WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 24 -- Friday

[linaewen]

Wow, it's Friday already!  Where did the rest of the week go?  ;-)  So, tell me, what kind of day was it for you?

Did you write?

• Yes!
• No!

If yes, what kind of writerly activity did you engage in?  If no, what were the obstacles/situations that affected your writerly pursuits?

For Discussion:  Many successful writers say that the foundation to good writing is reading.  Is reading helpful to you as a writer?  How much do you read?  Do you read books differently as a writer?

Comments

[linaewen]

I have a hefty dose of RL this week, and it prevented me not only from writing, but also from responding to my own check-in posts! I'm hoping for a lull in reality this weekend so I can catch up on some fun stuff, including writing. I did have my documents open for a bit yesterday and wrote down an idea for a challenge due next month, so that was something, at least.

Here are my catchup comments on the discussion topics I missed:

What writerly skills do you come by naturally, and which have you had to work to acquire or improve? My vocabulary and spelling are good and good grammar comes naturally, so that's a big help. I also adore doing research and writing outlines, and that gives me a lot of information to work from. I think I have a knack for description, too. What I need to work on is POV and being concise -- I probably say more than I need to. I also tend to use a lot of adverbs which I hear is a no no in some writing circles. ;-)

Do you find that ideas for stories or writing projects come to you out of the blue, or do you have to search for them? What serves as the basis for most of your stories? A situation? A character? A moral dilemma? Most of my ideas come out of the blue, usually when I'm about to go to sleep, so I have to get up and write them down! Other times I have to work at it a bit, especially if I'm given a prompt and I have to search for the idea. I almost always have a germ of an idea that suggests itself straight away, and with research it gels into something useable -- or not, as the case may be. My stories are for the most part character-driven.

For today's discussion -- I read much less now than I used to; a lot of my reading nowadays is me looking for info on my current idea. However, up until recently, I was a voracious reader. Reading is helpful in that it gives me ideas for my own writing and allows me to experience different styles that I'm not good at. I do read books differently now -- I'm more moved by beautiful language when I read, but I'm also very much bothered by typos. Unfortunately, my eye goes right to the mistakes that are present -- and this if often with published books!

[lea_hazel]

Trying to talk myself out of so many anon meme prompts.

[the_rck]

I wrote for the first time in a couple of days.

I read quite a bit, but I tend not to read so much while I'm writing. Writing takes a lot of time (well, not the writing so much as all the procrastinating I do).

[the_rck]

Oops! read the wrong discussion prompt!

I'm good at dialog and character's internal monologs. I'm lousy at action scenes. I'm not visual, so it's hard to describe what things (and people!) look like.