Fiction Scribe

Day six.

I apologize for the lateness of this post. Along with the ‘post to future’ technical difficulties 451press is having at the moment, Mr. Scribe and I have spent the day moving around furniture and re-setting up our entertainment system.

It has certainly been an interesting day.

I once again avoided rewriting my main character’s scenes because I worked on another scene I was eager to finish up instead. The scene helps set one of the major plot lines of the story, though, so I don’t feel bad for neglecting her.

I’m rather proud of the scene I completed, actually. I wrote a few pages more or less without stopping, which I always like.

How is your project going? Do you write for twenty minutes (or more) straight? Or do you prefer ten minutes here and there? (Maybe it’s necessity rather than preference, hm?)

Describe your favorite drink as if speaking to someone who has never heard of it, seen, smelled, or tasted it.

A little more Friday fun for you. I love these.

Sniglets *

Words that don’t appear in the dictionary, but should.

110 At The Equator (won’ ten at the ek way’ tawr) - n. Any burning sensation experienced directly below the navel when putting on a pair of jeans straight from the dryer.

Accordionated (ah kor’ de on ay tid) - adj. Being able to drive and refold a road map at the same time.

Aeroma (ayr oh’ ma) - n. The odor emanating from an exercise room after an aerobics workout.

Aeropalmics (ayr o palm’ iks) - n. The study of wind resistance conducted by holding a cupped hand out the car window.

Agonosis (ah uh no’ sis) - n. The syndrome of tuning into “Wide World of Sports” every Saturday just to watch the skier rack himself.

Airdirt (ayr’ dirt) - n. A hanging plant that’s been ignored for three weeks or more.

Anaception (an a sep’ shun) - n. The body’s ability to actually affect television reception by moving about the room.

Animalanche: When you kick your stuffed animals in your sleep and they
fall all over you or the floor. (from Kaffit, age 9)

Anticiparcellate (an ti si par’ sel ate) - v. Waiting until the mailman is several houses down the street before picking up the mail, so as not too appear too anxious.

Aquadextrous - adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.

Aqualibrium (ak wa lib’ re um) - n. The point where the stream of drinking fountain water is at its perfect height, thus relieving the drinker from (a) having to suck the nozzle, or (b) squirting himself in the eye.

Arachnidiot (ar ak ni’ di ot) - n. A person, who, having wandered into an “invisible” spider web, begins gyrating and flailing about wildly.

Attrinyl (a try’ nil) - n. (chemical symbol: At) A black, bulletproof, totally inflexible type of plastic, used primarily in covers of pay phone directories.

B+ Stampede (bee’ plus stam peed) - n. The attempt by half the classroom to claim the paper with no name on it.

Backspackle (bak’ spak uhl) - n. Markings on the back of one’s shirt from riding a fenderless bicycle.

Baldage (bald’ aj) - n. The accumulation of hair in the drain after showering.

Bargue (bar’ gyoo) - v. To whine, fuss, and complain a great deal while at the same time trying to get someone to see your point of view. Ex: The young child bargued with his father until his father gave in and let him stay up past his bedtime.

Bazookacidal Tendencies (bah zew’ kuh sy dal ten’ den seez) - n. The overwhelming desire of most individuals to reach out and pop the gigantic gum bubble billowing from someone’s mouth.

Beavo (bee’ vo) - n. A pencil with teeth marks all over it.

Find more at: JengaJam

Day five.

My writing desk seems to be taking precedence over my main character, which is strange and annoying. I’d like to get my desk moved into the living/lounge room today, though, because I love my desk, but it’s too cold in there during the winter.

(Winter? you ask. Yes, it’s winter in Australia.)

My main character is proving willing to withstand my poking and prodding, but I’m currently in the middle of a scene not involving her that I find more interesting.

One thing I’m discovering about this novel is that I’m changing from my usual ease of writing with the females to more ease (and eagerness) to write for the males in this story. Perhaps it’s because I know how much of a big mess they are going to cause or perhaps even living with my husband has made it easier for me to write about males. (Living with someone you can study. What more can you ask for?)

I think once I get past this initial hiccup, I’ll ease into the story more. As it stands, I’m shifting around a bit still to get the feel of it.

How are your projects going? Is anyone new participating? Are any of your projects taking turns you didn’t expect? Do you wish your project would?

Day four.

After rejecting and then taking back what I have written for my novel, day four brought a lot of ideas as to how I can make the plot better. I wrote some more for the beginning and made plans to rewrite the scenes my main character is in. I haven’t written that far for her, so there isn’t going to be a ‘great dismantling’ of everything to rewrite her scenes.

After reading Susan’s comment - If you don’t like your main character, how can you expect your reader to? - I began thinking about my main character. I realized that it wasn’t that I didn’t like her, it was that I didn’t know her. She stood there as a flat, meaningless character and, out of habit, I pretty much tried to ignore her.

Having contemplated that a bit, I came up with a few ideas about how to make her shine, which I’m looking forward to writing on day five.

How are your projects going? Is anyone new participating? What genre story are you working on?

Because we writers could use a little humor once in a while…

1. AQUADEXTROUS (ak wa deks’trus) adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub tap on and off with your toes.
2. CARPERPETUATION (kar’pur pet u a shun) n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
3. DISCONFECT (dis kon fekt’) v. To sterilize the piece of confection (lollipop) you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow ‘remove’ all the germs.
4. ELBONICS (el bon’iks) n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.
5. FRUST (frust) n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug.
6. LACTOMANGULATION (lak’ to man gyu lay’ shun) n. Manhandling the “open here” spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the ‘illegal’ side.
7. PEPPIER (peph ee ay’) n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want fresh ground pepper.
8. PHONESIA (fo nee’ zhuh) n. The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.
9. PUPKUS (pup’kus) n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.
10. TELECRASTINATION (tel e kras tin ay’ shun) n. The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you’re only six inches away.

