check in day 3

[lilly_c]

Sorry I missed yesterday, I had a bad night on Monday and needed to rest as well as getting my head back into the right spaces.
How is the writing going today? What about the last two days?

Poll #20527

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 1

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Today I

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wrote
1 (100.0%)

edited
0 (0.0%)

posted
0 (0.0%)

sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

researched
0 (0.0%)

planned
0 (0.0%)

had a cheeky break
0 (0.0%)

dealt with life
0 (0.0%)

Discussion: resources. A while back crookedspoon asked for Writing resources/suggestions/insights on how to write longfic when you've never done that would be superb. As well as their request, what are some resources that you would recommend? It can be anything at all - progammes (including assistive tech options), blogs, books, challenges etc. I will then use all of the suggestions from the comments to make a main resources post that will also be a permanent sticky post.

Comments

[ladygriddlebone]

Scrivener is my big one. Got me through a 320K fic and several others that are longer than 50k (including my current WIP). Too many features to list here, all of them useful. My favorite is probably the project targets, which shows your progress against your daily goal (mine is usually 500 words) and manuscript goal, or corkboard view, where your writing snippets become cards on a corkboard and can be named, summarized, labeled according to progress, color coded, etc.

It can help to set a daily writing goal, even as little as 100 words, and commit to doing it every day. (It doesn't matter where the words go in the story or how good they are, just that you're making progress.) As you get in the habit, it'll get easier and easier. I did 500 words a day for almost a year when I committed to finishing my longest story, which is the one that topped out at 320k. It was horrible at first, but by the end I could fly through those 500 words and often got quite a bit more in.

Other than that, read lots of stuff by a variety of authors that's in the length range you're envisioning. And don't limit it to just fanfic. Get a feel for what can work for a longfic (and what you like in a longfic). Pacing's really important as a story stretches out.

[linaewen]

Jarte is the program I use for writing. I am trying to learn how to use Scrivener, but I love being able to have multiple tabs open in Jarte, and it can also be installed on a flash drive to be used on any computer -- handy for when I'm trying to get a bit of writing done while I am at work!

I use Online Etymology Dictionary when I am trying to make sure words are not too modern for the time period I am writing.

I'll add more as I think of them!