#WriteAStoryChallenge - Day 31!

I can't believe it's the end already! Here's my final sentences, be as they may:

Wow. It's been a whole month since I started writing this story. I've been itching to fill it out and edit it, and now I can! It doesn't have a good conclusion yet - I lost track of the days and was totally unprepared for the final day! I'm not sure whether I'll write again next month, or take a month off to edit this one. I loved writing it, and I suppose it doesn't take very long to write something up each day. 

Perhaps I'll try the February challenge! I like the challenge of fitting in the words in creative ways, though sometimes they didn't quite seem to fit.

Until tomorrow, and next month, dear readers!

#WriteAStoryChallenge - Day 25!

On the Bright side, I've stayed pretty consistent with the writing on this one. It's becoming more interesting by the day. Here's today's sentences:

I get the feeling that I'll have some editing to do on this one when the month is up, but I'm excited about the work that I've been doing on it. Each day is a new adventure, and I'm learning lots of new words. It's really exciting for me to do this, and I plan to keep up with it - so long as April keeps posting the monthly prompts. And even if she doesn't, I could use previous years, since I haven't done them before. 

How do you feel about challenges like this? Are they worth it? Do they accomplish their goal - to keep us writing effectively?

#WriteAStoryChallenge - Day 17!

Here's today's little bit of writing!!

This one was kind of tough. The word was "X-Ray", and honestly I had no idea how it was going to fit in. So I just let it happen. The toughest part was getting it in 3 sentences.

Once this is written, I'll be excited to go back through and kind of fluff up passages like this. I wanted it to be a few sentences, but I could only have three. Then again, I've always been a fan of using run-on sentences with little to no punctuation to indicate frantic speaking without having to say "he was frantic" or the like.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

I created a page for word counts. I'm going to get graphics for the progress/stage bars instead of words. I might regret saying that later, but I am going to try!

#WriteAStoryChallenge - Day 16!

This was the only way I could think of to include the word!

I've been keeping up with the challenge pretty well. What I haven't been keeping up with is the blog posts about it. Instead of posting a few every day to catch up, I decided to leave you with a piece of the story missing and continue from today.

As of now, Word Count Wednesday probably isn't going to happen. I may post periodic updates, but I'm not sure they'll be their own blog post. Perhaps I'll leave it on a separate page. We'll see.

I've felt off lately, but writing is keeping me sane. So I'll do it until I can't do it anymore.

Thanks for reading.

#WriteAStoryChallenge - Day 10!

Good evening, everyone! It feels good to be keeping to the routine of things.

I only wrote two sentences today, but it felt like the right place to stop. I haven't really been looking ahead at the prompts, so I can't be sure adding that one more sentence wouldn't ruin everything.

Of course, the true mark of a writer on the fly is being able to run with sentences that seem to "ruin everything" and turn it around into something perfect.

I'm working on the editing stage of The Ringmaster's Dilemma. I have a lot - and I do mean A LOT - of work to do. I started a spelling & grammar check in Word last night, and didn't even finish it. But I guess that's pretty normal when you have over 80,000 words and you wrote them all off the cuff.

Do you have any editing tips? Let me know below.

Fortune Cookie Musings

I appreciate the rhyme and rhythm of this fortune. You see, the rhyme gives it a kind of fun feeling, whereas the rhythm gives it memorability. But that's just words on paper. Let's talk more about the meaning of the words.

Obviously, a garden full of weeds is not desirable. We weed our gardens to remove the invasive plants, and usually they aren't as pretty or as nice as the plants that they could potentially choke out.

So a person who speaks of greatness, but does not act out that same greatness is like a garden full of weeds, not anything much to look at and not worth much anything, either.

It's easy to look at a problem and talk about how to fix it, what steps need to be taken, and how much time or money it might cost to do those things. But it is another thing entirely to raise the money, to make the time, to go out and do and fix and learn. And sometimes, you learn something new and exciting on the way. 

It takes a special kind of person to rise above and do things. Most days, I am not one of those people. But I would like to think that there are days when we've all weeded our lives a bit and flowers can start to grow again.

Lucky Numbers: 12, 19, 38, 10, 25

#WriteAStoryChallenge - Day 9!

Today's word was "determine". Very versatile!

It's becoming easier to fill in the story, now that it seems to have a direction. Almost. I'm still excited to see where this little story goes. I hope it's wonderful and the best story ever. But something makes me doubt that.

And the success of this story will help me determine whether I want to do February's Write A Story Challenge. Perhaps if I write 12 stories, I could edit them and put them together in a book?

But that's a long way away. In the present, I think I'm going to start something along the lines of Word Count Wednesdays. Just to keep myself liable to post and to keep my word counts updated.

It will be the word count of all current projects, and perhaps a chart to watch them grow. Or shrink, as I'm sure my NaNoWriMo project will be doing in the next month or so as I edit.

Do you have any word count goals that you're getting close to? Let me know in the comments below!