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Agony Aunt
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Today I mostly wrote ... the word count thread.
K gets that a lot on a word game site she plays on. It's amazing how many men on there have just had their wives die.
It should be 'today I almost wrote.'This morning before breakfast I worked out that I'd have an afternoon and an evening almost free! So hoped to get some stuff written
Just after breakfast I got a phone call from the Podiatrist, they had a cancellation, could I come in just before noon. Well I'd heard nothing since March so assumed that the doctors had never put the request in.
Anyway I went, and it was worth going, she thinks my metatarsal trouble is probably because the way I walk because my right knee is less slightly less flexible than my left (I fell on it forty years ago)
But anyway it was gone 1pm before I got home and by the time I'd got something to eat and got out to start giving cows their midday feed it was 2pm
So by the time I got in to start writing it was 3pm because I'd feed bins to fill as well. So I got a brew, checked my emails and was about to make a start when I was asked, 'could I give a hand with a cow'.
So I helped trim the feet of two cows, and by this time it was about time for a shower and supper was ready.
Never fear, I've got all evening.
At 7:15pm I got an email from the foodbank, "Phone us"
I did, and then drove down to the foodbank. One of our staff had found somebody virtually passed out in town when she'd been doing a collection so fetched him back to the foodbank. So I went down there, saw him and decided we'd take him to A&E. Before I arrived he'd said he didn't want to but he'd sort of passed out since then. But I didn't ask him, just gently helped him onto his feet, put his arm round my neck, walked him to a car, got him in it and then we drove him to A&E
They knew him and eventually he decided he'd rather see a doctor than his Dad, and to be honest he looked more than just drunk. Then he went to sleep again, so we left him with the reception staff who were great, and I just got home.
Write!
Pah
Blimey! Your life would make a great book!
Cluttered with detail but with no real plot :-)
Sounds like you need to try the 10 minutes a day rule! Blimey Jim! I’m sure you can use that somewhere. I’ve done OK this week 300 to 500 words a day, despite some serious adventures parents side!Cheers
MTM
it does doesn't itI've never needed the 10 minutes a day rule but it looks as if I'm going to have to give it serious consideration!
Good grief Jim. All you need is a diary, honest. Collated and spellchecked, obviously. But that would be enough.
The great thing about 10 minutes is you can do them before you get out of bed in the morning. Even if it’s just jotting down a quick plan. It helps that I have an iPad with a keyboard, so I usually type 250 - 500 words in that 10 minutes! But even 50 words in a note book keeps you in touch!Cheers
MTM
1029 words today.Stopping cos I'm starving!
Will wrote: "Good grief Jim. All you need is a diary, honest. Collated and spellchecked, obviously. But that would be enough."
nobody would believe it!
That's why I write the Tallis stories, it's easier to achieve suspension of disbelief :-)
Jeepers, yes! I hear you Jim. I used to work for National Express. You wouldn’t believe the things people used to ring up and ask, or do on coaches, in bus stations or ... yeh. For example, I remember vividly being taken airside at Heathrow to photograph the bus and coach operations there - lots of stuff goes on behind the scenes at airports, it’s fascinating. I was shown round by a lovely man, also called Jim, who worked out of a portacabin miles out on the apron and kept looking up as he drove me around, as if worried he might catch a nasty glance about the head from a passing 747.I was amazed as we drove about the place to see a suitcase lying at the side of the ‘road’ on nearly every corner. Apparently as those trollies snake from the airport to the plane, lots of the baggage falls off. So if you find your luggage doesn’t arrive, that’s probably what happened. I think, at the time, there was a dedicated service that did a sweep every few days to pick them all up and send them on. Now, if I had something like that at the space port in Space Dustmen, no bugger would believe me at all.
Cheers
MTM
BTW, that bit in The Wrong Stuff where the tube driver tells Ruth to sit in the carriage at the front and bang on the driver’s door if she’s scared is actually something that happened to me. The only bit that’s fiction is the appearance of the Grongles and Sir Robin. ;-)
Same with Tallis, surprising how many of his stories have happened to me or to friends, only I might have embroidered them a little ;-)
And I'm looking forward to the space dustmen :-)
It doesn’t take much to embroider a simple story into a whole quilt of splendidness! And thanks both, re Space Dustmen. It’s slow at the mo, partly because I have to work out who’s female and who’s male - yeh, I know but it’s taken me a while - but also because my main source of inspiration seems to be the shorts about The Pan of Hamgee at the moment ... I have done just under 6k on another one of those this week. Hoping I can get it up to the usual 12 - 13k. We shall see.
Cheers
MTM
I've put on another K or so, now over 25% in to this one
619 today but it's taken the book up to over 48k.
Just the blog post today, unless I get some words in, in a few moments, did 1056 yesterday which was nice, short is up to just shy of 7k, which is nice for a week’s work. Especially a week like this one’s been.Cheers all
MTM
Finally. 239 words of pure fiction. Unusable at present, because they occur after the end, but one character is asking another why - about the scene I'm having trouble writing.
Still, more than for months. And part of the process back.
Well done. It's coming back! Doubt I'll get any done today. I've got a couple of reviews backed up and they take a bit of time.
Just 313 today but I was a bit squashed for time. Still, progress is progress.
