Sunday, May 27, 2012

Writing Update

I scaled back today to a still productive but more reasonable 3724 words. Anywhere between 3500 and 4000 words is a good pace for me and one that I can maintain pretty consistently. More battles today, and to quote the Simpsons episode with Lady Gaga from a couple of weeks ago, "There is no over-the-top. There is no over-the-top."

3 comments:

beb said...

God, I loved that Lady Ga-ga episode of the Simpsons. It was so delightfully surreal and yet had a serious sort of story line for Lisa. Best episode in a couple seasons.

When I was young I loved reading about how different writers went about their work. (Actually I still do.) Two of the most interesting stories has stuck with me all this time. In one L. Ron Hubbard (I believe) was in the ASF offices when Campbell told him one of his stories needed to be changed. He took the story and threw away a couple three pages before there he made to revise it and started writing from there. That way when he got to the new part he would be up to speed and in the groove. This is similar to how the men behind The Venture Brothers write. They begin by writing a couple mid-season stories to get into the mind-set before writing the opening episode.

The other story, or writing technique (and I don't recall who's it was) involved leaving the last sentence of the day unfinished. The idea being that remembering how that last sentence was supposed to end would remind you of what was going to happen next.

By the way I see that capcha has been dialed back some. There was a while two weeks back where I was going to comment but after four futile tries decided my comment wasn't that important.

Charles Gramlich said...

I agree, there is no over the top!

James Reasoner said...

I've had that "Homer Face" song stuck in my head for a couple of weeks now. Best Simpsons song parody in a long time.

Very rarely I'll stop in the middle of a sentence. But I'll leave myself notes where I stop in the manuscript pretty often.