52 Pickup

Hello to all the writers, editors and readers on lit.

I'm attempting something, a little personal challenege, and I'd like to receive feedback on it.

I want to see if I can write under a deadline. To that end, I intend to write a single story once a week for the next fifty-two weeks of the year.

I know that means fifty-two stories which is far more than most people have (and far more than I have right now after two years on the site). But it wouldn't be a challenge if it wasn't hard (besides, I intend to give myself some breathing room with a few "chapter" stories).

In all honesty, something will most likely come along to trip me up but I want feedback on these stories. The gimicky nature of what I'm attempting aside, I'd still like to turn out quality. The nature of this stems from a conversation I had with another writer who said that turning out good work (or any work at all) with regularity was impossible. He likened writing to a spiritual event that cannot be rushed or made to conform to a timetable.

I told him that that was the excuse of the lazy writer who can't make time to hone their craft. He told me that I was a scribble-whore who was only out to make a few bucks and was looking for a writing formula (mind you, he considers every published, compensated writer a literary whore) to make me into the next Stephen King.

Hence the extremeness of what I'm shootin' for. I didn't know what category to put this under, but since I wanted feedback I figured this was the best place.

So here goes...grant me luck and pray that the site administrators move my stories through with speed.

Or, wish me nothing but failure and misery and the very public humiliation that comes with this sort of thing.

Either way, this is gonna be fun.

I'd only be interested in reading them if there was one perverted character who cameo'd in all 52 stories. Sort of a twist on Quentin Tarrintino's movies, how he always had the red-haired guy (never knew his name) in them somewhere.

Only kidding

Good luck.

PS whacko, but admirable - is this the new year's res?

Hmmmm, a single character that ran through all fifty-two stories. Tempting...who knows keep an eye out and you might see a recurring character. I don't know about slipping him into all 52 stories. The first story I've submitted (this is technically the first week of 2004 you know) doesn;t seem to have much in common with what I'm planning for next week but we'll have to see. Might be fun.

There will be a few series so if you really want a recurring character, there'll be plenty of 'em.

Good luck, but it seems like you're setting yourself up for a fall. I would say that it's possible to write good stories, and I would say that it's possible to write a story a week, but I just don't know if you can do them both at the same time.

I don't believe that one has to wait for divine inspiration before writing, but I do believe that quality takes time and effort. I'd imagine that the best you can hope for are stories that are adequate.

It'll be interesteing to watch though, and I wish you good luck.

---dr.M.

Thanks Dr. M

I've seen your input on a lot of writer's stories and I have to say it's some of the best editorial advice around. I don't really expect to turn out a masterpiece a week but simply an entertaining story once a week. If I can do that, I'll have suceeded. Besides, it forces me into a disciplined writing schedule which is something I've needed for a long time.

I'll tell you, WC. Ever since "Gypsy Candles" first appeared--where was? Story discussion circle or on the feedback board?--I thought you were a writer to keep an eye on. Very capable, great sense of place (my hometown), a natural story teller, and very inventive. So if that's what it takes to get you to write more, then get to it. Lit needs some quality.

---dr.M.

If you can, work on several stories at the same time and make it your goal to COMPLETE one per week. Whether you can do it or not depends on you, and also how much time you have available. If you work full time and have a house to take care of and a family, it is difficult. If you are retired or otherwise not working and living by yourself, it can be done. Dedication is all good and well but it also takes time.

I applaud your efforts to be. I forecast doom - but admire the bold initiative nonetheless. My advice would be to go at your own pace and not so much worry whether the work actually gets posted on Lit or not. After all - Lit goes through cycles where Laurel and Manu get cluttered with stories from contests and the like. So long as you keep churning the stories out, people will forgive the less-than-clocklike releases.

Give links throughout the early going as your stories do become available. That way people will be reminded to check for your latest release until it becomes a bit of a habit, so to speak. As for feedback, leave the Public Comments open. I'd feel more comfortable contributing to those.

Good luck!

it can be done

i wish you well.

