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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 2, 2016 3:57:03 GMT
A new month, a new set of goals. I feel like I should be able to make that sound more exciting, but... I mean, it's just a goals list. Not really that interesting. Anyway, this is a thread for talking about your plans this month. What are you hoping to get done? Any deadlines, milestones etc. coming up? Are you thinking of doing Camp NaNo in April, and if so what sort of preparation will you be doing in March? Are you interested in any of the ongoing or planned Steve challenges listed below? Any suggestions or other feedback for the Steve admins?Edit: also this question from Agent: What areas in writing/editing/whatever would you like to improve on?----- To help you out with your goal-setting, here's a list of the things that are (or will be) happening around the place: In progress:* Role playing! (yes, you really can set RP participation goals): Participate in one or more of our shared stories, Syberean Doom, The Sleepers, and The Gods of Winter: Wrath of the Iceweed. Or start a new one if you have an idea that doesn't fit into any of these. * Currently in progress - The First Quarter Short Story Challenge (ends March 15th): Write the first draft of a short story. * The Sticky Note Challenge (ongoing) * Daily Plot Bunnies (start whenever you like): create and post 7 plot bunnies in 7 days. Coming soon:* Feedback/critique sessions (fuzzy timeframe so far - probably start 2nd half of March, maybe continuing into April): read and comment on short stories written by Stevians. It's sort of part 2 of the current Short Story Challenge, but open to anyone who has a short story in need of editing or rewriting. * [external event] Camp NaNo (April 1st-30th): Start/continue a draft of just about anything in a virtual cabin with a group of friends. If you know of any other challenges or have an idea for one, post here in this thread and I'll update the list.
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 3, 2016 3:55:27 GMT
Because I don't actually know what I want to do in March, I've created a new challenge instead - The 'Next Steps' Challenge, which is all about figuring out how to make a small amount of progress on a whole lot of things.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Mar 3, 2016 23:30:09 GMT
What are you hoping to get done?
* Clean up the first draft of 'Blank' (Sisyphus story) to the best of my ability by the 15th. * Write another short story without a prompt and deadline looming over me and forcing me to write. * Eventually, make some progress on my backlog, at least of short stories. * Organization - add the last 10 plot bunnies I came up with to my list.
Any deadlines, milestones etc. coming up?
* Only the 15th, for the short story challenge. No other ones are imposed, because I don't do well with deadlines. (I know, right? I'm a writer. I'm SUPPOSED to write to deadlines!)
Are you thinking of doing Camp NaNo in April, and if so what sort of preparation will you be doing in March?
* NOPE. I'm done with NaNo challenges, at least for the moment. I'm planning only to learn how to edit brilliantly. Most likely I'll work on cleaning up one of the short stories I've already done, likely The Red Button.
Are you interested in any of the ongoing or planned Steve challenges listed below?
Well, I'm still doing RPs. Sticky note is a fail for me. DPBs, as ever, is always great. Next Steps sounds fun, though
In fact,
Any suggestions or other feedback for the Steve admins?
I can't speak to other people's issues, but below is a list of mine. Eventually, if there are enough people with the same or similar areas of work, some challenges to address these in the coming months would be good.
* I need to finish more things. Still focusing on short stories, so a short story a month to practice the techniques I picked up from SS-SFF-SS would be good. * I have several stories in first draft form lying around on my hard drive. I need to learn how to edit brilliantly. At the moment my editing skills are not all that great. * I need to extend the techniques I've learned from short stories to a single novel length work. * I need to do more world building and character development on my ineffable WIPs. This is probably where the Scary List of Scary might come into play.
I think I need to add a question.
What areas in writing/editing/whatever would you like to improve on?
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 4, 2016 3:59:45 GMT
What are you hoping to get done?
1. D-word Quartet: worldbuilding and detailed outline for Doom. Some of it, anyway. This is going to take as long as it takes, so my March goal is probably just to get into the habit of working on it every day.
2. A sort of non-specific writing goal where I add at least 2k to everything I start or continue, unless I reach the end of the story in less time than that.
Any deadlines, milestones etc. coming up?
15th for the short story.
Are you thinking of doing Camp NaNo in April, and if so what sort of preparation will you be doing in March?
Not planning on doing either of the Camps or NaNo this year. They no longer fit the way I want to work.
Are you interested in any of the ongoing or planned Steve challenges listed below in the first post?
