Write Every Day, Day #3

[auroracloud]

I noticed that genprompt_bingo has a new round starting since yesterday, as does ladiesbingo. Although I have an abysmal success rate of zero with the various bingo prompt cards I've signed up for so far, I'm considering claiming one or two. Especially with all the new fandoms I've picked up with my obsessive podcast-listening (which I need to post about!) and reading, maybe it'd help me get stories written!

So as a voluntary question - do you have any favourite bingos, comment fests, and other sources of prompts that you would like to recommend? Do you like working with prompts? I rather like them - it often helps to focus my creativity and pick a direction to go. Though with random generators like bingos, there's always a risk that not enough of the prompts speak to you.

If you want another source of random prompts, I can recommend the Ersatz Genremixer, where you can enter characters and get tropey prompts from several different trope lists. The results may be anything from uncannily appropriate to ridiculous or just plain WTF, and I have far too many of them saved in a Scrivener file already.

Today's Writing

I had quite a lot on my schedule today - I've noticed I feel better about isolation if I keep myself busy with interesting things - and I also woke up too early and am therefore sleep-deprived again. I also took longer than expected with cooking and bread-roll baking. So I didn't have a lot of brain when I finally sat down to write, but hey, I still managed a little over 100 words on my novel, so it's not nothing. And the scene I'm working on is not that easy for me, because I'm trying really hard to be concrete and focused on physical senses and sensations rather than letting characters drift away in tons of introspection or just chatter about things. Because that's a thing I really want more of in my writing.

And then I started writing fic for a new fandom. Not a lot of words yet, but some! I'm still writing things for prompts from the happy distracting commentfest a few weeks back, though I haven't finished any. Maybe at some point I will!

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, china_shop, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, elliet, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 3: auroracloud, china_shop


If I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet, let me know and I'll edit it! You can join in or drop out any time.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

does this count?

I did take a bunch more screencaps of the area I'm trying to describe, and I did successfully convince myself that the answer to a different question about this setting is "the way that makes the scene more dramatic"…

ETA: progress! real live progress!

[auroracloud]

Yay for real live progress! Besides pondering things related to scene you're writing.

[trobadora]

646 words for me for me today.

Generic prompts mostly don't work for me - I need something specific to a fandom for it to inspire me.

[auroracloud]

Well done! Sounds like it's going well with the "more than alibi sentences" thing so far. :-)

I'm also more likely to get interesting stories out of fandom-specific prompts, which is why most of my published fanfics have been written for exchanges etc. But I also like generic prompts, because thinking about them in connection with my fandoms can give me stories nobody happens to be requesting with those fandoms/characters. And for my original writing, prompts of all kinds can be really helpful.

[luzula]

I wrote nothing on my fic today, but I spent much of the day obsessively writing a filk song (rewriting the Steeleye Span version of 'The Lowlands of Holland'). I finally finished it just at bed time. \o/

It's only 273 words, but you know, there are rhymes and stuff, and writing lyrics isn't really something you measure by wordcount. : )

[auroracloud]

Woo hoo, a filk! Congrats for finishing it! And rhymes and rhythms and stuff are hard, and indeed you don't really measure lyrics by word count - the same with poetry, for that matter. (I'm not tracking my word count this year, but when I did, it felt really odd to be counting words from poems on days when that was all the writing I did.)

[badly_knitted]

I've done genprompt_bingo before; for me it's the best bingo out there because it's low pressure. That said, I write for lots of weekly or monthly prompt communities. I enjoy writing for prompts and having deadlines because it helps me to knuckle down and write. I love fan_flashworks. Three challenges a month, and various badges that can be earned.

Funnily enough, I was writing for that today, got a first draft of my entry for the current challenge done, then did some editing on something else for posting to my journals.

April 3rd - 929 words.

[auroracloud]

I had a bingo card from there earlier but I don't think I finished any stories. However, I really liked the prompts, so it might be worth a try to do it again!

I like the idea of flashworks and weekly prompt communities, but in practice I seem to be too slow a writer for those. I like to mull on my stories for a bit, and I just never seem to finish those things before the particular challenge ends. I've been following femslashficlets for a couple of years, and have finished (to the point of publication) a grand total of one story during that time, and that was during an amnesty/remainder week. Which reminds me, I should look at the current prompt table for that one and see if I can write something..

Sounds like a productive writing day, well done!

[badly_knitted]

I think I've had two genprompt cards, got a blackout on the first one but only wrote a few fills on the second. One day maybe I'll complete it. I like that you can do that with genprompt_bingo even with really old cards.

As you like taking your time when writing, you might like my challenge community ficlet_zone; new prompts each month but no deadlines so you can take as long as you want, dip into past prompts any time, and any length of fic is welcome.

Thank you, it was a pretty good day.

[falkner]

Very poor time management on my part today, so only an alibi sentence got written.