I submitted 45 items in 2003 (including poems and audio stories). 35 were story parts averaging 2500 - 3000 words each and I gave myself three months off from Dec to Mar.

i would suggest you need a central story to keep you going and fill in with one offs as the fancy takes you.

it is best to work to a deadline. I know when I don't I sometimes don't write for weeks.

best of luck

IT CAN BE DONE

I know it can be done because I did it in 2003. I submitted 45 stories, one of them a six part novella, and it is classed as fifty entries. This was in a nine month period, beginning in April. At that rate, I would have submitted 60 stories over a year. The main thing is to have time. Also, almost all my stories have an ongoing character and he will be in most of the stories I write in 2004.

Good Luck.

WyldKarde said:

...Besides, it forces me into a disciplined writing schedule which is something I've needed for a long time.

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Which is why I'm rooting for you. Most accomplished writers say that the more you write, the better your writing becomes, even if it doesn't get any easier. If this experiment results in a daily, habitual writing schedule, your writing can only benefit.

I can't think of any reason why you shouldn't go for it.

Yeah...I have to admit that the writing schedule has been a little rough. Forcing myself to sit down and write has been tough at first, but once I get down to it, I see it's definately doable (if not always easy).

Yeah...lit acceptance isn't exactly like clockwork I'm beginning to see. back when I only checked lit every three of four days or so, I didn't notice how long it took to get a story up. Now I'm noticing that my deadlines and lit's posting times may not always sync up. However, I once got a story up (for a contest, mind you) within about twelve hours, so I'm sure I'll get my share of pleasant surprises.

Anyhoo, I'm one fifty-second(th?) of the way there. Taking a great deal of advice from others, I've decided to settle on a central place with a central cast of characters. It'll be fun to simply yank on all those puppet strings for a year and see what (if anything) pops out.

The first one is called "My Father's Keeper" and there'll be a link once it's posted. For those of you with a penchant for interracial, it's an interracial story. I figured I'd try to touch on as many different erotic genres as I could (reasonably) work with. If I'm gonna crank out one of these a week, I'd better figure out how to get some differentiaton in my yarns.

Probably the hardest part of maintaining a writing schedule is not letting other people disrupt it. If you are a professional author, writing a story that has already been sold or that you know will be sold, it is not as hard because most people recognize that you are at work. If you are just writing for fun, though as I am and as most of us probably are, they say "Quit goofing off at that computer and ..... whatever they think they have a right to interrupt you with.

I am trying to maintain a high output level also and have submitted two stories so far and have about twenty more in various stages of completion. Most of my stories have the same ongoing character, the narrator (N) and there are also several recurring persons, especially in the group sex. N has sex with various women in various ways; some of them like to be spanked, some like to be tied up, some like anal, etc. I have set a goal of averaging one story submitted per week but I have hopes of doing more than that.

Yeah. Getting those around me to respect my writing scedule is tough. People usually do assume that you're not really doing anything. I've been accused of being a lazt fuck, uncaring boyfreind...yada, yada, yada, for not getting up to perform some task that was, more often than not, inane and pointless.

"Ohhh, I love this song, get up and dance with me."

Sweet bleeding christ! Nevermind the job and the school, now the radio conspires against me.

Oh well, I just keep sitting down and typing until it sinks in to everyone around me that this is something I do and am going to keep doing.

Oh, by the way the first story (it turns out) is gonna be called "Morgan's Morning" and it's a Mastrbation story. Oh well, first accepted, first served. I can say with some confidence that "My father's Keeper" will be the second one.

What is this obsession with "challenges" and "records" that infects some people at times? It's not a race, you know. So what if you can or cannot do it? I thought the point is to write good stories -- like your Gypsy Candles, for example. Give me stories like that and I don't care if you only write one a year. Give me crap and I don't give a f**k if you write a million.

hiddenself said:

What is this obsession with "challenges" and "records" that infects some people at times? It's not a race, you know. So what if you can or cannot do it? I thought the point is to write good stories -- like your Gypsy Candles, for example. Give me stories like that and I don't care if you only write one a year. Give me crap and I don't give a f**k if you write a million.

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Actually, there is a race, and some of the members of Lit., including me, are entered in it. I don't know if WyldKarde is. It's called the Survivors Contest and the winner has to be prolific and versatile. Last year, the winner had over 100 stories submitted.

At the same time, nobody here is going to knowlingly submit crap.

