The Writing Challenges - Having At It

I don't know if it's that I'm more in touch with my creative centre, or that I'm just quite haphazard and rash and have a sort of 'bugger it, that'll do' attitude. (Which is a bad attitude, I know!)

Actually, 'in touch with creative centre' sounds better than what I just said. I'm going with that!

And yeah, there has been a lot of sex this month! (I can't say sex out loud, there may be adults present.)

PS. I love that there's a Mouse test! :D
 
You know, "passing the Mouse test" sounds like it's about that s-word anyway...bearing a strong resemblance to a rabbit test?
 
If "Passing the Mouse Test" meant "Cheesy", I think I'd have more success. :(;):)
 
I don't go about it as such... I tend to wait for something amusing with some sort of relation to the theme to pop up.

Last month I'd just re-watched an episode of the IT Crowd, this month I got the idea after going through a few webcomics.

My original idea this month, was the transformation exercises my Maths teacher used to force us all to do. Translate the square by (9, 3), enlarge by a factor of three and rotate twelve degrees... I sometimes felt sorry for the squares, you know, being thrown around against their will.

Slapdash, I know. Sorry. :rolleyes:
 
For me, I write the theme down on a piece of paper and then brainstorm everything that comes to mind about it. When I've got the aspect I like, I'll mull it over for half an hour or so and then write it out on paper. It gets a little messy when I cross bits out or start again, but I can see the phrases I want to keep and write it out fully later.

When I've got something I'm happy with, I leave it overnight and see if any other ideas strike me. At least, that's the way I've done the last two challenges. For the first one, I wrote everything down and then typed it up within an hour.

After that, I type it up into my wordpad and see what it looks like, making any changes as needed, then post it.
 
For the first challenge I had an idea and wrote it up quite quickly, I spent more time on pruning it to 75 words than actually writing it all down, but then once it was posted (and I was very happy with it at that point) I didn't like it and wished I'd spent more time on it.

So now, when I have an idea (fairly soon after the competition starts) and then write it, prune it, but then let it fester for a while and see if I still like it. Usually I just rewrite a few words, swap a few lines around. If I'm feeling brave I remove a whole sentence and add something else.
I've found that the idea usually comes quite quickly, but then it takes a little while to solidify into an actual story. One of the things I don't seem to be doing is making a story, I'm just writing a paragraph about something and tacking on a rubbish final line to try and explain it all.

I did write one this month with a start middle and end, but I chose the other story.

How I come up with the idea is a mystery to me, this month I tried to think of things that transform, I toyed with the idea of geographical shapes for a while, but then prefered the idea of an idea (or I thought of a thought). :)
Wasn't sure if it was ready for posting, but will be a bit busy this month* so thought it best to get it posted.



* This is my last month of paid work as redundancy has hit, so I'm going to have a couple (at least) of months off to see if I can write full time. If I can complete 75 words a day it'll only take about three years to write a full length novel. No probs!
 
With all the thought some of you put into it, I'm not surprised the submissions are so good. Some of them I've reread many times, finding a new little nugget each time. I must admit I was a little intimidated to give it a try but reading this thread gave me encouragement.. My idea just sort of popped into my head out of research I was doing for another project. I wrote it quickly in the reply box, threw out the unnecessary words until I got down to 75, then posted. The hardest part seemed to be trying to tell a complete story that is not simply an isolated description of an event in a larger story. I wasn't really able to do that, but maybe next time.
 
I just read your story, ColdBurn, and it still made a powerful impression on me.

As I learned in the first Challenge by posting my story too soon, sometimes two or three words can make the difference between something that reads like a complete story and something that doesn't.
 
The two competitions I've entered, my pieces have been pretty much based on a random idea that's popped into my head. The first one was part of an idea I've thought about before -- who says that you'll even be able to breathe the air when stepping into another world? As mentioned when discussing this month's competition, I went through quite a few transformation ideas, also thinking about Kafka's little piece (love The Metamorphosis) and all the Greek Myth transformations (probably better that I didn't, though, as they've been done better than I could've, I'm sure) before, for some unknown reason, I thought about something as innocent and as cuddly as a teddy bear becoming something...very different...at night.

