Hey all you writers... (1 Viewer)

esart

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Just wondering what ya'll are working on? Sharing is caring, after all.

I've been working on a book for the last couple of years of creative non-fiction, I suppose it is my memoirs, even though I do not like that particular description. I don't like autobiography either, but that's what it tiz.

I'm only a quarter way through it and only just recently organized the flow of it all, so it's been coming along faster in the last few months.

I thought I would start a thread about what we all might be working on and maybe discuss it. Maybe it's a dumb thread, or maybe it's brilliant! What do I know?
 
I have a screen play done about a writer who loses his girl to a young musician then plots to frame the musician for her death and his (the writers) suicide
The writer is also working on a story about a terminally ill writer who's last wish is to make love while the train approaches. . What can I say I'm a Kurasawa fan.
Some I like. Some sucks big time-and there are not a lot of screen plays being requested from nowhere southern Ontario unless you have a puck in the story.
This thread could have some real balls if you a start putting end dates to projects began.
 
I'm mostly working on poems the way I always do, which is 80% edit/re-write and 20% new stuff. An idea for a chapbook struck me this week and I've started mentally "assembling" it. It will be based on a series of people I've met in Chicago and then lost touch with - one poem per person. The thing is, I also have the cover photo in mind but I need the permission of the artist. We get along fine and I'm pretty sure she'll ok it, but I've become fixated on this damn photo ! It's almost like if she were to deny permission, I'd want to scrap the whole thing. Immature of me, I know.... But that photo would be so fucking perfect.

Anybody else ever have a detail like this looming over one of your projects ?
 
Dividing time between poems, short story rewrites, and a smattering of novella-type projects. I'm having as much fun writing as maybe I've ever had. I'm digging it.

esart: if you're committed to it being non-fiction but don't want those labels, you could go with a kind of Gonzo journalism type thing. Or, just call it fiction, and make up stuff for the boring parts!

Number6Horse - As for details: I've often been derailed because I couldn't think of a name for the character(s). Might be why some of them never get names!
 
Hosh - It's true I can do that, but after much hemming and hawing over it, and consulting with MJP, the best thing about my story is that it's all true, so I'm not going to make nuthin up. I like "creative non-fiction" the best of all the labels, so I'll just keep it there. There are not many boring parts really, that would just be in the writing style if I don't fulfill my role as the writer. That's the only part I worry about really.

I was just reading this article about writing a proposal when I'm ready, and it seems pretty fucking daunting.
 
Anybody else ever have a detail like this looming over one of your projects ?

Yeah, like the title! I obsess over titles of art shows as well. Sometimes for weeks. For this book, I think I might have some kind of a nervous breakdown this time. It feels like it needs to be the most important element of the entire project. I mean, isn't it???
 
Titles are easy.

Unbreakable disaster tools rattling in the bed of a rusty pickup
Creased lips upon cold steel and your heart, dead as a raccoon in a snowstorm
Incredible banjo resilience balm infecting trees nationwide, arborists leap from bridges
Broken tooth upon the rim of a glass without a net, FTW

I too am working on a memoir, which sounds so god damn precious. I want to punch myself in the nose. It is the story of an unsuccessful musician, me, back in ye olden tymes. The awesome title is, A passport and a clean pair of socks. It is either 95% done or 50% done, depending on my mood when I look at it.

It will be a Nobel Prize winning book, and you fuckers will all want a piece of me when I'm riding high. But I'll remember. I'll remember who was with me and who was against me.

And 1.5 million dollars only goes so far, so no loans. Please don't ask.
 
mjp: I think you ought to call your memoir "Dead As A Raccoon", but what do I know? I would read that book (and not because of that great title.)