Well, as far as challenges go, I do think it's neccessary to challenge yourself (which is what this is, it's not like anyone's gonna give me a shiny new nickel for pulling it off). There's a fine line between art and masturbation. With one, you produce things, small slices of your personality or, in the case of the truly gifted and the truly insane, pieces of your own soul. Then you exersize some courage and you show that to as many people that care to see it and you (this is the hard part) walk away. You're done, you've created and whatever happens to it now is up to your fans and your detractors. Done bravely and done well, it can be exhillerating.

Then there is the flip side of art. I'm sure all the guys (and manbe some girls) here have had that one signifigant (or insignifigant) other who writes poetry. The thing is that they don't show anyone their poetry but whomever they're dating. It's usually extremely personal to the point of being invasive and it mostly serves as a form of release. That (I'm gonna catch flak for this one) is not art. It's ameteur therapy and it usually doesn't work (how many serial killers and suicide victims have roomfulls of notebooks filled with information that, if given to a psychiatrist would have saved a lot of people a lot of grief). Not to say that it isn't helpfull in other ways. I'm not saying an artist should publish everything with their handwriting on it, but what one does for themselves is not art. Art must be communal in order to be valid. It's a point that will be argued until the end of human civilization, but there are far fewer works of art to be found hidden in closets with sheets thrown over them than there are accessible to the public.

In terms of this little stunt, it's simply a self-assessment with a risk of failure thrown in. Any Writer (capital W, meaning a professional. If you write for fun, screw the rules) who does not write regularly is unworthy of the title (flimsy as that title is). I have said that I don't expect genius from myself on a regular basis but I should expect something from myself on a regular basis. Otherwise, I'm simply doing it for fun which makes it a hobby.

Some people on this site are just doing it for fun and that's great. But I'm trying to stand out as a professional. Just as a marathon runner has to be able to run at least twelve miles or so on a regular basis, a professional writer has to write regularly--and not just scribbles in a notebook, I mean a finished product on a regular basis. We all know that one writer who has been working on the same novel off and on for about six years or so. Despite what they think, until they put forth a concerted effort to produce something, it's just their hobby. Something they do when they have the time, or need a break from the everyday. I have been that kind of writer and now I'm trying to make the jump from hobbyist to writer.

When I was a hobbyist, I venomously defended my claim to the title of writer. However, my body of work, or lack thereof, argued against me. Beyond that, the effort I was putting into what I claimed to love was not consitent with either calling myself a writer, or with love. Simply put: "If I loved to do it, why wasn't I doing it?" Gypsy candles is over two years old and everything else has been self-admitted dreck. I may have been a great writer on one occasion...two years ago, but I expect more from myself and in order to do that, I need motivation. The risk of failure is a great motivator and that risk is made greater when it's public.

So there. That should explain the "why" of what I'm doing. It's been speculated on, but I've never just come out and said "This is why I'm doing this." I'm not going for accolades, or trying to pimp higher scores out of lit. I'm simply trying to get better. No offense to anyone happy with where they are. If you're happy, screw what other people think or want for themsleves. I just would like to be a better writer and for me, this is one of the best ways to challenge myself.


Whoooo, there's gonna be fuel for the flame with this one. Better protect my eyes from the glare...

Now, have at thee!

WyldKarde said:

... a professional writer has to write regularly--and not just scribbles in a notebook, I mean a finished product on a regular basis. We all know that one writer who has been working on the same novel off and on for about six years or so. Despite what they think, until they put forth a concerted effort to produce something, it's just their hobby.

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Literary history does not agree with you. There are literary giants who produced only a few finished works. Tolkien comes to mind. Of course, in these cases, writers have to have other means of support, but that does not make them non-professional writers you know. I'll take a competent hobbyist ("genius a few times in a lifetime") anytime over a mediocre professional ("something on a regular basis").

There are authors who are very prolific and others who agonize over everything and do a million rewrites. Look inside you and let your personality determine what kind you can be.

Note to B101
The vast majority of Lit stories disproves your statement (unless all these "authors" of crap are extremely naive or stupid to not realize that they are writing crap, and that's hard to believe). The Survivor Contest itself is mostly crap -- it rewards on the basis of quantity (or, rather, variety), without any regard at all for quality. Most Survivor Contest stories are mediocre at best (and Lit authors of such stories have occasionally admitted that, eg, "I know it's not very good but I did it for the Survivor Contest.")

hiddenself said:

Literary history does not agree with you. There are literary giants who produced only a few finished works. Tolkien comes to mind. Of course, in these cases, writers have to have other means of support, but that does not make them non-professional writers you know. I'll take a competent hobbyist ("genius a few times in a lifetime") anytime over a mediocre professional ("something on a regular basis").

