Blogging – Page 86 – Linda Nelson

I don’t know about you, but writing has been something I have always wanted to do. Way back when I was in grade school I toyed around with writing stories. It was a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon when you weren’t allowed to go outside to play.

Back then, we didn’t have internet, or video games. I don’t even think Pong was around yet. The TVs were in color and Black and White. In fact, I do remember that our Channel 9, WMUR, was the last channel to switch to color in 1973. Can you imagine that? Watching Black and White TV?

Look at how far we have come in the past forty years with technology. Back in the 70’s, cellphones were just a dream, as was Skype. The internet was something from a sci-fi novel.

Original image via Bing Creative Commons, courtesy of television-news.wikispaces.com

All those shows from the 70’s are now classics. They were fantastic shows too. Down to earth, with clean comedy humor. Take All in the Family for one, Archie Bunker will live on with his attitudes and mannerism.

Then we had our cop show – Adam 12. I still think I remember seeing a couple of those episodes in Black and White.

Bewitched was another show that aired originally in Black and White.

There were so many marvelous classic shows way back then. You can jog your memory by visiting http://classic-tv.com/70s-shows/

So now we have the internet and too many video games and not enough outside time for our kids growing up in today’s world. What ever happened to using your imagination and dreaming up stories and play acting them out with your friends?

Gone…

But you can still view those good old shows on the internet.

Original image via Bing Creative Commons, courtesy of jobike.it

I like Idioms. I always have. Before now I honestly never gave them much thought and never quite noticed how they can be difficult for a person not from our country to understand them. Some of them, if you took them word for word you would be left wondering, what’s that supposed to mean?

Have you ever twisted them up?

I’m a NCIS fan. I miss seeing Zeva David on the show. She used to mess up the idioms we use all the time in our country. Some might find it annoying, but I always got a big kick out of it. In fact, I like this more than Tony’s constant quotes of movies. These are quirks of character that I have found myself paying attention to more and more since I have begun writing. Some of the best character quarks can be found in the weekly TV series we watch.

For example, Zeva tried to use the haystack idiom. It didn’t come out quite right. This is an example of what she might have come up with; the cat lost its tongue?

When I want to add a little bit of humor to my stories, I try to switch up idioms with my characters. I believe I did this more so in Witch Book than any of my other stories.

In the future, I will be attempting to do this even more.

ROW80 Check in:

Kait is calling for us to look at our goals once again and adjust them if need be.

I think my goals are going to stay somewhat the same.

I need to write as much as possible. It does not matter as to whether it is my blog posts or my work in progress, just as long I am working on something that has to do with writing.

I’m not making word count goals this time around. Instead, I want to make writing time goals as in 90 minutes a day. This can be either plotting, writing, researching, or editing. My words per minute, when it comes to typing, has gotten pretty high since I began in 2010. So, if I’m spending the right amount of time working on the work in progress, I’m sure my word count will reflect this.

I will log my word count on my blog counter once a week instead of daily. This is so I will stop focusing on word count and more on the actual doing of the writing. I’m hoping for a longer novel this time around that will be slightly influenced by The Game of Thrones. Why?

Because I like how in that story, everyone wants something, they all have some sort of secret, and I want to use the secrets and wants for the coming book. Enough! I can’t tell you anymore, or it will spoil the story, besides the part where I will be trying to get most of the cast in this book, even if it is in the mode of a guest appearance.

As you can tell, the plot is pretty much set in motion. I have my inciting incident that has carried over from Witch Book and Aaron and Keja. I even made a rough draft of a map to help me out.

Witch Book was written in 90 days as a first draft. It had a strong plot outline for me to follow. This is one of the most crucial things I need to have in order to write fast.

What about you? How do you go about your writing? Do you plot or punster? Do you use maps or charts? Cast outline or Character sheets or both?

Please share, I’d love to hear about your writing habits.

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