WIP Challenge: Day 5 check-in

[sylvaine]

How's it going, fellow writers? Are the creative juices flowing, or has the beginning of the week hit your muse hard? Tell us you progress!

For discussion: Have you ever been in an offline writing group? Did it help with your writing?

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

I already did my 750 Words for the day, hours before I usually do! Maybe I will even get to some editing tonight??? Who knows! I don't really think the words were super-useful, but... if I'm stuck on a scene or plot point I tend to write versions of it every day until my brain's worked out what needs to happen -- so these words were (in theory!) part of that process. Hoping my answer comes to me soon. -_-;;

I've never been in an offline writing group -- when I was younger I took a few writing classes, but that's the closest I've come.

[jagnikjen]

Well, it's going okay. Trying to get a bit of revising in this morning while it's quiet.

Discussion topic: As a matter of fact, I am a member of Romance Writers of America, one of the largest writing organizations in the world. I've learned sooooo much about writing and have real life writer buddies that I see once a month.

[lacygrey]

Its going well at the moment. I completed a short scene for a short fic. I'm not too sure how the whole thing will hold together when its finished, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Ive managed to lose the kink meme prompt that I wrote a ficlet for yesterday. Ive been scouring for it, which is fun, but a time sink. If I can't find it I'll have to reprompt it myself anonymosly, even though that will lose any trackers.

Offline writing groups - no. I did a residential course for a week once though. One nice suggestion I remember is to warm up each day by writing a Haiku.

[lilly_c]

Got some more work done on big bang after uni, got to finish early for a change so that definetly helped. As tomorrow is one of my days off it shall be spent typing what I've got handwritten so far.

I've never been in a offline writing group, can't even remember taking any writing classes either.

[lullabymoon]

Opened a few sources for research but had to leave before I could properly look at them. Another scene written for yuletide as well.

Never been in a writing group at all. Our local area group has had a few successes but what little I've seen of them (and heard) suggests it's not really my cup of tea at all.

[sylvaine]

*sigh* Doesn't look like I'll be doing anything tonight anymore. I've basically been failing to do even the most basic things today, like, you know, *getting out of bed* and *doing my homework that is now past the deadline* and that kind of thing. Not really the most conductive mood to writing. (But, IDK! There's still an hour left to the day? I live in eternal hope.)

I have been in an offline writing group! Last year my English teacher started one at our school; it was glorious fun! ... that may have been because I was best friends with half of the class, and half of the rest were my sisters. ... and after a while the other members stopped coming. >.> It didn't really help me that much in terms of writing the things that I actually wanted to write, i.e. fanfic (although the teacher was a REALLY good sport about critiquing my slashfic whenever I brought it in :D), but it was just a lot of fun to do all the silly writing exercises that he gave us - speed writing, team writing, turning a really boring first paragraph into something fun by adding in lots of ninjas bursting in through the wall, writing in somebody else's style, writing monologues to perform onstage (which we never got around to, but still!)... and I think some of the general comments were pretty valuable, things that should perhaps be obvious but weren't, such as not overusing adverbs, or applying real-life experience to your writing to make it more realistic, or putting in more description.

[lacerta]

500 words! Of things I didn't mean to write, but oh well, I'm happy I got something down on the page and if I keep going now, I might be able to pull it together, too.

Not really a writing group, but I've met up with friends to write together. It was actually very helpful in terms of avoiding distractions because everyone brought in a lot of motivation and we made sure not to distract one another.

[pinstripefedora]

Only ~100 words today, unfortunately. I've been nursing a headache, which has been making it very difficult to concentrate. I also discovered that the scene I had been looking forward to writing so much is going to be more difficult to get through than I thought. I'm planning on staying up a bit longer to work out what changes I'll need to make, but there's no guarantee I'll have any more progress tonight.

I've never been in an offline writing group, no. Well, okay... in high school, some of my friends were also writers, and we used to pass our stories around to each other for fun. But I don't really think that counts.

[pinstripefedora]

Yay, I get to update my comment with good news. Between my headache finally going away and a surge of late-night alertness, I managed to figure out what was going wrong and rewrite my ~100 words into about 330 new words worth of material. As an unexpected bonus, I even wound up doing a little research on the side. I am much more pleased with what I've accomplished now, and am excited about getting back into it again tomorrow (or whenever I am next able to get some writing time).

[terajk]

I wrote 200+ words for my white_lotus assignment, and a Ranma 1/2 drabble-and-two-thirds.

Offline writing groups/classes are helpful for me. I think critiquing other people's work (in the "I want to help make this piece the best it can be" sense) really helped me look at my own writing more objectively. Also, the accountability was a plus.

[bay_alexison]

Bleh, yesterday and today just weren't my writing days. Last night wanted to get back writing for one of the LJ communities and wrote close to 200 words, but the idea I had just wasn't working. Today I had planned to get back to writing my help_japan fic, but bleh had too many things to do today and I only managed to edit/ finish up one small scene. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be in a better mood for writing.

I had never been in an offline group, though I took a creative writing class in my final semester of school. We only did nonfiction writing and some exercises, but I did learn a few things like how to find stronger action words and putting all five senses to make the writing more sensual.