[auroracloud]

Alibi sentence still counts! And time management is hard, I sympathize. I fall victim to poor time management quite often, which is why I too often end up doing my daily writing when I'm half asleep... Wishing you better luck today. :-)

[rhoda_rants]

Oooh! I cannot help you, but I am very curious to learn about this Prompt Bingo business!

[auroracloud]

You can check out those communities to see more about how they function! Basically you get a randomly generated bingo card, usually 5 x 5 squares, a prompt in each square chosen from pre-announced prompt lists. You can usually exclude certain prompts or categories if you don't want them. And then you try to write stories about the prompts in various squares, enough that the filled prompts form some kind of a bingo line. Different communities/challenges have different types of lines they accept, different deadlines etc. I've never successfully completed a bingo line, but contemplating story scenarios is still fun!

If you want to see more prompt bingo communities, st_aurafina listed a bunch in her comment below!

[sanguinity]

Apr 3: Three longhand pages this morning. Not really sure about the direction they drifted off into, but that's what happens when one doesn't have a proposed end one is shooting for. Looking forward to transcribing it all this weekend and seeing what I've got.

ETA: Prompts! I usually just ask my tumblr followers for prompts (sometimes with the help of a prompt-list, sometimes without), and then do whichever of them strike my fancy. I've always felt a little guilty that my fill rate is around 50%, but I suppose that's a little bit of the way bingo cards work, right? You can go for blackout if you want, but you can also just pick a set of five that (mostly) speak to you.

[auroracloud]

Yay for more longhand pages, I hope you find some nice or intriguing things in there when you type them up!

I know when I leave prompts for people asking for them, I'm not expecting them to necessarily write about all of my prompts or even any of them - it's a nice bonus if they do, but I understand that just because I came up with a prompt, it doesn't mean it works for them. A 50 % fill rate sounds very good already. And indeed, you can think of it as a bingo card, most of the time people don't fill all the squares in those either. :-)

[deifire]

Today: 1,111 words!

For prompts, I've had a lot of fun with the AO3 Tag Generator in the past. Also, my main fandom has an ongoing prompt fest and a seasonal one every December.

[auroracloud]

What a nice number for a word count!

Ooh, thanks for linking to the AO3 Tag Generator, I don't think I've seen that before! I went there now and got "supermarket oral". Um, maybe not that one. Though it's fun to think of which of my fandoms it would work for. (Turns out my brain will supply Torchwood and The Bright Sessions.) Maybe I'll try another... (I got "canon-typical cryptid comeplay" - wonder what canon that is and whether I want to know - and "zesty tourist femslash" which sounds like something I could do something with, if I come up with a fandom where zesty tourist ladies might be in supply.)

[sylvanwitch]

I'm glad you had a productive day (and there you are tempting me to bake again--I'm going to have to make something tomorrow to satisfy the urge :-). Yay for new fandoms AND for working on difficult scenes.

I added 648 words to the Bond/Q fic. I feel they're extraneous, but I'll leave them for now.

[auroracloud]

Hee, sorry for tempting you, or maybe not - baking is good for your general well-being!

Sometimes words that feel extraneous turn out not to be, or they're still needed on your way to writing what really needs to be written, even if they get deleted later. But in any case, good work!

[shadaras]

I have written a couple hundred words of traumatizing my characters! :D

Physical grounding is so much fun in scenes; I find that it's easier the more active they are in the scene. Sometimes I end up using physical sensation as a way of showing that characters are too fucked up to be able to think, though, so I don't consider it quite so separate from the 'drifting away' that you mention. (This may be why I find the blocking of writing combat and/or sex so interesting, to be fair.)

[auroracloud]

Good for you, if not for your characters!

I somehow often have trouble with physical grounding, maybe because I'm such a live-in-my-head type and sometimes have to make myself be grounded in my own life, too. Though dancing as a hobby has helped, as has doing more cooking, baking, and crafts. Anyway, it's something I want to pay more attention to, because I really enjoy reading stories where that's done well.

Sometimes I end up using physical sensation as a way of showing that characters are too fucked up to be able to think, though, so I don't consider it quite so separate from the 'drifting away' that you mention.

That's very true! One of the reasons I focus so much on the sensations and the physical in the scene I was talking about in this post is that there, my usually very cerebral character pointedly isn't able to be cerebral because the things that are happening are affecting her so much. (I feel like that was a very unclear sentence, sorry about that.)

[shadaras]

All of those hobbies are very good for physical grounding, yes. :)

And your sentence made sense!

[st_aurafina]

Write Every Day is at your house this month?? I totally missed it. (Not that I've had time to write...)

I love bingos like I love to buy yarn and never use it:

seasonofkink - kinky fandom
fluffbingo - for your soft, fluffy fics, though I'm not sure if it's running this year?
trope_bingo - tropey fics, obvs
allbingo - runs all year bingos, and lots of other challenges
hc_bingo - hurt/comfort bingo, currently in an amnesty posting period I think?
15kisses and all the other 15 challenges, for when you don't want to do a whole bingo.

