stop the Christian apocalypse. Unfortunately, the only weapons they have at their disposal are deadly viruses, and the god of smallpox doesn't remember how to use his divine powers because he got screwed up when smallpox was eradicated and a human psychiatrist tried to help him by overwriting his brain with a bunch of fake memories. Meanwhile, the humans are all acting weird because Jesus is brainwashing them. I expect this to move pretty fast once I get to the part where John meets Ebola, but I'm currently bogged down in the part at the beginning where he is just dealing with his human friends and wondering why they are all getting religion all of a sudden. I think I just need to conceptualize better who his friends are and what their character arcs are going to be.

1000 words a day is what I can do reliably when I am actively working on something. About 3000 words is the most I've ever written in a day, but that's not a pace I can maintain.

[Conserative Morality]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

Dunno. It varies. I can push 4000 good words out in as little as an hour, and then just shut down for the rest of the day; or I can go days without writing a word; or I can scribble bits and pieces through the day and get only a few hundred (Or dozen) down. I'm very erratic in this matter. I don't think I could give an average that wasn't complete bullshit.

[The New World Oceania]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

Er... 200 written and revised on average on a normal day, maybe?
(I've got this feeling we're talking novels)

[Volmachtia]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

I range between 1000 and 1500 words a day, usually.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

I wrote 35 words yesterday. At this rate, I could finish NaNoWriMo in slightly less than four years.

Not that I really have any interest in writing a novel, of course.

[Nazi Flower Power]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

I wrote 35 words yesterday. At this rate, I could finish NaNoWriMo in slightly less than four years.

Not that I really have any interest in writing a novel, of course.

Quality, not quantity!

[Zeinbrad]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

Depends on what my boss person wants.

(Talking about Video Game writers)

Through I do plan ahead. Then again I'm writing a Hunger Games-The Video Game story, so it may be tough because Video Games are interactive not like novels.

[Vancon]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

Depends on what my boss person wants.

(Talking about Video Game writers)

Through I do plan ahead. Then again I'm writing a Hunger Games-The Video Game story, so it may be tough because Video Games are interactive not like novels.

You're not serious.

[Laerod]

Depends on what my boss person wants.

(Talking about Video Game writers)

Through I do plan ahead. Then again I'm writing a Hunger Games-The Video Game story, so it may be tough because Video Games are interactive not like novels.

You're not serious.

Pretty much exactly my reaction when he first showed us that someone had hired him to write for a game.

[Zeinbrad]

Depends on what my boss person wants.

(Talking about Video Game writers)

Through I do plan ahead. Then again I'm writing a Hunger Games-The Video Game story, so it may be tough because Video Games are interactive not like novels.

You're not serious.

I'm a volunteer.

And I needed the experience.

Don't judge me.

[Nazi Flower Power]

You're not serious.

I'm a volunteer.

And I needed the experience.

Don't judge me.

The thing I was wondering about was if they have the rights for a Hunger Games video game or if they're doing it unlicensed.

[Zeinbrad]

I'm a volunteer.

And I needed the experience.

Don't judge me.

The thing I was wondering about was if they have the rights for a Hunger Games video game or if they're doing it unlicensed.

It's similar to the hunger games. They just didn't want to get sued.

I put it in the Gaiaverse because otherwise they would get sued and it fit the Ragon Empire.

[The New World Oceania]

How much would people here say they write per day, on average? And no, world-building doesn't count. I'm talking about writing publishable (is that a word?) content.

I personally write in-between 750 and 1000 on most days. I've been aiming for 2000, but I'd be lying if I said that was the norm. The current story I'm working on is 33,000 words, and I've still got plenty of momentum.

I wrote 35 words yesterday. At this rate, I could finish NaNoWriMo in slightly less than four years.

Not that I really have any interest in writing a novel, of course.

This is the kind of stress that killed Hemmingway.