I'm working on a new novel, my umpteenth, called Stella Vero. I began it last December, after reading 20 pages of my old manuscript for Death At The Flea Circus, and saying to myself "Oh! that's how I can make the new novel work!" It was an idea I'd been kicking around for about five years, no actually it was two ideas, and they suddenly joined and I saw how to approach it, using techniques I used in Flea Circus and then forgot I could do. It's like I needed someone to give me permission to do whatever I wanted to with the book, and then I suddenly realized I could give myself that permission. Dumb, I know, but that's how it happened. The working title was "The Snake Mother, Naked At Last", but I dropped that title, as much as I love it, in favor of just using the name of the main character, who is not present in the book, Stella Vero. It's coming along nicely. I have about 90 pages. No due date. I'm in no hurry because I learned from Flea Circus that proofreading is hard work, and I'd rather put that off a while. The writing is the easy part. You just put one word after another, followed by a third. It's that easy, like walking, except you have to think about it, but not too much -- that just makes you freeze up.
 
i'm still "working" on this thing i wanted to write about alphabets and letters and collecting books that make a big deal about alphabets and letters. by "working," i mean i wrote one chapter of it in january and haven't gotten around to doing anything more since then - but i have a lot of notes about what i want to write if i ever get to it.
 
Carol - Daunting yes, but I'd say the Overview section looks like the most nauseating. "Start the overview with an anecdote that draws the reader in".... gee, that doesn't have greasy sales pitch or political campaign promise written all over it, does it ? Even though a book proposal actually is a sales pitch, my gut tells me try something besides an opening anecdote. It seems like a technique that editors might see too much of and dismiss ? But I have no alternatives to suggest or much of a track record myself either, so there you go.

Titles screw me up too. But leaving poems or artistic works untitled - wait, make that (untitled) - feels pretty douchebaggy to me also.
 
Speaking of which, Richmond's repetitive "Gagaku" titles worked for me because the poems themselves were repetitive, in an interesting way, as variations of a theme.

I usually don't title poems when I write them, especially short notebook poems, and only get around to it when I type them up for submitting. Fiction I usually have a title for from the start, although sometimes it will change mid-writing.
 
number6horse: All I know is that eventually I have to write something that will have to draw in a publisher and/or an agent and make them think it's the greatest thing since sliced cheese, or bread, or something wonderful that has been sliced before, or packaged or invented for everyone's delight. Or something that has never been out there before. I'm pretty sure my story is unique... I know there are a lot of stories out there that have a similar theme in terms of overcoming rape and childhood abuse, but sprinkle in the art world and touring the US as a musician, along with my sexual escapades and 15 years in a cult, some celebrities, multiple sclerosis, mental illness, and a cross-dressing-crack-addict-turned-Christan brother and the death of my parents in the same year, I feel like I have some semblance of something.
 
The beestung lips of a Barstow chambermaid
Six beekepers on a train to Vladivostok considering what could have been
The venomous sting of your betrayal and subsequent "mysterious" disappearance

I'm working on all three of those right now. 1,000 pages each, minimum.
 
HoneyComb-Over: The Bees are Receding
Fucking the Birds: A Bees Guide to Sexual Enlightenment


My god, if and when I publish this, the title is probably going to be such a let down after everyones humorous offerings.
 
My photographer friend says she no longer has a suitable copy of that photo for my cover. She's looking around the city for brand new shots and ideas, and I'm confident she'll find one better than the last. The poems are shaping up nicely - just a bit of nips and tucks left. I found a DIY chapbook site with easy-to-follow instructions on assembling and sewing. Ready to shop for paper/cardstock pretty soon. Starting to get excited.....
 
If you just keep hitting it and make small progress each time, things build. No need to be in a hurry writing a book.
 
I thought I would start a thread about what we all might be working on and maybe discuss it.
Wow, another thread that is letting me post, without an invitation. I was wondering if people "wrote" on these forums :) Before I type to much more, I better make this statement is true. :)
 
Who pays writers? is part of the Scratch magazine site. It collects and reports anonymous information from writers about how much publications and websites have paid them.

Interesting stuff if you're one of them writer types. So is the magazine. Its focus is on making a living as a writer, and they get pretty specific about earnings in a lot of the articles.

Scratch
is a subscription site if you want to read the articles ($20 a year), but "Who pays writers?" is free to peruse.
 
I don't think I have ever been paid more than $100 for a whole article. For the most part, I write for free. Then again, I am not a writer.
 
I thought I would revive this thread from the dead because I just finished the first full draft of my book (my memoir). It only took six years. The "first pass" took six years and then the first true draft took less than a month -- full time of course. That happened today, so I thought I would post the good news.

Just a few more versions to go now and I'll be ready to send it to my editor! Woohoo!
 

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