Got a novel/play/screenplay in your head? Get it on paper! Here is the page count thread for hopeful and actual writers.

[wilbur]

Are you a writer in need of some motivation? Post here each day or whenever you can with your page count. Or post your hopes for how many pages you want to write each day and then come back and see if you managed them. Even if they are rubbish, at least you will have them down on paper and can make them brilliant at a later date.

I will start. I am hoping to write a second full-length screenplay before August 2008. I have two days a week where I have time to write my own stuff and I am aiming to do 5 pages on each of those days.

Yes, I did feel very rock and roll. Although less so when I realised the last time I had been at H'Smith Apollo was to see bear In The Big Blue House Live.

Good luck with animation series. What are you doing on it?

Ha ha ha about your Apollo realisation Wilbur!
I am script editing. Was going to be writing eps too but stood that down to leave some spare room for my thang.

Casualty and Rock and roll, it's all been happening here while I've been away.
Glad that the casualty wasn't serious in the end, Toots. And am v impressed with Mark Ronson, we only get tribute bands down here in the country - I haven't been to see anyone since I was pregnant.

And I can say nothing useful about how I got here; I have been writing this book for seven, count them, seven years. So about the only thing I have, I think, is sheer pig-headed persistance. I hardly wrote though, for eighteen months or more through pregnancy and the first year - and that has at least given me a bit of a distance on the book. Although that makes me realise just how much there is to do still. I am now writing like fury as I think we will start ttc'ing soon, and so I'd like to get something out to agents before my brain turns to slurry once more.

I've had a very up and down week with it too; sometimes I think it's worth the effort, and I would write every spare hour of the day, other times I despair. I'm used to working with lots of people, so find it hard carrying on with no one telling me it is any good, and having to sort out all the problems on my own. I just hope it's worth it. And at least it's preventing me from taking being a housewife too seriously.

'sorting out all the problems on my own' God yes. That is hard.

Although I do think despair is inevitable, with writing, sheer pig-headed persistance is key.

Hope you have a good day with it tomorrow, if you get a chance to write.

hello can I check in here?

working feebly on a novel. got 2hrs/night to work - after wrangling feisty 10m old to bed - but have noticed I don't seem able to work two nights running. Mind is just a blank on the 2nd night.

I'm going to set my sights low, like, 1/2 a page, that way I should usually make it and not get disappointed with myself

Okay I'm clocking off now.

I wrote 1/2 page which I realised I am now going to delete - but then wrote 1/2 a page of notes as to where I do want to go so feeling happy. AND I settled ds 3x

Settling babies whilst trying to write - oi vay! Well done on your notes. PhDlnanl.

Hi phd - welcome. Sounds like half a page a day is more than enough with a 10 month old! Well done for doing some notes - I'm going to be concentrating on that kind of thing for the next couple of weeks as well.

thanks for welcome

Will I be revealing my control-freaky perfectionist side too early if I check in again already?

Only I find it ever so, ahem, encouraging, to have a goal written down and people looking over my shoulder

woo-hoo, I wrote 1.5pp tonight and went back to last chapter and put in a few more lines to make this one make more sense. If that makes sense. Which I suspect I am not, so shall stop hogging your thread. 'Night.

No, do keep coming back and telling us all about it - it's an inspiration and a remnder, for me at least. Am very impressed that you are writing in the evenings, too, I don't seem to have any brain cells left after 7pm. So what are you writing? And are you doing it at the same time as a PhD. If so, my brain is about to implode in awe.

I am still proceeding doggedly through the revisions, although I have done a good thing in the last week, which is to sort out three bits of writing which needed to be added in, and which were blocking me. I've also gone through some kind of mental shift - which I will try to explain even if it makes no sense. I really wanted some help, someone to tell me that the revisions are OK, and asked a writer I know who's read a bit of it. But he's busy, in the throes of his own stuff. So I had a 24 hour downer, then just got on with it. And now I'm pleased, I feel as though I have set out on my own and it is going to be OK.