There are authors who are very prolific and others who agonize over everything and do a million rewrites. Look inside you and let your personality determine what kind you can be.

Note to B101
The vast majority of Lit stories disproves your statement (unless all these "authors" of crap are extremely naive or stupid to not realize that they are writing crap, and that's hard to believe). The Survivor Contest itself is mostly crap -- it rewards on the basis of quantity (or, rather, variety), without any regard at all for quality. Most Survivor Contest stories are mediocre at best (and Lit authors of such stories have occasionally admitted that, eg, "I know it's not very good but I did it for the Survivor Contest.")

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I agree with the first part of your post but I have to take issue with the last part. Crap, like beauty and smut, is in the eye of the beholder. A literary critic might read my stories and judge them to be crap. They have no character development and no plot. They are just descriptions of sex acts. Well, duh, that's all they are meant to be. I write smut, pure and simple. I write stuff for people to wank themselves or frig themselves to. If that critic got a hardon or her pussy got wet while reading the story then the story accomplished its goal.

One of the Marx Brothers criticized a movie critic who had panned a Marx Brothers movie one time. The critic then added how much he had laughed at the "bad movie". Groucho replied something like: "The movie was intended to make people laugh and it accomplished that purpose. How can it be a bad movie?" That's not even close to being an exact quote but the sense is there.

If a movie, story, etc. accomplishes its purpose, how can it be crap?

I will agree, however that there is a fair amount of crap on the site but I don't think the writers, for the most part, consider it to be crap.

I knew it was bound to swerve into this but I didn't feel like seperating published work from simple writing. While most writers don't have a lot of published work, that doesn't change the fact that they wrote regularly (while they were writers mind you, J.R.R. Tolkien was a celebrated professor of Linguistics so you can factor at least one other career into his lifetime. To claim that he wrote all the time would pretty much be an outright lie).

Maybe Stephen King can crank out three novels a year, but that's due to commercial success. He could get a birthday card on the New York Times Bestsellers list. The fact is that Stephen King has a regular writing schedule. As do all writers. And in their writing scedules, they produce finished products. Literary History supports this as manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, sketches, and poems are constantly being found, produced by long dead artists who were either polishing their craft or meybe they couldn't beat the reaper to the publisher. Either way, it proves that the most successful artists were always working. Most of what they did never saw the light of day or was never meant to...but they were constant in their work.

Too many artists today forget that art is also work. They wait for some divine inspiration to come down and beat a masterpeice out of them. That's the line in the sand I'm drawing, the one between the all-black wearing artistic elite who reek of patchoulii and are too deep to be misunderstood by anyone. They seem to think that art involves waiting around until inspiration strikes and then latching a free ride on some personal tragedy or insight. Practice is offensive to them and no true artist would ever think of showing his work to anyone, only a select group of people who "get it".

That would be the guy who inspired me to do this in the first place. He wrote one good story and is content to sit back with his feet kicked up until another one falls out of him like a baby tooth. At the time, I only had one good story and everyone was telling me to sit back until another dropped out of my ass. I needed to prove to myself I wasn't resting on my laurels. Gypsy Candles is two years old...I'm still getting messages saying "Don't rush it man...let it just happen."

Nothing worthwhile in life "just happens". Every sucessful person in history realized that and put forth effort to achieve their goals...

...artists included.

What WyldeKarde said. You're a writer when you write. Other wise you're a think-about-it writer.

My only concern with what WK is doing is to wonder whether setting a schedule like that is the best way to develop your chops as a writer. Going through a story a week, you'll hardly have time to edit or polish, and editing and rewriting is--to me at least--way more than half the battle.

They recently had a National Novel Writer's month or some such, where the object was to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I didn't participate, first because I don't believe in playing games with my writing, and secondly because the only way to knock out 50K words in a month was to just sit down and write it straight through: no revising, no rewriting. At the end of the month you have 50K words, but if it's crap, what have you accomplished? You've learned to write reams of crap.

I already know how to write reams of crap. It's the quality stuff that's the problem. And for me, that takes revision, rewriting, polishing, and time-consuming stuff like that. When you're just cranking out the stories and flinging them over your shoulder because it's time to start the next one, I wonder how mcuh you're going to learn about writing quality prose.