Courtesy of The Humor Bin

Day three.

This challenge has already proved quite interesting for me. What I gave up yesterday, I’ve decided to give another chance today. I tried writing things over, but they just didn’t feel right. I’ve isolated my main problem down to, again, the main character I’m not especially fond of.

Instead of writing the entire beginning over because of her, it’s much easier to simply rewrite her scenes.

I’m quite looking forward to my writing time tomorrow to see how long I’ll sit and think before actually getting my twenty minutes of writing done.

How are your projects going? Are your characters behaving? Are you stuck for any reason?

I would like to put up a bit of a general inquiry post for all the readers of FictionScribe.

This site is now going into its ninth month of existence, and it certainly has changed a bit since the beginning. Change is good, though, because change usually implies growth.

I would like this site to be good for writers of all experience levels, though more focused on the aspiring writer to be honest.

If there is anything you don’t feel is necessary to the site and you’d like to have taken off or if there is anything you’d like to see/see more of, let me know. Keeping in mind I’m only one woman with the same twenty-four hours in a day you have, I’ll see if I can incorporate the ideas you have for this site.

Thank you.

This is a post to just touch on the subject. Do you use writing software? Why or why not? If so, what program(s) do you recommend?

Please submit a list of all employees broken down by sex.

We know what that should means, but we also know what that could mean.

I dislike double meanings when I’m reading a story because it distracts me from the novel. I truly hate sentences that could mean more than one thing when filling out legal documents or reading things for research.

Basically put, this is a lesson in paying attention to what you’re writing. The English language is a funny thing with multiple meanings and words that sound the same but have three different ways to spell them.

To, too, and two. Their, there, and they’re. These aren’t quite the sentence above, but they’re all the more reason to pay attention and get your intended meaning across. It’ll safe you from instant slush pile, and it might just save you from embarrassment.

A lot of embarrassment.

Day two.

Remember yesterday when I said I didn’t think the twenty minutes every day wouldn’t have much influence until I had done if for more than one day?

Well, day two has turned out to be quite eventful in that I’ve decided to scrap what I’ve been working on and start over.

I like the idea, but I just plain don’t like what I’ve been writing before. I don’t like the main character (which isn’t essential to writing a novel but helps) which is causing problems. I also feel like I’m jumping around too much, which is partially reflecting how restless I’ve been feeling lately and also how much I have been avoiding committing to the plot. (Ironically, my main character is having commitment problems as well. Go figure.)

So, after getting today’s twenty minutes of writing, I’ve decided on a complete overhaul.

How interesting.

Fiction Scribe as well as some other blogs are experiencing technical difficulties right now. Some posts are not showing up when they are scheduled to go up.

I apologize for the inconvenience and hope things will be sorted out soon. Be sure to scroll down in case multiple posts go up at a time. (As I just got two to post up a little while ago.)

Thanks.

Day one.

So how did you do with your twenty minutes (or more) of writing? I admit, I put it off most of the day instead of just sitting down in the morning and doing it. I ended up getting up a nice chunk of writing done as well as a few notes down for future scenes.

I wasn’t expecting much on the first day of this challenge. It will be interesting a few days down when I’ve made more of a habit of writing at least twenty minutes every day.

If you’re participating in this challenge, comment and let me know how it went, what you’re working on, and anything else about this you’d like to talk about.

At this time, 451Press, unfortunately, doesn’t have a poetry blog. However, for those of you looking for a poetry-focused blog – especially if you’re looking to support a poetry blog just getting started out – then stop by Poems In My Head.

Poems In My Head is a new poetry blog written by 451Press’ own Neelima of Healthy B.P.M.. With a mix of poetry contests, news, sites, and personal poems by Neelima, this blog has all the makings of a great poetry blog.

Stop by and let Neelima know what you think of her blog. As always with start-up blogs, feedback is appreciated!

Sometimes it’s not the writing that’s hard; it’s the sitting down and doing it. Once you’re sitting down and actually writing, things can come a bit easier, but pulling you away from your nachos and the latest game of footy is an interesting challenge indeed.

Talking with my good friend DaveP, we discovered one more thing we have in common – a novel we should be working on more than we actually work on it. We talked more on the matter, and I proposed a challenged.

The Weekly Writer’s Challenge.

Every week on Sunday, I will propose a writing challenge for writers to complete every day starting the following Monday and ending when the next challenge is posted the next Sunday.

For our starting challenge, we’ll have something simple to get the ball rolling. This week, starting tomorrow and completing when next week’s challenge is posted, my challenge is this:

Write for twenty minutes a day.

This may not sound like much, but as my friend Leslie says, “It’s amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes.�? (She is the woman who has accomplished what many of us dream of – living off earnings from writing.)

There are a few more rules, though.

You must pick one project, one story idea, one something, and work on that for the entire week. I’m choosing my novel rather than something else because I know it can keep me writing.

There are no punishments (in fact good on you!) if you go over, but you must write for a minimum of twenty minutes, and this doesn’t include the time you spend shuffling papers and wondering if you can remember the name of the person who invented post-it note glue.

If you’d like to participate in this challenge and are going to blog about it, use the “contact me�? button on the right and send me the URL of your blog.

Enjoy.