[auroracloud]

Yeah, I offered to host this month, when in the last days of March there was no host for April! It was a pretty quick decision to do it now, but I'd been thinking about offering to host soon, and I really could use the distraction and the extra communication with people! But no wonder you don't have time to write at the moment... *long-distance hugs*

I love bingos like I love to buy yarn and never use it

That is... an incredibly accurate comparison. *glances towards very messy yarn closet*

Some of those communities I follow, but some I don't though I'm aware of them. I should give trope_bingo a try at last!

[nafs]

"..just chatter about things."
Doesn't sound familiar at all. I'm told my dialogue is a strength. It had better be, the lion's share of my stories are dialogue, especially before I start revising.

Discovered I really didn't like one of the last parts of what I typed up yesterday so my words today went to re-setting that scene. Tomorrow, reading and moving pieces to get a better sense of the big picture.

[auroracloud]

Oh, I didn't mean to disparage dialogue, not at all! I'm sorry if I made it sound that way. I was awfully tired when I wrote the post, so I didn't explain properly. Dialogue is my strength, too, at least that's my impression based both on feedback and the fact I don't usually need fix it as much in editing as other things. I love writing dialogue, and it usually comes to me easily.

But I've noticed I run the risk of focusing too much on dialogue because it's easier for me than some other things, and my stories/characters can easily become just talking heads. In my case, I could easily just keep them chattering on for pages, and not get things done in any other way. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with a dialogue-heavy story (heck, I've read a novel written entirely in dialogue, and I enjoy reading plays, and I love podcast dramas which are mainly dialogue with some sound effects). But I also want to work on the things I'm not usually so strong on, such as sensations and physicality, because I want to get better at writing them, too. I really love reading stories that are strong on those, so I'd love to be able to write some.

Good luck with getting a better sense of the big picture! It definitely happens to me quite often that I don't like parts of what I've written and have to do things all over again. But usually the first writing was still needed to get me to the point where I could write the thing that works better.

[nafs]

I didn't really take it as disparagement, more like gentle mocking?

And yes, that's exactly what happens to me. I sit down to write out a scene and suddenly it's five pages of dialogue and I haven't mentioned where anyone is or what anyone is doing, there's no body language, there's very little inner voice... Lately I've learned to just let it happen like that and fix it later. If I sit around trying to force it, nothing gets written.

[china_shop]

4th: I wrote today. :-)

[auroracloud]

Congrats for writing!

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks for the random source of prompts. I like allbingo on DW and comment_fic on LJ (which is multifandom and daily)

I'm amused by today's word count because they're so similar. I got 571 words on my gen freeform story and 517 on my original novella

[auroracloud]

I follow allbingo, too, but I haven't tried to claim a bingo card in a while. I looked at this month's sample prompt cards, though, and I liked a lot of the prompts - should check out if I'd like to try a card there. :-)

That's quite a coincidence with the word counts, indeed! Congrats on both counts!

[cornerofmadness]

It's at least low pressure as far as prompt sites go.

thanks

[yasaman]

Day 3: had too much actual work from home work to do today, which took enough time away from fic writing that I couldn't quite manage to finish up this fic, but did still write 668 words!

[auroracloud]

Well done for writing so much on a day when you had so many other things to do! That's excellent, even if you didn't quite finish the fic yet. :-)

[lferion]

Day 3 -- posted the drabble-poem to Fan Flashworks, and wrote a much lighter drabble prompted by a pleasant image I woke up with.

I do like prompts, and I am particularly fond of making them work where by rights they really shouldn't, sometimes by invoking archaic meanings or atypical interpretations.

[auroracloud]

Ooh, it's nice when you get some kind of story/prompt out of your dreams or ideas that come to you when you're half asleep / waking up.

Oh yes, it's really fun to make prompts work where they wouldn't seem to. Some of my favourite stories are inspired by reverting a trope or looking at a prompt sideways, and things like that. :-)

[thisbluespirit]

genprompt_bingo is good fun and very laid back, so not too dreadful if it doesn't go anywhere!

[auroracloud]

True! I should go and claim a card, I really liked the prompts in the last card I had from there (I think the round before the last one) even if I didn't finish any of the stories!

(icon brought to you by the random icon button, to fit the theme!)

[carenejeans]

Day 3: I worked on the nonfiction project as usual...

I like the idea of prompts more than I like prompts themselves! I don't know. Bingo cards always seem to have a square that annoys me and ruins everything. 8-/

I think I've mentioned this before, but form and structure prompts work best for me. I'm not sure why, but for instance, "write a story where Sherlock is a mermaid" just has me going, erm. But "write a story where Sherlock is a mermaid, in the form of a ship's log," has possibilities. 8-)

(Hmmmm...)

[auroracloud]

I like prompts, but I do tend to need a load of them for them to work! It's true there's usually a square that's difficult...

Ooh, I haven't seen a lot of those kind of prompts, but I do agree they would be fun! Even though I'd still struggle to write a story where Sherlock is a mermaid, but that features a lot of things that aren't my strength. :-D