Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[WillowLuman]

Something cuter and shorter. But not too cute. I was going to go with Tito but he's not Mexican.

[Xantalos]

Bob.
Frank.
George.
Georgie.

[Sirus]

No NaNo for me today. Super early morning to look forward to.

I get the feeling I'll be using that excuse a lot this year 

[Doomblade187]

Carl.

And yeah, my word count's about 10-ish, due to me having a total block on storyline, as well sudden uncertainty on what I want to write on. I have two starts already written, but I just need to go by this point. Missing tomorrow, though, so I'll be two days behind. Ah well.

[Caz]

I've read some good fanfic. Hard to find, sure, but not impossible.

[WillowLuman]

I must sleep as soon as these damn meds wear off. Quickly, a non-mexican equivalent of "Tito." I am seriously stumped.

[Xantalos]

Timmy.

[Darkmere]

Terry. Tommy. Todd. Titus. Tartarus. Benny. Benito. Ben. Benjamin. Billy.

[JanusTwoface]

2005 for day 1. It's kind of nice having just moved to Pacific time, gives me a few more hours to procrastinate. On the flip side, doing this on top of finishing my PhD and a full time job will be ... interesting.

Is anyone else planning on publicly posting their work? It's always interesting to read what others come up with. I'm thinking about blogging mine (see sig), although I'll wait until the first chapter is done before posting this time around. Daily updates are a pain.

[Aqizzar]

Spent all day doing jack squat.  Although I actually did quite a bit of writing this week (while at my job) it's for an unrelated project.

So far the TVTropes random plot generator hasn't given me anything very inspiring.

[Flying Dice]

Got a few hundred words written on a new idea. Looks like I'll be sticking with this one.

The thing is, fanfic isn't there to be good in the first place. It's a place to cut your teeth as a writer as you start your climb up the ladder. You learn how to start and finish a project. Or you learn that you can't hack it and stop writing forever. Sometimes that happens. Nevertheless, you get feedback for what you write many times, and even if it's not good, it gets you used to feedback. It's the kiddie pool area of writing. It's to be used for experience. Thus it doesn't really matter if it's crap or not. It's the stage where it's supposed to be crap as a learning thing.

[/opinions]

That's a pretty recent view, and I think it has a lot to do with some sort of bizarre combination of a misunderstanding of Sturgeon's Revelation, of the reason people write and read fanfiction, and a general unfamiliarity with the subject. I'll grant, certainly, that there is a massive sea of shit, and that it's much more obvious than in other media (particularly those that require investments of time/money). Due to the nature of the beast, it's also damned difficult to sift out genuinely good stuff. That said, though, I've spent probably upwards of 30 hours simply searching for good stories, and I've found a solid core of perhaps 20-30 that are both within my range of interest (more than a few coming from places I didn't expect, and good enough to interest me in the source material; on an unrelated note, there's a broader pool of perhaps as many as 100 stories which, while not publishable, show enough ability that they easily could be with proper editorial assistance) and above professional standards--mind, too, that "professional" writing can be surprisingly terrible, even from respected, published authors.

It's also true that a lot of younger writers these days use it as a jumping-off point (though most don't get beyond the point of "how do i into plot" or "no dun flame pls"), but that is neither the origin nor the heart of the medium. I know of at least three or four active fanfiction authors who are also published novelists in their own right. This is all fairly off topic, however, so I'll cut myself off short.

[Darkmere]

Stopping point for the first full day is 2360 words, at a spot where I'm eager to jump back in tomorrow. Things are shaping up pretty well; I have a few setups for great payoffs later on (I also setup the last line of the novel in the prologue), and I'm getting closer to the fun parts of the book I really look forward to writing. Huzzah!

[shadenight123]

Mind you, concerning the fanfiction argument, I know there's a hell of a lot of horrible things out there that would make your skin crawl and yourself die in a corner of agonizing torment while muttering 'Why? Why god, why do you let this live?'
At the same time, I wouldn't be able to write half as decently as I do now without having used Fanfiction as a starting point. The only real working tip for anyone wishing to become a writer is to 'write and write'.
So yes, I agree, it doesn't take much to write a 'shitty' story.
Still, better a completed shitty story than no story at all.
Because along the way people will comment on it, which is something you won't normally have. People will say if the story is good or not, if there are some points of the plot that are agonizingly horrible or good and that kind of feedback is the type you'd normally find in those literary clubs where you have to stand up and speak your own point of view.
Only, with the internet and fanfiction, you have something like a pool of at least a good thousand hundreds of potential reviewers. That then translates in reviewers for at least a good ten-to twelve per chapter, and in those ten to twelve reviews, the majority will be about 'please update soon' or 'great story!' but one, or two, will be constructive criticism.

"You should use less commas and more periods." "Careful when you make a spoken sentence, because if you finish it with the comma," the reviewer said, "you don't need to put the T of the as a capital letter."
And so on. Yes, fanfiction is a kiddie pool, but it's way better to start in a kiddie pool then start to swim in the ocean, rather than fly down a cliff and smash against the rocks below.

(Btw, I'm Italian. So it's twice as hard for me to write grammatically correct sentences in English...but I try all the same.)
I know I'm far from perfect or even good...but I'll get there. Word after word that I spew I will get there. Writing fanfiction if I have to.
So don't offend the genre. Offend the thirteen year old with hormonal imbalances that suddenly found it interesting to write a story of Harems because they'll never have one in their lives.

[Gentlefish]

...English isn't your first language?

You type better than half of my family 

Spoiler: Excerpt from my Wri'Mo' (click to show/hide)

   Another movement in the same place. *What's...* I look over again. And again, my shadow. The kid next to me's asleep, leaning back in his chair. I sigh. *Must just be tired.* I go to look at my iPod and I notice - *huh?* - the iPod's shadow's as if it's been set down on the table. I look back up at my shadow. Still the same position, but... I move my hand holding the iPod and the proper hand moves to the same place, but it's as if it's just mirroring my movements sans iPod. *I can even see where it's missing. Huh.* I think to myself. I laugh.
       *I need more sleep.*I shake my head and close my eyes, set my iPod down, and give them a good hearty rubbing with my hands. *There. Everything better.* I think as I pick up my iPod and check that everything is normal. It is. I start to go back to tetris but I notice the time instead. five minutes until we're out. *Guess I can tune in.*

[Digital Hellhound]

After 2182 words today so far, I'm taking my break. I intend to double it at the very least by the end of the day. I've soldiered on through such obstacles as distracting people, reading about the myriad roles of naval personnel, and overt homoeroticism.