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The good morning, good night thread

Started by Ed, October 22, 2007, 03:49:05 AM

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delboy

Just had the contributor's copies of the latest Western arrive. Always a nice moment :-)
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

desertwomble

Quote from: delboy on February 13, 2014, 09:46:33 AM
Just had the contributor's copies of the latest Western arrive. Always a nice moment :-)

Pony Express?

Nicely done. Give it pride of place on the bookshelf.

DW :cheesy:
http://chaucers-uncle.weebly.com/

www.paulfreeman.weebly.com
 
Read my most recent winning Global Short Story Competition entry:
http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/assets/october-ebook.pdf

delboy

QuotePony Express?

It was actually the chicken man that delivered it... a box of frozen chicken and six westerns!

QuoteGive it pride of place on the bookshelf.

Yep. I 've piled them on top of The Sun Also Rises. That Hemingway fellow has had his time on my bookshelf!
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

Ed

Quote from: delboy on February 11, 2014, 04:38:39 PM
Bit of guitar playing, as I've not posted any for a while... This is my first attempt at playing a tune in a non standard tuning DADGAD. Still trying to find my way around the guitar in this revised tuning, but it was fun to do:

http://youtu.be/liwaRHYv9-E

Cheers
Derek

That was beautiful, Del  :afro:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

delboy

Thanks Ed  ;)

I was gigging last night - a dep gig with a band that featured a very good girl singer. I'm not used to female vocalists - they sing in keys that I'm generally not used to playing - American Pie in Ab, for example. So what with having to learn 30 odd songs and then be really attentive on the night it was a lot harder work than one of my own gigs. It was a late night and driving home after midnight the main route home was closed for roadworks which made me even later. The dog woke me up nice and early this morning...

All of which is to say that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was my 600 words before breakfast.

But I ain't missed a day since late December and I don't plan to until I write The End on Draft # 1. So I knuckled down and lo and behold the words came. Up to 45 000 or so now :-)
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

desertwomble

You're the man, Del.

Encouragement to us all.

DW :cheesy:
http://chaucers-uncle.weebly.com/

www.paulfreeman.weebly.com
 
Read my most recent winning Global Short Story Competition entry:
http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/assets/october-ebook.pdf

fnord33

Nice, Del. I feel productive if I can sit down more than three times a week. I just finished a piddly 13k I've been meaning to write for about three years.

Anybody know any cool places to go in Prague, Budapest or Dublin? I'm looking for some neat places to visit there.
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide it's basic mechanisms. - William Burroughs

Geoff_N

Sadly I don't know of any cool places in those delightful (so I'm told) cities but I know a hot place in Methana Greece that I've booked for a writing retreat and cycling mayhem in September. Yay.

Fnord, I am so impatient, I re-re-revised Xaghra's Revenge and sent it to my agent along with updated outline, marketing plan, etc. Fingers crossed she'll find a mainstream home for it before too long. The publishers of my Exit, Pursued by a Bee would take it but DDP do bu~~er all with promo. ARIA publisher would too but my agent is keen to give the bigger boys and girls a chance.

fnord33

Good luck.  :smiley: I'm sure you'll land a big one.
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide it's basic mechanisms. - William Burroughs

delboy

Good luck with finding a mainstream home for Xaghra, Geoff! I'm sure the right one is out ther e- just have to wait for all the planets to align...
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

Pharosian

Hi, everybody!

A few days ago I ran across a fascinating theory about writing and what makes a story successful. There's an Englishman named David Baboulene whose PhD thesis was on subtext in literature.

He claims there is a direct correlation between the success* of a story and the amount of subtext it contains.

"Subtext" is a term I've heard bandied about for a while now, and I never fully understood it or how to "get it" into my stories.

This David Baboulene has written two books (so far) on writing. The first is called The Story Book, which I downloaded from Amazon for $3.00 last week. In it, Chapter 4 deals with subtext.

But he came out with another book March 9, and it's on sale until the end of the week. (It's $1.66 in the U.S.; not sure what it costs on amazon.co.uk) I read it, and I strongly urge you to buy this book! Parts of it (first couple of chapters) are on the academic side but he's done a great job of making it "accessible."