I may - when I'm about half way through the revisions, I think - have to start thinking about sending it out to agents. Gulp.

oh vonsudenfed, good on you - am quite terrified of prospect of ever trying to find agents. Am not writing while phd'ing, btw. it's long done

3 pages tonight. shattered. but quite happy

I find if I'm engaged (or have a deadline) I can manage an hour or so in the evening. But if I don't knock off by about 9, I have trouble winding down.

Managed another (trickyish) scene on Tuesday. My rule is if I've got down what people need to be doing and saying then I move on. It's just a first pass. I'll come back later and make it into a first draft. If I don't the forward momentum going and try and make everything perfect as I go then I can get stuck. I think this is a script thing though. All this fuss for 60 pages!

ha, that's funny toots - I polish a fair bit as I go - I have a tendency to plow ahead in a rush of enthusiasm and get characters doing/saying the wrong thing. Or write them into a dead-end iykwim. So I do lots of tweaking. Which is not to say that it won't still need lots of work after!

I think that is a script thing, toots, the need to simply have the information that is required for a scene down on paper and then tinker with it later. I'm sure it comes from scripts having a tighter structure than novels. I have several scenes in a half-finished screenplay that literally have a character walk in, say something like "I need to tell you that Fred is having an affair with Freda" and then walk out. They are simply place holders, reminding me that I want that scene there - my film school guy used to call it "on the nose" dialogue, and said sometimes it can be a way through a problem or block.

I work that way with the novel too at the moment - particularly if I don't have much time , I will sketch in the missing bit, or just put a sentence, and then come back when I know I will have a good stretch of time to concentrate on it. Sometimes its easier to write something from a few notes, too, rather than just facing a blank page. I've just done that this week - had two whole mornings to work (rather than just writing while dd naps) and so have sorted three bits that had to be created to fill gaps.

But when I'm writing from scratch - rather than revising - I hop about all over the place, writing lots of scenes just as they come into my head, with a rough sense of where they might happen, and then weaving them together at a later stage.

And at every stage, I have to keep in my head that this is rough, I can always just come back and make it better. Otherwise I become so paralysed with fear that I do nothing.

And I have, near as damn it, done 23,000 words. When I reach 35,000 words (i.e. half way) I am going to go back and revise the first four chapters and then think of sending them out.

There, if i write that down i might have to do it....

Vonsudenfed Just spotted your name and thought I'd say hello.

It is isn't it Wilbur? (just agreeing with your entire post as must go and make dinner)

I've realised am slightly dreading the next two scenes I've got to write. They've got several things kicking off in them and I worry about being able to write one of them in a credible way. Think 'on the nosing it' is the way to go for now, rather than thinking about how to re-work getting the info across, so that I can get past them. Then I will be onto page 2 of my 7 page outline and nearing the end of act 1 of 5.

It is isn't it Wilbur? (just agreeing with your entire post as must go and make dinner)

I've realised am slightly dreading the next two scenes I've got to write. They've got several things kicking off in them and I worry about being able to write one of them in a credible way. Think 'on the nosing it' is the way to go for now, rather than thinking about how to re-work getting the info across, so that I can get past them. Then I will be onto page 2 of my 7 page outline and nearing the end of act 1 of 5.

Well I've not done a thing this week on the creative writing front, apart from adding to my 'work' blog, which I don't think counts really......being as my work, has nothing to do with my writing at present but you're all keeping me inspired, so keep it up girls

oh and UQD who may hit me for calling him a girl.

Hi people. Have just started writing my first novel but I need some oomph to make sure I don't give up. I have been working the storyline in my head for some months so I know what I want to happen, and a couple of days ago jotted down a rough outline of it, and each chapter.
I went into overdrive and wrote my first two chapters (small ones though!) and now need to make sure I don't just stop like I have so many times before!

welcome aboard, VS

if you learn the secret to finishing a project, be sure and let me know won't you!

Have carved out some time this morning. Feeling clammy and my heart is beating in my mouth. Resistance. Don't want to do it. Got to do it. Going to do it. I will make one more coffee then I'm throwing myself in screaming and I'm not going to come up for air until 3pm. Anyone else?