#writebet

[twotommyolivers]

Possibly the most important words ever said "With great power comes Great responsibility." Sadly, those who listen Are as fictional as the man who said it.

[twotommyolivers]

Time continues on Even though there is no prompt Long live the writebet

[twotommyolivers]

The Science of Writing

Likely posting this before writebet does, with annotations.

So I guess after 2 months of daily writing, I should figure out what I/we learned from the endeavor. One thing I may have personally found out is that if you spend most of your time working for a news blog, then that's probably going to affect your free writing. Had I not been pre-conditioned to think and look in terms of journalistic writing, then maybe I would have done more fiction writing. Another personal note is that I may be more of a sociopath than I care to admit.

On the macro level, however, there is one thing that we all found out together

Newton's First Law Simply put, inertia is one of the biggest forces in writing. This IIRC was the initial purpose of writebet to begin with. I can't speak for anyone else, but there were several days when I felt like writing not because I wanted to but, because there was some intrinsic need to because I did it the day before and the day before that, and so on. Once the chain of consecutive days writing ended, it seemed like things kind of fell apart. I know that's how my TV viewing behavior tends to work, and is why my girlfriend is watching all the toku and not me. As soon as I skipped a week or two, I had no compulsion to pick it back up. (This line of thinking is likely why I'm still watching Sailor Moon Crystal even though I'm still hard-pressed to find anything genuinely enjoyable.) As a corollary, laws of elasticity seem to hold up, too (no pun intended). That is, the more one is pushed to do something, the more one pushes back—again, a potential reason as to why this all broke down. Of course, as I look back to read this, I probably should be talking about coefficients of friction more than spring mechanics in order to keep up the metaphor, but it's the last day, so what are you gonna do?

However, all that said, not everything has been brought to a halt. Even though it looks like many of my stories have died on the vine, they ended up being fully fleshed out in my head, and it was enjoyable. It was fun figuring out how Shiori's “date” was going to happen and what would ensue, or knowing how Hakase would navigate The Strip. Plus, writebet overcame some inert stories I always wanted to do, but never started. I always enjoy Michiru being a bit of a shit to her lover. My toku RPG fires got reignited. Hell, I almost started to resume my dumb Kanadanger VS Gokaiger nonsense. While these didn't all come to full fruition on the page, they started growing again, and that was probably just as important.

An interesting note was that if we did make it to Day 100, we would've had about a two-week break before NaNoWriMo kicked in, which meant that if you dared, you would have been waist-deep in the writing process (either the planning or practice thereof) for nearly five full months, likely pouring out close to 100,000 words. That seems insane when you think about it, but considering all the momentum you would've built up from writebet, it doesn't seem as daunting. Even though it's formally over with, I've entertained the notion of keeping writebet going, which seems insane coming from me, who considered this whole thing as just a way to mark time. But then I look at the above paragraphs, and I look at all my work from the past two months. After so much already done, and so much that can potentially be done to come, why not continue? And I ask you the same question? With about 50 days until NaNo starts, why not continue to write, not just tomorrow or for 100 days, but until November 30?

Is that a bet you're willing to take?