It's called "Story Theory - the psychological and linguistic foundations to how stories work" and for $1.66, you will get your money's worth before you finish reading it.


* He used movie ratings at IMDb.com as his yardstick for "success."

delboy

Hey Pharo! How are you doing?

Sounds like an interesting book. I do enjoy books on Story rather than on writing, if that makes sense (although I enjoy books on writing, too..). I'm currently re-reading Robert McKee's Story which is very good. I will check out the one you mention.

I'm still managing to do my 600+ words before breakfast every day, but I know I'm accumulating a mass of issues to have to address when I've finished draft one. In fact draft one is turning out to be an outline more than anything - albeit an outline that is written in full. What I mean by that is in it I'm discovering all my characters and settings and plots and so on, but the timing is all over the place, there's nowhere near enough conflict, too much exposition, not enough consistency, poor dialogue, background, motivations, too many talking head scenes, not enough hooks... etc etc etc

But I'm still happy with it. The underlying idea is a cool one and, once I've addressed all the aforementioned issues, I think it could easily be the best thing I've written.

How's your  writing coming on?

Cheers
Derek
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

elay2433

Long time no see, Pharo. You popped into my head the other day. Hope all is well. Thanks for recommending the book. I purchased a copy. How's the writing coming?

Hot damn, Delboy! Good stuff there. Keep at it. If you can keep that up, in a year you've got a decent sized novel even if you have to axe half your output. Or you've got two novels that'll need editing. Either way, good stuff.

I'm not keeping up with you, but I'm still moving in the right direction. I'm averaging 3-4 sessions a week, 300-1200 words a session. Been on this short story now for two-three weeks and I'm at about the midway point. Nearing 4500 words though, so it's apt to wind up too long for most markets.

I've hit a few tough spots where I don't want to bother, where I feel like what I've got down sucks, or I feel like I'm getting lost in minor sub-plots, or I'm wasting time because the word count is gonna be off anyway and shouldn't I just shelve this one and start on that other pristine idea?

I'm getting that same urge to ditch it and try something else that might fit within a more salable word count. But I'm gonna keep at it anyway, if for nothing else but to be able to actually finish a piece.

delboy

#4528
I downloaded the Kindle version of the book, too - only £1.02. Bargain! I'm looking forward to reading it.

Elay, I know exactly what you mean about this:

QuoteI've hit a few tough spots where I don't want to bother, where I feel like what I've got down sucks, or I feel like I'm getting lost in minor sub-plots, or I'm wasting time because the word count is gonna be off anyway and shouldn't I just shelve this one and start on that other pristine idea?

I'm getting that same urge to ditch it and try something else that might fit within a more salable word count. But I'm gonna keep at it anyway, if for nothing else but to be able to actually finish a piece.

When I started this new regime I had a battle each morning to actually write. Now the battle is to keep on writing rather than dump this piece and start on something new and better, or maybe start revising, cutting, reworking... I know it's a common issue when in the dark central regions of a novel, in those dense jungles where nothing seems to be moving, but it's also because I know that there's so much wrong with what I've written that I want to start revising and improving. So I have this battle to keep on forging ahead, leave all the errors and inconsistencies behind, knowing that I'll pick them up in draft 2. And 3, and 4... Each morning I have this little fight and then eventually I start writing and (so far) each day I've done my words. Even mornings like this morning when I'm tired because it was a late night with the band and it's the end of long working week. But the bottom line is...it's fun  ;)

In other news I redid my latest guitar piece, combined a couple of sections, and made a proper multi-section instrumental tune out of it. I call it Brokedown Treadmill (http://youtu.be/fwn3jdFtvuU)as a homage to the old blues track Brokedown Engine, but also because it's really just a bunch of exercises put together with a whole lot of mistakes... It has garnered a few nice comments, though  :dance:
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

Geoff_N

Thanks for the tip, pharo. I've downloaded it to my tablet's Kindle app. I enjoy story theories and have a shelf full of them. I believe the first one I read - David Lodge The Art of Fiction was keen on subtext but then he was or still is a prof of English at Oxford. Also the theoretical fiction work by Sol Stein goes on about subtext. I've been told my stories have subtext such that I didn't know I'd put it in! haha. Not written a story about a submarine yet...