Re: Writing advice (was: 'Topic Sentences')

In article <1h4w0d5.174fvgpkl0ugwN%usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Catja Pafort <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Lucy wrote:
>
>> That's sort of the opposite of psychoanalyzing, though.
>>
>> Here's the advice in other words: stop worrying, just write a million
>> words.
>
>
>And then you look at your million words and wail 'this is all crap'?

And then you say, "Oh, good, I've written out my million words of
crap!"
>
>
>I'm trying out a new strategy right now - the blank *** rewrite.

So am I --- the zillion little Post-Its with plot elements on
them. Necessary, because I have exactly seventeen* chapters to
fill out, and I don't want to be caught either long or short in
mid-December. I don't have a dining room table so I stuck them
on the back of a tray.

And discovered about I was about two chapters' worth of plot
elements short. So I asked my son for suggestions and he said,
"Oh, you haven't dealt with these guys and those guys and the
other guys yet;" and after eliminating a few guys who can really
be left alone to live their own lives and determining that my
heroes don't have to kill off another bunch (really nasties,
nobody can think of a good word to say for them) because they can
succumb to an extant plague, I had enough material to fill up
the back of the tray.

_____
*Having nothing to do with the works of Brust or the contrade of
Siena; there were seventeen weeks left from the time they
announced AC2 was going to shut down, till the end of the year
when they do it.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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