The Writers' Thread

[Mysterious Dude]

Today begins National Novel Writing Month. The novel has to have 50,000 words to qualify, which means I have to write 1,667 words a day to keep up. I'm currently on schedule, with 1,825 words of my novel about incest and murder in suburban America. Will I be able to keep it up? Time will tell. But hopefully, I will be able to avoid using cliches like that.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I really need to start writing again. It's been a long time, and I have no excuses. I always feel guilty when I think about how much time has passed, and what I could have accomplished by now.

[lovejuice]

i'm always interested in the national novel writing thingy. i just can't find a good opportunity to do it.

[monolith94]

I'm currently working on a chapter of text for my teaching of writing class (our professor wants us to be writers if we are to teach writing) so between that and my college essays/reading and working as a sub I don't have much time for this. Alas.

[Sycophant]

I've started two aimless possibilities for NaNoWriMo this year. I'm going to just keep writing, even if it sucks hard and is nonsense. I will finish. Perhaps this will help me excise some of my anti-narrative-writing demons. Ultimately, I do prefer writing screenplays, but if I force myself to do this much, I might come around to my narrative style.

[Mysterious Dude]

Four days in and I'm actually on schedule (6,962 words). I can hardly believe it.

[Raiders]

I'm only about 2500 words in, but it is actually still making sense. Still, I'll have to speed up eventually, and it'll all go to pot.

[ledfloyd]

i suck at writing. i can't come up with plots or stories. whenever i try to right something i end up writing nihilistic rants that grow tiresome after a few pages.

funny the writers choose to strike during writing month.

[megladon8]

I hope everyone can disregard the writing I posted last night and then promptly took down.

On another read, it was horrendous.

[Ezee E]

I hope everyone can disregard the writing I posted last night and then promptly took down.

On another read, it was horrendous.

Damn. I missed it.

[Winston*]

I hope everyone can disregard the writing I posted last night and then promptly took down.

On another read, it was horrendous.

Oops, I already copied and pasted it onto several heavily trafficked creative writing forums coupled with your real name and location. Sorry...was I not supposed to?

[Lucky]

Has anyone ever worked as a freelance writer for a newspaper? I just sent my resume because there was an ad in last Sunday's paper, so I'm crossing my fingers. I'm just hoping for a few articles a month, especially since I'm getting a new apartment in a couple weeks.

[DSNT]

Has anyone ever worked as a freelance writer for a newspaper? I just sent my resume because there was an ad in last Sunday's paper, so I'm crossing my fingers. I'm just hoping for a few articles a month, especially since I'm getting a new apartment in a couple weeks.

A friend of mine worked for one of those weekly free publications. He loved it for the notoriety and the swag, but the pay could have been better.

[lovejuice]

Has anyone ever worked as a freelance writer for a newspaper? I just sent my resume because there was an ad in last Sunday's paper, so I'm crossing my fingers. I'm just hoping for a few articles a month, especially since I'm getting a new apartment in a couple weeks.

already two magazines i freelanced for go out off business, so i guess i'm an unlucky charm.

[number8]

already two magazines i freelanced for go out off business, so i guess i'm an unlucky charm.

Hey, don't worry about it. My short comic was published and the company promptly folded after I've bragged to people about it. Lesson learned.

[jesse]

Goddam, I was going to give this a try again this year, but I completely forgot!

:frustrated:

[megladon8]

I am almost done my script for the episode of "Arrested Development" I had to write.

Only about 9 1/2 pages left...

I am constantly astounded by how easy Final Draft makes the process of script writing. I don't have to worry about format at all - it does it all for me as I go along. I can just write and write. It's wonderful.

[Ezee E]

I am almost done my script for the episode of "Arrested Development" I had to write.

Only about 9 1/2 pages left...

I am constantly astounded by how easy Final Draft makes the process of script writing. I don't have to worry about format at all - it does it all for me as I go along. I can just write and write. It's wonderful.

Hmm... I'm curious to see how you'll write that.

