Summertime Diversions

I’ve been struggling to complete two writing projects for two years.  They are both novel length but I haven’t been able to make much progress past the 40% mark.  A few months ago I began wondering if my struggle was more related to the content length and genre that I’d selected, since the stories as far as plot and outline are concerned, have been complete for over a year.  Perhaps novel isn’t the format that speaks to my writing style.  I’ve thought about converting them into short story compilations but that didn’t get very far.

Tired of guessing and wanting to do something demonstrative about this quandary, I decided to take a few writing seminars over the summer.   The idea is to take one of the stories and do it as a short story, screenplay and novel – beginnings of for the last two and see if I find a stronger affinity with one format more than the others.  Right off the bat, I know the style I can produce like breathing is essay form but I don’t have a desire to do more with that beyond blogging coherently. 

My goal was to find writing seminars that offered online AND instructor-led opportunities.  As a busy working adult, I’d take a bulk of the courses via distance learning then pick one or two to attend in person as a working vacation.  After doing a lot of research, I selected Gotham Writer’s Workshops.  They have a wide selection of offerings online, instructor-led AND long weekend type workshops.  Operating out of New York City, where I was born and raised, means that I can take a few seminars in person and visit family and friends while I’m there.  Perfect little working vacation of attending a writing seminar, seeing a Broadway show and staying with family, will work out wonderfully.  I’m VERY excited and looking forward to this summer’s writing projects being more fruitful than last year’s.

I’ve also decided that my digital photography hobby has been dormant for far too long.  I’ve yet to take advantage of living in Georgia where I have access to lush landscapes and flowers for many months, landscapes and portraits being my favorite subjects.  When I don't have subjects available for either of those then I'm prone to doing macro and abstracts.  I’m going to make a concerted effort to get out and shoot pictures this summer.

Comments

[Beau]

Good luck! I love writing, but a long time ago I told myself that I would never have the patience to write anything longer than a short story, so I write a lot of stories about my characters.

Nerdy? Of course. But it's a really great format: picking out a small adventure and filling in the blanks.

Post some stuff here for readin'.

Beau

[Sören]

Seems we all are quite too similiar. We play the same games, we have the same hobbies ;-)

I did some writing in a free internet based writing workshop, two years ago.

Photography became a common hobby since everyone with a cell phone can take part :-( Alas, I even didn't do much serious in the last time, mostly some "reporting" from roadster tours.

I guess that the pictures in the article are done by you? I like most the first one with the yellow/red contrast. The curvature of the flowers matches perfectly: is it a arranged set up or a luckily discovered natural formation?

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Beau - I will since two of them are scifi/fantasy.

@Soren - Yes, those are mine and the first two are staged meaning I setup up the shot. I think a good percentage of MMO players, especially those running around in themed virtual worlds are creative people so we'll have similar hobbies. It would be interesting to see the demographic of writers, musicians, artists, etc in the MMO player base.

[Sören]

I'm just realizing how much time I spend setting up the next fancy shot of my character applying the same rules as for real photography. Some days ago I had a great greenish sunset in Aslan, wonderful light. But before I found a good position around the great waterfall it was over and night arose.

About demographic research: I suppose there is some self-organizing mechanism in peoples interests. Like amazon: "people having this hobby did also enjoy that hobby". And woooosh: you have a cluster with identical behaviour.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Soren - Whew, that statement just got me off the crazy train. I also setup non-combat shots looking for composition in the picture. Now that I know I'm not alone, I feel a lot less crazy! LOL

For example these shots still stand out as favorites and I worked to get them as they are:

http://notadiary.typepad.com/photos/eq2_bbm/5_beach.html

http://notadiary.typepad.com/photos/zangermarsh_2/fen_3.html

http://notadiary.typepad.com/photos/zangermarsh_2/naga.html

http://notadiary.typepad.com/photos/eve_online_i/tunnel.html

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Beau - P.S. Why would you think writing stories about your characters as geeky?? SEVERAL of the bloggers on my blog role, myself included do that very same thing.

[Nef]

Writing about your characters is wonderful. And easy. I like the easy part.

As for the other writing -- I'm not too good at filling out word counts either. I'd look over the material, if the story flows well and is complete -- why not leave it as is? If there's some weak areas you may want to come up with some scenes to reinforce them. If there's some loose story threads look for ways to tie them up. Perhaps there's some room that could be filled with scenes that may not have anything to do with the central plot but help add more depth to the characters or setting? That's usually what I look for.

But, getting to spend some time in New York and going to seminars would be more fun... :)

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Nef - Because they're not fitting appropriately into the genre. It's much harder for an unpublished fiction author to be published with a manuscript that floats outside of the genre. Plus it feels like a struggle and I'm not sure it's supposed to 'feel' that way. So rather than continuing to second guess myself, I figured I'd do the workshops and see if it helps me decide one way or another.