RPs are a bit scary (especially Syberean Doom, because Oskar), but I definitely want to continue with them. My March 'plan' is probably somewhat similar to the Sticky Note thing. 'Next Steps'... well, I have my list. It remains to be seen whether I actually do any of it.
Wonder if I should have put SSSS: Nibbles on that list of ongoing challenges? I'd like to un-abandon 'The Goats' at some point.
Any suggestions or other feedback for the Steve admins?
I'd like to have more small challenges - from things that can be completed in length of time it takes to type up a forum post to things that maybe take a weekend or the equivalent. Examples would be things like a short character profile, a flash/short piece based on a weird picture, a small piece of world/setting description, decribing your story/world/character according to a specific template (e.g. write a blurb in the style of *The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul*). Basically, a whole lot of fun little challenges that have the benefit of also getting us thinking about our big projects in a slightly different way.
I also still want a novel-finishing... not exactly a challenge, but a novel-centric thing to do with getting our big projects written and edited. I guess this is probably one of those things where I work out what I need to do and then post it. Since none of us really seem to know how to get this thing done, maybe an admin focus on encouraging experimentation and reporting would be a good idea. Example: I'm going to try out P.C. Wrede's 'Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions' during March, so I need to post regularly on how I'm going with that.
What areas in writing/editing/whatever would you like to improve on?
* Worldbuilding (and world-rebuilding - making sense of the setting in an existing draft) * Pretty much everything about editing. * Getting more of the plot and setting in place before or at least during the first draft. * Completing the first draft - includes things like getting past my usual sticking points, filling in the gaps between random scenes and keeping track of the overall storyline when I'm writing out of order. * Developing appropriately sized ideas for short stories.
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 9, 2016 7:21:49 GMT
Sort of 'March and beyond', but what about a short story challenge that runs for the rest of the year? (based on Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍's PPT post here: stevethewrimoforum.proboards.com/post/7082/thread) Short stories would fit in with the following list of things identified by the vast number of people who've responded to this thread so far : * Finish more things * Develop and practice planning, writing and editing techniques * Maintain a consistent writing habit * Write more short stories * Improve skills in key areas (e.g. setting, character, exposition etc.) ...and probably more, but that's enough for now. Point is, writing short stories is a good way to develop certain writing skills without having to make a novel-sized commitment. So I'm wondering about a short story challenge. One (or more) of the following options might work: 1. New Year's Resolution: Choose a number of stories to complete by the end of the year. Doesn't matter when they get done, provided you have the whole stack on Dec 31st. 2. Stopwatch: Choose a period of time to complete each story e.g. 7 days, 14 days, 30 days. The goal is to never have a story take more than that amount of time to write, rather than to get a number of stories done. 3. ShoStoWriMo: New challenge each month - goal is to get a number of stories done by the end of the month. 4. To-Do List: Choose a number of stories to complete, with no deadline at all. But... how to account for planning and editing? Are those things included in the basic goal (story isn't 'complete' until it's polished)? I suppose so, since Agent's challenge involves people reading the completed stories. In that case, what about people who need a rest between writing and editing? Doable. One story per month would theoretically mean a planning week, a writing week, a rest week and an editing week. Squish accordionly for setting shorter time periods. Ignore Siana's habit of doing the planning and writing at the same time, because that's easily accounted for. Anyway, short story challenge. Doesn't have to look like any of this, but might be a good idea.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Mar 9, 2016 7:54:54 GMT
Planning, writing, AND polishing in a week? By the old gods, NO!
I am not aiming for spit-shining everything I send out. It currently takes me far longer than 7 days even to create a first draftstory. My aim is just to finish something that has a beginning, middle, and end, and which hopefully meets the prompt...basically, the minimum quality allowed for Sisyphus.
The only reason my brain isn't screaming right now at the thought that people will see these is because this will exist solely in a Sisyphus bubble where suckage is allowed. No way I'd have decided to do this otherwise.
I'm going to do my best to eliminate typos and my by now infamous hanging half-sentences, but I am notorious for panicking and then writing something completely different at the last minute, resulting in a huge mess. Like I said in my PPT, the point of this is to establish a consistent writing habit and to complete things, two goals of mine, without the pressure of perfecton.
More involved editing will honestly fall outside MY complete-x-short-stories-and-send-to-people-one-a-week challenge, because I can't spit-shine in a week. Nor do I know how to spit shine so gotta work on that before I let the crazy lady loose. It will only come into play after I've let the story sit for at least a month or more, usually longer, and I doubt any but betas, people on Steve, AW SYW, or those who request them will see that version. Polishing will happen in between, when I feel like taking a break from writing. I won't be editing all my stories this year, because the longer than average break time I require won't allow it. I'll probably just select my favorites to work on for now.
