The Great 2014 Writing Thread

[Luckymoose]

After the success of our NaNoWriMo thread, there were brief discussions on doing writing challenges or just keeping in touch. A new year is the perfect chance to start a thread for those purposes. This thread can serve as our go-to writing thread, for anyone on CFC that writes, to update, share, challenge, or discuss writing with one another.

As it is a new year, I have made a resolution to top my previous two years in word count. I seem to hit a hundred thousand words a year in fiction, generally, since 2012, and I want to double that. If any of you have writing goals for the year, month, etc. keep me informed. I will update the original post.

@Valka: I know you wanted to do challenges of some sort, and if you still wish to do that you may use this thread for that.

Writing Goals for 2014:

CivCube: 0/25,000 (nonfiction essays and reviews)
Daird: 0/70,000 (old school sword and sorcery!)
Luckymoose: 128,000/200,000 (stories, novels, whatever)
North King: 60,000/100,000 (single story unrelated to his NES)
Terrance: 0/200,000 (misc. NESing)
cybrxkhan: ~30-40,000 (various projects)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

After the success of our NaNoWriMo thread, there were brief discussions on doing writing challenges or just keeping in touch. A new year is the perfect chance to start a thread for those purposes. This thread can serve as our go-to writing thread, for anyone on CFC that writes, to update, share, challenge, or discuss writing with one another.

As it is a new year, I have made a resolution to top my previous two years in word count. I seem to hit a hundred thousand words a year in fiction, generally, since 2012, and I want to double that. If any of you have writing goals for the year, month, etc. keep me informed. I will update the original post.

@Valka: I know you wanted to do challenges of some sort, and if you still wish to do that you may use this thread for that.

Writing Goals for 2014:

Luckymoose: 0/200,000 (currently writing: epic fantasy novel and short stories)

Thank you, but the requirements of Iron Pen will necessitate its own thread. I've got RL crap going on for the next couple of weeks, but hopefully after that we can get going.

I'm interested in hearing about any other challenges or projects people might want to tackle. For example, I've got a bunch of "how-to" books (the Write Great Fiction series) that has a number of interesting exercises we could do as a group learning experience.

 

[CivCube]

I'll have to think about this. If I were to start writing seriously (something I've considered for a while), I'd likely do nonfiction essays and reviews.

 

[Kyriakos]

200k words? Hm, that is a tall order. The last part of my diary (from september 2010-now) is around 163K words, and (in my set-up) 670 pages.
But it should be noted that i barely keep a diary for the last 1 1/2 years, apart from noting down what was written when and what was published where/when. Prior to that, beginning in 2005, the diary must have at least 6K pages (other set-up with far more words per page used back then). So 200K words in a year is doable, yes, but in pure fiction it may be quite difficult. I don't have 6-7K pages in actual fiction, more like 1K at best.

 

[Wrymouth3]

200k words? Hm, that is a tall order. The last part of my diary (from september 2010-now) is around 163K words, and (in my set-up) 670 pages.
But it should be noted that i barely keep a diary for the last 1 1/2 years, apart from noting down what was written when and what was published where/when. Prior to that, beginning in 2005, the diary must have at least 6K pages (other set-up with far more words per page used back then). So 200K words in a year is doable, yes, but in pure fiction it may be quite difficult. I don't have 6-7K pages in actual fiction, more like 1K at best.

A lot of us unpublished plebians love to write fun trashy literature.

 

[Luckymoose]

Thank you, but the requirements of Iron Pen will necessitate its own thread. I've got RL crap going on for the next couple of weeks, but hopefully after that we can get going.

I'm interested in hearing about any other challenges or projects people might want to tackle. For example, I've got a bunch of "how-to" books (the Write Great Fiction series) that has a number of interesting exercises we could do as a group learning experience.

I'd like to hear about it. This thread doesn't have to be used for specific challenges, but more as a general thread to talk about writing, challenge one another, support one another, etc.

I'll have to think about this. If I were to start writing seriously (something I've considered for a while), I'd likely do nonfiction essays and reviews.

I wouldn't be opposed to that. Nonfiction is still writing, and this thread is for all writers. I set my own fiction writing goals, because I do tens of thousands in nonfiction as my "job." No one has to match my goals. I will update the OP with whatever goals you wish to set for yourself. This thread will serve as motivation to better yourself through hard work.

