I now have a deadline for getting this novel done.

[clocketpatch]

This must be shared with the other writers on the Flist: http://terrypratchett.co.uk/news%5Ctermsandconditions.html

Here's to December!

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

8-O Clocket, I every faith in you & your wonderful, vivid and off-beat style, but at least 80,000 words you're prepared to submit to actual peoples by December 2010?!!!?

I wish you the best of luck now, because if you really do, we'll never see you in the interim... :-D I'm not sure anyone else will, either.

[clocketpatch]

Ah, sanity does have to kick in at some point (I know I can't actually beat the deadline, shhhhh). But it des give me sometime to work towards which will hopefully keep me on track rather than wandering off into distract-o land.

(also, everything I write is YA and the competition is for adult fiction. Still, shhhhh!!)

[thisbluespirit]

:-D Good thinking!

Aw, and I did wonder about that, too, cos that was what I thought. Mind you, if you don't tell adults that, they won't notice. :lol:

[clocketpatch]

It's quite true you know. I'm just reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman. The main character is 17 but it's adult marketed as far as I can tell.

Your icon is quite adorable.

[thisbluespirit]

:-) Yep. As long as nobody says, they'll never work it out. It's completely true!

Aw, thanks so much - it's one I made. :-D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, best of luck! That is some serious wordage though, and a tight deadline. If I'd found about this in June when it was first announced I would have been sorely tempted myself... Maybe it'll run again next year? But yeah, best of luck, and if I hear nothing from you whatsoever between now and Xmas I will know why! ;D

[clocketpatch]

The odds against it being finished by then are quite seriously high (especially given that I'm quite possibly the slowest writer in the history of the Internets) but still, f you can all prod me then maybe I can actually get something written. Even if it isn't in time for the deadline, I'm quite content to use this as my motivator. Yesss....

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

This is true - deadlines concentrate the mind wonderfully, or something like that. I will prod you and you can prod me back and... O.o

[pitry.livejournal.com]

G'luck Clocket!

And I must say, as someone who's been working on an idea for something original...
"This competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over who is a resident of the UK, other countries of the British Commonwealth, and the Republic of Ireland"

Damn you, British Mandate!
:( :( :(

[clocketpatch]

There are times when I am so glad to have the queen on our coins...

*huggles*

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Heehee. Yeah. *looks for that online petition to bring the British Mandate back* ;)

at any rate, good luck with it! Deadlines really are great motivations, aren't they? (Even if they're impossible to hold).

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I saw that when it was first announced - but I knew I couldn't meet the deadline...

Good luck with your attempt!

[clocketpatch]

In the back of my mind I don't really think I can meet it either, but you know what, hell with it, motivation is motivation. If I can keep up a 2000 word-a-day pace then... (okay, this is never going to happen in a million years. Especially not if I get this school business worked out. But I want to dream! lol)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Dreaming is good!!

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

*is American* :-(

*cannot write an 80,000-word story anyway* (I've never even written a 4,000-word story!)

(Heck, the longest original fic I've ever written was, um, 1533 words. For a contest with a minimum requirement of 1500. lol!)

[clocketpatch]

I think the longest story I've ever written is... 60,000 words? It was realllly bad though. It involved dragons and castles and terrible abuses of the English language.

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy just to have come up with enough plot to cover that many words, however thinly. My stories tend to come in 1500-word chunks, or fractions thereof - single scenes, almost all of them.

(Also I'm lazy. I think of more scenes, but they'd need research or lots of rewriting or something, so I only write the climactic scene and tuck everything else in as backstory.)

[clocketpatch]

You know, they say it's harder to write short than it is to write long right? And tucking enough detail into a single scene, so that the reader can imagine the rest of the scenes, even if they haven't been written, is a talent all on its own.