I've been canny enough to get both pieces under 75 words on first attempt. The first piece, I spent quite some time pruning the words, as I wanted a certain effect from them. The second one was mostly about the final line, when the transformation occurs, so I literally wrote it, typed it up and posted.
 
HoopyFrood said:
... for some unknown reason, I thought about something as innocent and as cuddly as a teddy bear becoming something...very different...at night.
Click to expand...

Unknown? Subliminal suggestion? Or channelling The Procrastinator? (From the other thread)
Write about a teddy who, when kissed upon his button nose, changes into...
Click to expand...
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
I just read your story, ColdBurn, and it still made a powerful impression on me.

As I learned in the first Challenge by posting my story too soon, sometimes two or three words can make the difference between something that reads like a complete story and something that doesn't.
Click to expand...

Thank you, Teresa, coming from you that means alot to me. I guess if we don't quite write a complete story we can always take comfort in the fact that it's only 75 words. No sin, at least nothing the God of Faberge Mechanics wouldn't put you on the shelf for.;)
 
I'm guessing it's the almost three years of seeing that psychopath Thread Bear's picture.



<--- Thread Bear.
 
ColdBurn said:
With all the thought some of you put into it, I'm not surprised the submissions are so good. Some of them I've reread many times, finding a new little nugget each time. I must admit I was a little intimidated to give it a try but reading this thread gave me encouragement.. My idea just sort of popped into my head out of research I was doing for another project. I wrote it quickly in the reply box, threw out the unnecessary words until I got down to 75, then posted. The hardest part seemed to be trying to tell a complete story that is not simply an isolated description of an event in a larger story. I wasn't really able to do that, but maybe next time.
Click to expand...
I have to admit, the first time I read your story it went a bit over my head. But then I reread it and picked up on a few little clues that I'd initially missed (including the title!), and it suddenly fit together. I really like it! Awesome idea and well written.
 
Interesting thread! I wish I'd started reading it sooner. It's been quite a relief to me to see how much work that some of you are putting into your stories. I was under the impression that many of you just had an idea pop into your head and wrote, counted, edited, counted, read, edited counted. Total time less than 20 min. (Don't ask me why I had that impression. Writing it down made me realize how stupid that idea was.)

For myself, it always comes down to the theme. The first theme "New Planet" just shouted terraforming to me. I thought I had a clever idea (not clever enough that anyone voted for it, or even mentioned it [sigh]) and wrote. Twenty minutes to write, an hour, more like two, to edit. Let it set for a day; still liked it. Posted it.

I was determined to make a more memorable showing in the second. But I had no idea what to write about. So as an exercise I wrote the letters for escape down and tried to think about two descriptive words for that letter and maybe my muse would be amused. The words were depressing and black I thought about hell, and viola "Dives" and with considerable work I put the descriptive word pairs in the story. I took a couple of days where I would glance at it and re-read it, and edit it. In the end it looked a lot like the first draft. It garnered me a lot of fun, several personal messages, much discussion on the thread, and --- no votes. [Sigh!]

This month "Transformation" shouts out for me the kind of transformation I am trying to enable in the lives of my congregants. Then MOUSE wrote that "cheeky" piece and the die was cast. I had to write about the right kind of transformation. Judging from the discussion, no one's found "A Dragon's Prayer" in the least interesting. [Sigh!]

Well, being a Parson is good training for putting in a lot of effort for little response. :)
 
What?! :p

I like yours, Parson. Anything to do with dragons is always good!

And um...

Total time less than 20 min. (Don't ask me why I had that impression. Writing it down made me realize how stupid that idea was.)
Click to expand...

Not stupid!!
 
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