[lovejuice]

[QUOTE=megladon8;5822]I am almost done my script for the episode of "Arrested Development" I had to write.

Only about 9 1/2 pages left...

I am constantly astounded by how easy Final Draft makes the process of script writing. I don't have to worry about format at all - it does it all for me as I go along. I can just write and write. It's wonderful.[/QUOTE

i too want to read it.

[Ezee E]

I'm 60 pages into my script. I think I will finish it by the end of the year.

I'm so tempted to get into the climax which I've been thinking about and thinking about for pretty much the entire year. I think it'll be the best scene I ever wrote. Hopefully the rest comes together. It's my first ensemble-based full-length movie.

[megladon8]

I'd love to post my "Arrested Development" script, but I am not sure how I could show it to you guys...I would want to post 21 pages of script...

[Ezee E]

you can just e-mail it to me as an attachment if you want.

[megladon8]

you can just e-mail it to me as an attachment if you want.

Sure, what's your address?

[monolith94]

For those who are interested, please read and critique the following piece of writing I'm currently working on:

[

Show Spoiler

I know this forest.

I know the way this Autumn day, touched by mist, has colored the trees. I know how stones are piled upon stones, and the savage darknesses that are within them. Therein insects lie.

I know what I can see, and I know the small metal box, what I wear strapped over my shoulder, that I like to imagine sees with the same knowledge. A thick lens I have often lifted, letting in light: frames full of golden reeds, half-blurred in movement. Or a frame showing the forming dusk, trees silhouetted against the bend of a river. This they know me for.

But as I walk through the trees, and lift my camera to catch the slightly drifting leaves, something unexpected appears. A white robe, perhaps, beyond a patch of birches and I cannot be sure. A woman’s blonde hair, I thought I saw.

Was this how I came that day to an unknown grove?

For the past month, I hadn’t shot anything worth shooting. The landscapes I had grown up with seemed to offer nothing: celluloid visions of twigs and stumps; dirt and dead leaves. I couldn’t have been certain of anything I had seen, but somehow I could sense that the time was right to explore, never mind how much I doubted what I had seen so far in the distance.

If there had been a woman there, a person, now that would have been a subject worth capturing. Then, marrying the human figure to the landscape, perhaps I could have broken the endless nothing that my hobby was beginning to become. I raised the lens and looked in the same direction, but this time in the narrow camera frame no suspicious figure emerged: just the quite amber stillness of trees resisting the wind dispassionately.

I sighed and started forward, first slowly but then quickly as some part of me began to suspect and suspect that I had seen something, that it had not been simply a delusion, the product of a bored mind.

Soon enough the forest with its tall firs began to thin, and I came to a wide clearing, still soft with the touch of dew. A profound sense of isolation settled upon me; I knew objectively that not far, not far at all, there were people, and the safety of a crowd. But there in the clearing, I could not help but think that I was desperately alone. And there before me, at the opposite end of the field was an old New England stone wall.

I walked up to it, to where the field ended. Looking down at the light gray stones, I spotted a black centipede moving past; by the time I had uncapped the lens it was gone. Looking into the forest ahead, I could see that as I would draw inwards, it would grow thicker.

As I lifted myself over the wall, I saw that in the ground, not more than fifty feet away from me, was a stone circle, several feet in diameter. It had been constructed out of innumerable small stones, much like a Byzantine mosaic. Curious, I approached it; on the stones were: a small stretch of tattered stained red rope, a pair of broken glasses, a small pile of ash, and the scent of burnt sage.

I knelt down on the ground beside the circle and focused the lens. The ground was cold. The light was right, and the scene felt perfect in black and white. I went through a few shots, but then set the camera down. After a few moments, I sat down and took the scene before me in. I realized, suddenly, that I had forgotten all about the vision that had brought me to this place. Had I imagined a woman in the distance? I could have never imagined that I would find something like this in the state park. In the end, I couldn’t come up with any answers. Slowly, I pulled out my cell phone and prepared to dial the police.

]

[number8]

I'd write more if I wasn't on strike.