Tag Archives: writing

Broken Collarbone Inspiration

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A month ago, on a rainy day, I slipped and fell on my tile floor while walking into my own house.  I was so stunned when I fell that I think my brain stopped working for a few minutes because I could not do anything.  When my brain cranked back into gear, I had a hard time getting up because my right arm (my dominant arm, of course) hurt so much.  A trip to the ER revealed a broken collarbone.

The bad news is that this has cut into my writing time because I haven’t wanted to do much.  The good news is that I’ve had lots of time to read.

I’ve been enjoying the Maisie Dobbs mystery series by Jacqueline Winspear.  In the author interview at the end of the first book, she says that she had an accident while writing the book that kept her from using her right arm.  Apparently a friend asked her, “Well, you’ve got a left arm, haven’t you?”  So she wrote much of the book with just her left hand.  Inspiration!  I still have a left hand, too, and I can even use my right hand some of the time.  I need to get back to writing.

It has taken a month, but I am finally able to get through a day without taking pain medicine (NB: I hate taking medicine, so that doesn’t mean pain free).  And so far today has been a 830 word day.  Yea!

What inspires you?

April Stats

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Here are my stats for April.  Late and low this month, for reasons that will be explained in my next post.  My words/hour ratio is better than March, mostly because I was writing something new instead of revising.

 

WORDS WRITTEN: 3053

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 12.1

WORDS/HOUR: 252

New Ideas

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Whenever I get an idea for a new project, I write it down in my Ideas file.  Usually, by the time I’ve finished the first draft of a project, I’ve already had several ideas for the next one.  Usually, one of them is banging around my head, ready to get out.  If I don’t have one clamoring to get written, I can read my Ideas file and see what sparks my attention.

Last month, that didn’t happen.  I was ready for a new project, and nothing sparked. 

Of course, I can always spend my writing time editing.  And I considered going back to the last novel I started and working on that.  In fact, I did start working on it.

And then I read something online that made me mad.  And while considering my response to what made me mad, I came up with a science fiction analog for the situation, a setting, a character, a problem … and a new story. 

It’s going to be a fun April.

How do you come up with story ideas?

March Stats

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Here are my stats for March. Less productive than February. I’ve found that trying to write 100 words a day is not a good metric when I’m in revision mode, which is where I am now on two stories. It’s also not a good metric when I’m in deep thought mode, which is where I also was on one of those stories. But, when I’m in writing mode, it works insanely well. And, since I’m now in writing mode for a new project … I’m hoping April will go well!

WORDS WRITTEN: 2261

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 16.9

Published: Stupid Manuscripts

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I am very pleased that Interstellar Fiction has published a story of mine called “Stupid Manuscripts”.  You can find it here:

            http://interstellarfiction.com/fiction/stupid-manuscripts-by-antha-ann-adkins

The idea behind “Stupid Manuscripts” – that a computer could generate random scientific articles, one of which might be close enough to right that a scientist could use it – is one that I had in my files for years and years before I found a fun way to write it.

The ability of a million monkeys to randomly type out Hamlet (or any other work of Shakespeare) sooner that the heat death of the universe has been proven to be almost impossible.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

However, computers have been used to generate text a word at a time a number of times.

In fact, a computer wrote a book in 1984:

            http://www.ubu.com/historical/racter/index.html

And computers have written fake science articles to test how well science journals and conferences screen their papers:

            http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102

            http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17288-crap-paper-accepted-by-journal.html

And a computer was used to generate a chapter of the “world’s worst novel” which was written to show that Publish America will accept anything:

            http://www.travistea.com/

Unfortunately for my character Hugh, in reality all of these generated works are nonsense.

The likelyhood of a computer generating a close-to-right scientific article (particularly one with equations, where you’d go back to the case of the infinite monkeys typing a character at a time with an even bigger alphabet of symbols) is still highly improbable.  So Hugh really had a lot of work to do …

And I had a lot of fun playing with acronyms.

I hope you enjoyed the story.

Writing Streak

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My writing 100 words a day streak is now at 34 days.  I’ve discovered that 100 words takes me somewhere between 10 and 40 minutes to write.  I’ve also discovered that, many times, I then go on to write far more words.  For anyone out there with the excuse that they “don’t have the time” to write (and, yep, I’ve used it too), I challenge you to try it and collect your own data.  Because maybe you really do have the time.

Now, I realize that 100 words a day isn’t going to add up to a novel anytime soon.  However, I think you’ll find it easier to add words to a big project than a small one because once you’re started on the big project, you can spend your time writing and not planning.  With smaller projects, the percentage of time need to plan is greater, I think.

I have now finished the first draft of my second short story for the year and am halfway through a third.  This is by far and away my most productive writing year, and it’s only the middle of February.

January Writing Stats

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I’ve started this system where I’m writing at least 100 words a day instead of saving up my writing for when I have a big chunk of time.  I’ve found that I can add 100 words to a story pretty quickly – 10 or 15 minutes – which is doable, even after a long day of work.  I’ve also found that I think about my stories more because I’m working on them daily.  The drawback is that when I’m in polishing mode, I have to start another story at the same time.  But that has a silver lining: it means I’ve got another story started.  Anyway, in January I finished one story and started another.  Here are the month’s stats:

WORDS WRITTEN: 5892

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 21.1

Naming Characters

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One of my favorite parts of starting a new story is naming all the characters.  I like to give my characters names that reflect their goals or traits, and I also try to avoid using the names of people I know well.  Luckily, there are lots of names.

One site that I used a lot today was:

            http://www.behindthename.com/

This neat site allows you to search for name by gender, origin, meaning, initial letter, popularity … all kinds of stuff (just click on a letter or type of name and then click on the yellow “Refine Results” button).  You can also look for names with a theme (intelligence, strength).

It has a related site for surnames:

            http://surnames.behindthename.com/

For name popularity in the US, I also like to look at census data:

            http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/1990surnames/names_files.html

The danger, of course, is that I have so much fun looking at names that I don’t do any actual writing.  Time to get back to work!

Finished Draft

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I’ve been trying to write more regularly (goal is at least 100 words/day), and when I do that, I’ve noticed that I make a lot of fast progress because even when I’m not writing, I’m thinking more about what I’m writing.  This has paid off: I’ve just finished the first draft of a new story that I also started this year.  I think this is a record for me.