Checking in on Day 28 (Thursday)

[linaewen]

It's Thursday, the 28th day of April (at least where I'm located) and it's time for another check-in post.  Here's a wee quote to start things off:

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing.
It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting.
As a writer, words are your paint.
Use all the colors.
-- Rhys Alexander

1.  How did you spend your writing time today?

• I'm writing!
• I'm researching!
• I'm editing!
• I'm taking a break!
• I'm wishing I had time to write, but I'm just too busy with other things...

2.  Do you have a word count for the day or a snippet of a thought or a conversation you want to share?

3.  On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most positive, how are you feeling about your writing efforts today -- and why did you choose that number?

4.  The "answer if you feel like it" question:  If you are a writer who likes to include a lot of details, what kind of details do you favor?  Scenery?  Physical descriptions of your characters?  Sounds, colors or expressions? 

Comments

[linaewen]

1. Unless you count work-related emails and filling out forms, I haven't written yet. ;-) However, I am hoping to be able to sit down and do some kind of fic-related work yet today. I want to at least do some review and planning (and maybe some research) for the various fics I need to be working on next month for the challenges I'm involved in.

2. Maybe tomorrow... ;-)

3. I'm feeling like a 6 today, because I'm anticipating a good time of writing before bedtime. I trust I'm not being too optimistic!

4. I tend to wax eloquent with the details when it comes to describing the setting, especially if it is outdoors. I usually have a strong picture of the place I am writing about in my head, and I try to describe it in the same way I see it. I tend to not be as specific when describing people, unless it's their expression or tone of voice.

[charamei]

1. I'm editing! I found a comment from an old beta which helped me to pinpoint the exact moment where this chapter breaks, and mostly it's just a case of wallpapering over the cracks in the prose now. Well, that and the major scene rewrite of doom. (I have no idea how, but my paper copy and my computer copy somehow got out of sync and I've spent several hours of valuable editing time typing up the correct version of a 2,000-ish word scene all over again. THEN IT WILL NEED REWRITING. THEN I WILL BE DONE.)

2. I wish I had something to share :/ I do have a wordcount today due to crack-wallpapering, but it's very bitty and mostly transition paragraphs.

3. Allow me to answer this in song:

Go to sleep little leech
You've sucked mama dry
Made her more crazy
With every cry
Why weren't we more careful
That night on the beach
Go to sleep
Go to sleep little leech

4. I'm not sure how to answer this one: the amount of detail I include varies wildly, mostly because I like it but am incredibly bad at remembering to put it in (hence the crack-wallpapering...). I like describing scenery; I seldom describe people except in the broadest terms. And I'm trying to get into the habit of describing emotional tics better, since I know that's a weakness of mine.

[littlebutfierce]

Both yesterday & today offline life pwned me, alas, so no writing of fic. ;_; Maybe this weekend, I dunno.

I tend to be a little light on description, sometimes (I too go back & add some in after I finish a draft, heh). Though what I do put in tends to be a lot of physical tics of the characters. Also sometimes scenery, I think--though that latter depends on what fandom I'm writing in & how much the scenery tends to feel like part of the story.

[lola_mento]

1. Writing!

2. 1200 words. I'm not even halfway through, though.

3. A 9. I'm doing great, but still have room to improve.

4. I'm really bad at writing detail. I have to go back and add it. And then I add too much.

[snowynight]

1. I took a break from my bigbang and wrote bingo fic!
2. 1100 words
3. 5. On the one hand, I don't write on my bang. On the other hand. I did write.
4. I usually write in a sparse style so details is my weakness.

[curuchamion]

I'm bad at details. My talent is in packing a whole lot of implication into a small space, relying on my readers' knowledge of the fandom to fill in the blanks; I'm hoping that trying to spend 50,000 words on the same OCs and setting next month will encourage me to practice proper descriptions.

(I blame L.M. Montgomery, partly. The entire Anne of Green Gables series is full of "ONOES your description iz Flowery!!! you must Cut It Out!!" Which, yeah, flowery over-description is admittedly something young writers do... but I think it's a necessary growing stage. You can't edit your descriptions till you know how to write them, thus I think I read the Green Gables books way too young.)

That is an awesome quotation, that right there. *copies*