---dr.M.

Edited to add: I almost hate to ask, WK, but it's 2 weeks since you first posted about your goal. Do you have two stories done yet?

dr_mabeuse said:

What WyldeKarde said. You're a writer when you write. Other wise you're a think-about-it writer.

My only concern with what WK is doing is to wonder whether setting a schedule like that is the best way to develop your chops as a writer. Going through a story a week, you'll hardly have time to edit or polish, and editing and rewriting is--to me at least--way more than half the battle.

They recently had a National Novel Writer's month or some such, where the object was to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I didn't participate, first because I don't believe in playing games with my writing, and secondly because the only way to knock out 50K words in a month was to just sit down and write it straight through: no revising, no rewriting. At the end of the month you have 50K words, but if it's crap, what have you accomplished? You've learned to write reams of crap.

I already know how to write reams of crap. It's the quality stuff that's the problem. And for me, that takes revision, rewriting, polishing, and time-consuming stuff like that. When you're just cranking out the stories and flinging them over your shoulder because it's time to start the next one, I wonder how mcuh you're going to learn about writing quality prose.

---dr.M.

Edited to add: I almost hate to ask, WK, but it's 2 weeks since you first posted about your goal. Do you have two stories done yet?

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NaNoWriMo got me into good writing habits, that's what it accomplishes. During November I wrote 2,000 words per day, and I am still writing as much as that per day. I've written many horror and erotic horror shorts in that time, as well as continuing work on my novel.

I wrote the ending of my NaNo novel yesterday, writing that last line felt so good. I am now onto the editing and rewriting phase, which I will take my time over.

Is it all a pile of crap? No, not if the feedback I've received on it so far is anything to go by. I've had high praise indeed from people who are hard core horror fans, who are also writers themselves, and they've only read the first draft, as I wrote during NaNo and beyond.

Sorry if I sound defensive, but as you probably realise, NaNoWriMo is a project that is very close to my heart. It changed my life as a writer, yes it's as dramatic as that.

Do I have a publishing deal on the cards? Yes, and I'm talking small press publishing house, ie. in print, not an ebook.

Who's playing games?

Lou

P.S. All the best WyldKarde, good on you.

Sorry, Lou. I should have made it clear that my feelings about the novel-writing thing applied to my own writing and the problems I face. I didn’t mean to tar all participants with the same brush. We all have our own way of working, and I wouldn’t put down anything that worked for someone else.

That being said, I still have real misgivings about the quantitative approach to learning to write quality prose, and my own experience has taught me that it’s really easy to fall into cliches of style and pick up other bad habits that can be very hard to break later on. I found that the stuff I forced out finally was flat and uninteresting, because there simply wasn’t time to think about things and let them mature.

I myself have learned more about writing from reading, editing, and polishing than I have from the act of writing itself. Maybe others are different. But I just have doubts about the value of high volume writing as a means of improving as a writer.

---dr.M.

Hmmm, I admit that my "writing" scedule is just that and editing wasn't something I prepared for. Then again, editing isn't something I'm good at either and when I attempt it, the stories never get finished because I keep going back and changing everything.

Getting the hang of editing is something I most definately will have to learn, and exerscise at a slower pace. Since I hoped I'd catch the eye of one of lit's better editors with this little stunt, I suppose I'll learn some of the basics of that craft along the way. Yeah, I'll be brushing the ashes off myself from a few spectacular crash-and-burns, but I'll be learning too, so who cares.

For those keeping score, I've actually got two more stories written but announcing them before they're posted by our gracious hosts hasn't always been a good idea. However, I'll give you the titles even though I have no idea when they'll pop (saturday by my timetable, but who knows, they might be up now)

My Father's Keeper...let's hope this iteration makes it.

Chez Ramen...a little trip down memory lane to that first night in your first place. So what if you didn't have a bed...or telephone...or windowshades to keep out the acidic orange glare of the streetlight outside...it was all yours...

What order will they pop in? When will they hit? I dunno, but it's never more than a few days after I claim that they're up so I figure a few days from when I would have expected them to be up....which would have been today.

Wow, Morgan's Morning still not up yet....I just noticed that. I was wondering why I wasn't getting feedback on my first one.

This is going to be tougher than I thought...