Ok, so I guess I need to differentiate between the definitions of 'complete.'
First draft complete: this is all I'm aiming for in my one story a week goal. I DPB, plan, outline, finish the first draft, clean up if I have time, and send.
Edited/redrafted/polished complete: I still need to learn how to do this. I'm only selecting some stories, as time permits. These will be the ones that I send out for betaing here or on AW. This will occur *after* the person receives the completed first draft story.
TL;DR - my criteria for 'completion' is that it has a beginning, middle, and end, and if I have time I clean up grammatical errors. It doesn't have to be pretty.
I basically have two different sets of tasks.
One, the priority people-gonna-see-my-epic-FAIL task, with a real goal, is to get 47 short stories done one per week at least. Two, edit and polish. I don't have a number for how many stories, because it depends on how much time I have. =
So for this challenge, we don't need to impose a definition of complete. We could just have different tasks, or levels. People can do one level then move on, do them all together and move more slowly but surely, or chop and change as suits their style.
Level 1. Plan x stories. Includes coming up with plot bunny and having a beginning/middle/end to your level of specificity. Mine is to know at least roughly the cause-effect and have a rough 1:1 scene list for each cause-effect.
Level 2. Write a first draft of x stories. For me, this means writing each scene I had planned and cleaning up any glaring errors. Glaring to a sound mind, that is. I've let some craaaaazy shit slip by at 5:30 in the morning too soon after writing and not sleeping.
Level 3. After a suitable break time, revise, clean up, beta/have beta'd x stories. This is a stage I have never yet gotten to, because I've always run out of time. I'm hoping I'll have better luck this year!
So you could plan everything, then write everything, then edit everything, or plan then write, then let sit while you plan-write another story, then edit another story, etc.
Impose your own time limits as you will [per options 1-4 above].
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 12, 2016 4:44:05 GMT
Coming soon:* Feedback/critique sessions (fuzzy timeframe so far - probably start 2nd half of March, maybe continuing into April): read and comment on short stories written by Stevians. It's sort of part 2 of the current Short Story Challenge, but open to anyone who has a short story in need of editing or rewriting. Since I'm sort of using this thread for general March planning and discussion now, I'm coming back to this. Is anyone interested in this challenge right now or should I put it on the 'maybe' list for some time in the future? An alternative would be to focus on writing challenges and prep for those doing Camp NaNo in April. I'm fumbling in the dark with no idea what everyone else wants and the sinking feeling that I'm trying to plan a bunch of activities nobody - myself included - is actually going to do. Help?
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Mar 12, 2016 5:57:47 GMT
I'm doing the challenge if it's alive. I've already cleaned up 'Blank' as best as I can given that I haven't had time to take the requisite break from it. I'm willing to accept any suggestions on it. It's basically a cleaned first draft. That said, if we want to postpone it, I have no problem with that either. I'm probably going to put it up on AW SYW. I'll just do another round of edits on 'Blank' and submit the second or third draft instead.
* I think what we really need to be asking as well is, what is everybody doing in March/April?
* Do you think you might have any use for a short story editing/crit challenge? If yes, but not now, when would do you feel it would be useful to you?
* Is anyone doing Camp? If so, would you like Camp-themed challenges? If so, any preference what kind? I'm probably going to be focusing on getting the first drafts of 4 short stories planned and written this month.
* Based on what you're doing this month, what areas would you like to improve upon? Anything we can create a challenge for?
On a side note, Siana, what do *you* want need to do?
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 12, 2016 7:29:49 GMT
I'm not really sure what I want/need to do at the moment, aside from editing and rewriting Doom. I think I want everyone else to be full of enthusiasm for something so I can just sort of be carried along with it. Like NaNo, only without the bit where I kill all the stories (and my hands) trying to hit the wordcount goal.
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 14, 2016 5:36:06 GMT
Feedback/critique challenge posted. Rules and format subject to change depending on what everyone else thinks. At the moment, it's about posting 1-2k openings for reader feedback. Depending on how many people participate and what sort of range of stories we get, the challenge might develop a 'part 2' involving sharing complete stories for more detailed feedback. Starts on the 15th, goes until the end of April. Anyone who wants to participate but doesn't have a story could actually write one in time to post it before the end of the challenge.
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