200k words? Hm, that is a tall order. The last part of my diary (from september 2010-now) is around 163K words, and (in my set-up) 670 pages.
But it should be noted that i barely keep a diary for the last 1 1/2 years, apart from noting down what was written when and what was published where/when. Prior to that, beginning in 2005, the diary must have at least 6K pages (other set-up with far more words per page used back then). So 200K words in a year is doable, yes, but in pure fiction it may be quite difficult. I don't have 6-7K pages in actual fiction, more like 1K at best.

I did 50k in 37 hours of butt in chair writing time in November. I believe I can do 200k in a year.

 

[CivCube]

I wouldn't be opposed to that. Nonfiction is still writing, and this thread is for all writers. I set my own fiction writing goals, because I do tens of thousands in nonfiction as my "job." No one has to match my goals. I will update the OP with whatever goals you wish to set for yourself. This thread will serve as motivation to better yourself through hard work.

I'll set a modest goal, then: 25,000 words. Once/if I hit that then I'll keep going.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Over the past couple of years I started to write down the basics of a fantasy setting. So far I only got to just less than 36,000 words. I guess it didn't matter, as I was doing it wrong, and it's all terrible. There are other ideas that I started to write down, as I can't do anything else with them at the moment.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I did 50k in 37 hours of butt in chair writing time in November. I believe I can do 200k in a year.

You can do 200k in a little over six days. As long as you can keep yourself awake!

 

[North King]

Let's set a goal of 100,000 fiction words of one, coherent story (unrelated to my NES). My problem has never really been volume, but of sustaining a single piece.

 

[Luckymoose]

You can do 200k in a little over six days. As long as you can keep yourself awake!

Nah, I can't. I can only write for so many hours in a day before I poop out. My word count poop out zone is about 5,000 in a sitting. So that would be about 40 days worth, if I chose to write that much. But I'll end up writing maybe an hour here or there over the course of many months to reach the goal.

 

[Terrance888]

I'll be setting up three goals up in the hood.

I'm planning for 10 updates for SilliNES. (About 50k Words)
I'm planning to write at least 1 Short Story/Article a month, or 12 Story/Articles a year. These must be on my own intiative, and NOT related to NESing. Cracked Articles would count to this total. (About 25k Words)
I'm also planning to participate in a bunch of NESes. (125k Total in Orders and Stories, no Diplo)

So give me a 200k Total Goal, with more when we reach TerraNES. 200k Sounds good for now.

 

[Angst]

I'll probably join if I can do this in character count. A simple 30,000 should do 'till February. I'm going to submit an application for a prestigious writing class.

 

[Dachs]

I plan to write several fanfiction works of varying length under other accounts on other sites, just like last year.

Also, I might eventually finish revising the Eurasian War timeline. Again.

Neither one of those is a wordcount goal, but...well.

 

[JohannaK]

I may swing back from stinking crap, also known as poetry, to regular crap, also known as prose. (Note that these nouns and adjectives are a measure of the value of my own writing, not the relative value of a kind of text universally).

If I manage to get more than 5,000 words out of a single piece it will be some kind of miracle.

 

[Evie]

I'll be editing my NaNoWriMo novel. My goal is to actually have a first beta version before the summer.

No real point to setting an actual wordcount goal for that.

 

[Terrance888]

I wrote 3884 words total since Jan 1 in stories and orders, primarily ImmacuNES.

My current count should be 3884/200,000

If I continue this for 52 weeks, I should have 201,968 words.

 

[CivCube]

I may swing back from stinking crap, also known as poetry, to regular crap, also known as prose. (Note that these nouns and adjectives are a measure of the value of my own writing, not the relative value of a kind of text universally).

If I manage to get more than 5,000 words out of a single piece it will be some kind of miracle.

It's okay. I know you didn't offend me intentionally.

 

[Daird]

I've had an old-school sword-and-sorcery bouncing around in my head through various incarnations for a decade. Think it's time to lay down some type. I think 70K is a good goal, and in a week or two I'll post the prologue and see what you guys think. If I get good reviews, I might even serialize the whole thing here.

Edit: I posted the prologue, and reviews were far from glowing. Scratch the serial.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

For those who expressed interest in Iron Pen, I've got a thread posted for that now.

If you'd like to participate, I ask that you read my posts in that thread, then PM me so I can add you to the list of competitors. It would be great if we could have the first challenge sometime this month.