Hello, writers. Tomorrow is the last day of DaKoWriMo, so let us know how those goals are coming! We’ll do a final tally next week.
I’ve been trying to get started on a new writing project this week, but it seems the whole week has been taken up with what an author I know calls “the business of writing”. Dealing with website hosting, planning for a future event, figuring out why my royalty check is so much less than I expected, and of course taxes.
I bet Stephen King and J.K. Rowling have people for this stuff.
There was an interesting discussion in the comments last week about Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. For those who aren’t familiar, the book is about a guy who falls asleep in Boston in 1887 and wakes up in 2000 in Mr. Bellamy’s idea of a socialist utopia. The book was a fin de siécle sensation. A runaway bestseller. According to wikipedia it was outsold only by Ben Hur and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
But unlike those two books, it’s hardly ever read anymore. This is probably because, as some doughty writers pointed out last week, it’s pretty much unreadable. I had it with me in a cabin on the bleak and snowswept Alaskan tundra for six months and I couldn’t read it. Stultifying is the word that comes to mind.
The concept is one that’s been done much more interestingly since then, of course. Not just the idea of our time being seen from the future, but our time being seen from the past. Or our world being seen from another world
I forget the term for this, but a common ingredient in this type of story is that the point of view character(s) are the outsiders, seeing our world/time as something strange.
Of course, you want to do it carefully. If someone is seeing our world or time for the first time, what do they see? You can’t describe every single thing as if it were weird and outré. The characters will focus on some things in particular. It’s up to you to decide what those things are.
Below is the grey box for all the excellent DaKoWriMo goals. Please give me your latest progress updates.
bonetti: 30 revision tasks; 28 done
dconrad: 20,000 words; 6000 written.
Leo Orionis: Write ‘A New Viewpoint’. Almost done.
Mercy Ormont: Continue/finish Thirty-Nine Years on the Street memoir. Revised earlier writing and 3 more chapters written.
mettlefatigue: Find my WO stories that could go in OFPM. (5 stories found)
Mnemosyne: Finish NNWM 10k-word goal; 8500 written.
reppa: Continuing research on potential projects.
RiverOfTheWest: Complete revisions and illustrations of the history book; 1350 words, cover art & 8 illustrations.
strawbale: Write another alien story + the foreword to the collection. Finished story and foreword. 800 words into second story,
TASW: 50 pages of Callie and the Solicitresses.
Tonight’s challenge:
In the year 2130, a callow youth and his or her stout companion are planning a trip back to the year 2020. (It’s up to you to decide why they’re doing this.)
Show them getting ready to go. As they get ready, what are they worried about or excited about?
Try to limit yourself to 100 words. If you’re writing dialogue, try not to let any character speak more than 20 words at a time.
^ I don’t know why the grey boxes split in three, but I cannot reunite them for love nor money.
Write On! will be a regular Thursday feature (8 pm ET 5 pm PT) until it isn’t.