347 today - but we had to sleep in to make up for Black Friday keeping the husband up, looking for a laptop for youngest daughter; then we spent an hour+ looking at apartments, lighting, appliances, flooring... with the Facilities people. We seem to make a little progress each time.
Had a good session. 1269 today. Three hundred words and I'll be over 50k.
Good job, Kath. I like to hear about your steady progress.
478 today. I'm doing some faffing, injecting a bit more story into a couple of chapters I thought needed more.
I joined you in a good session Kath. 2014. Words, not the year.
Today's was 839. Not bad but not as good as you. I find I easily write myself out for the day. I rarely do more than 1200 before I need to stop, go away and have another think.
About 300 most days except 800 on Friday and 1.8k on Thursday. Haven't done anything today but have done a long rambly dementia-related blog post!https://mtmcguire.co.uk/2018/12/01/de... if anyone's interested.
Cheers
MTM
All this rings true. My mum and both my parents-in-law had dementia to different degrees.
Kath wrote: "All this rings true. My mum and both my parents-in-law had dementia to different degrees."Yeh, it's not much fun.
Finally. 735 more words of unusable fiction - for a total sidetrack of almost 1800 - but exactly what I needed to unjam the motivation for the scene.Maybe some day it'll go into a 'what happened after' feature - how to look back and see things which were not clear to the characters when they went through them.
Let's see if that's the last hitch. In this scene. And in getting restarted. I've done this before, dug it out of the characters, but not from this vantage point - about three years after the story ends.
Writing is fun.
Yaaaay! Go Alicia.On the upside, I managed to write stacks yesterday. On the downside, I’m hitting the brain fog two weeks of the month and today, I forgot the time and missed a massage that I booked ages ago and have been holding out for looking forward to and generally anticipating with unbounded joy and the next slot to rebook isn’t until 4th Jan, and I’ll have to pay £50 for a treat I didn’t have which is always galling.
Lots of parental admin to do today. Thank heaven's my parents have stopped sending christmas cards or I'd have to do those too (500 at one point, although I think a few have died off since then, it's more like 300 now). Did manage to do my ten minutes of writing today and yesterday though so it's quietly moving on.
Cheers
MTM
Well done! I'm going through a phase of beta reading so I've shelved the writing for a bit. So many pre-Christmas activities in the village that my usual writing time is nibbled away - and I can (and do!) read at any time of day.
Kath wrote: "Well done! I'm going through a phase of beta reading so I've shelved the writing for a bit. So many pre-Christmas activities in the village that my usual writing time is nibbled away - and I can (a..."Tell me about it. I have to stop now to order Mum’s turkey and trimmings and sort out all the smoked salmon she sends but of course there’s always a vegetarian who doen’t do fish so there has to be cheese for them. It’s a bit of a pain but Mum isn’t up to it anymore.
Plodding on with edit but got a good day in so it is progressing.
Yes I got something written yesterday as well :-)Been too busy writing blogs
Nice work folks. I did a lengthy blog yesterday.
Nothing but beta reports. Another today.
Not doing too well over here either. Only managed about 200 in my 10 minutes this morning and didn't have a chance to let the 10 mins run over.
And on the upside - because I've not been well enough to do all the things I had booked in the diary for the last three days, I've started a Christmas story. 3k already. I aim for it to be a freebie next year. I think it'll end up between 5 and 6 thousand words. Off to wrap some presents now. Feeling much better but I'm not going out yet!
Well done Kath! I have had too much Christmas shite to do much but am determined to finish my current short before Christmas. Also wrote a blog post yesterday, a mailing the day before and a book report today for someone who has bags of talent but hasn’t quite cracked it with this book. I absolutely loathed it and the hero was meant to be tough with a heart but it hadn’t quite worked and the result was just this meat-headed bigot who made my skin crawl. I’m a bit worried I have been too up front with him about his stuff. I hope not, I tried to be honest but tactful.Glad I’ve done it though. Now it’s just the Christmas letter and letter to the godmothers and I’m done - or at least - I can go back to writing my own stuff.
Cheers
MTM
I was going to write but got a phone call, could I go into the food bank and help them clear the backlogSo much food has come in we're out of crates, I spend four hours just standing emptying bags and sorting the contents into what crates we had left!
Might get something written tonight
1300 word blog posthttps://tallissteelyard.wordpress.com...
I find I can sit down and write Tallis anecdotes with very little difficulty, but stringing things together to make a proper book is far harder!
2,239 words. This one is writing itself, the trouble is finding time to write it. It’s so weird how they start off, and I don’t know where they’re going to go so I just start describing a scene and stuff happens. Very enjoyable but properly weird.Cheers
MTM
Jim wrote: "1300 word blog posthttps://tallissteelyard.wordpress.com...
I find I can sit down and write Tallis anecdotes with very little difficulty, but string..."
I know, why is that? I am heading for 20k of complex stuff in the thing I’m writing. But I know where it’s going and what’s happening. If I could find a way to look at a book as a series of 20k shorts I’d be laughing. I suppose it’s the timeline because one set of characters doing something sets off another one and you have to jiggle them all about until they interlock properly and fit in. But it is strange.
Cheers
MTM
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1180 today. Plus replies to a few posts on my author thread from an American with dodgy English who sent me photos of himself and asked for photos of me! My author thread is not a dating site! He's banned and the conversation deleted.