I think I screwed myself up
When I first challenged myself to write from prompts I went looking around LJ and copied down the prompt lists from drabble comms. But I was almost never able to keep my word count near "drabblish" lengths. But since I wasn't joining the community or participating in the challenges it didn't concern me. I just needed something to spark my imagination.
With a few prompts I found I made a concerted effort to keep the word count under 1000. It worked okay for the first 2 but the third took off on it's own. I was still having issues when I started doing landcomms and the writers30days . Most of the challenges had a minimum word count of 100 words. And I noticed most participants kept their counts near the minimum. Makes sense especially if you have a lot of smaller stories to write. Me... not so much. My first attempt at writers30days was a failure partly because I refused to adhere to a word count limit (self-imposed). I only finished 4 stories out of 15 but my word count total was 14k, lol.
But when the 2nd round started of that I got inspired and set out to keep my word count under 500 for each story. I mostly succeeded (I think 2 went over that limit by a few words). Since then I've had a much easier time plotting out stories to keep them under 1000 words.
My problem, though, is now I have several challenges that require much bigger word counts as their minimum. het_bigbang is 25k, hc_bingo has a ton of prompts with 500 word minimums on each story (minimum of writing 5 stories to finish the challenge), sg1friendathon only has a 1k minimum but my prompt is about the end of the world and I can't see fitting that into 1000 words, and now I get a challenge in fictionland to use a prompt table (a la writers30days) with each story having a minimum of 1k words (so grand total of 15k words). I saw that and nearly freaked out. Then I saw it's not due until August and calmed down some.
Funny thing is I actually suggested a longer challenge because I always like writing longer fics. It wasn't until that moment that I realized I broke myself by learning to write shorter fics. Now all my story ideas come truncated to fit under 1000 words and I can't figure out how to get out of that habit and learn to think bigger. And longer.
Busy, busy, busy. Which is what I wanted. Just still trying to figure out the logistics of it and keeping up a house and dealing with 5 kids and a husband every day.
Right now I'm wishing for a nice comfy lawn chair so I can go out in the sun and write. We have some seats out there but they are old and the "waterproof" cushions aren't so waterproof anymore as the kids found out (wet butts!).
With a few prompts I found I made a concerted effort to keep the word count under 1000. It worked okay for the first 2 but the third took off on it's own. I was still having issues when I started doing landcomms and the writers30days . Most of the challenges had a minimum word count of 100 words. And I noticed most participants kept their counts near the minimum. Makes sense especially if you have a lot of smaller stories to write. Me... not so much. My first attempt at writers30days was a failure partly because I refused to adhere to a word count limit (self-imposed). I only finished 4 stories out of 15 but my word count total was 14k, lol.
But when the 2nd round started of that I got inspired and set out to keep my word count under 500 for each story. I mostly succeeded (I think 2 went over that limit by a few words). Since then I've had a much easier time plotting out stories to keep them under 1000 words.
My problem, though, is now I have several challenges that require much bigger word counts as their minimum. het_bigbang is 25k, hc_bingo has a ton of prompts with 500 word minimums on each story (minimum of writing 5 stories to finish the challenge), sg1friendathon only has a 1k minimum but my prompt is about the end of the world and I can't see fitting that into 1000 words, and now I get a challenge in fictionland to use a prompt table (a la writers30days) with each story having a minimum of 1k words (so grand total of 15k words). I saw that and nearly freaked out. Then I saw it's not due until August and calmed down some.
Funny thing is I actually suggested a longer challenge because I always like writing longer fics. It wasn't until that moment that I realized I broke myself by learning to write shorter fics. Now all my story ideas come truncated to fit under 1000 words and I can't figure out how to get out of that habit and learn to think bigger. And longer.
Busy, busy, busy. Which is what I wanted. Just still trying to figure out the logistics of it and keeping up a house and dealing with 5 kids and a husband every day.
Right now I'm wishing for a nice comfy lawn chair so I can go out in the sun and write. We have some seats out there but they are old and the "waterproof" cushions aren't so waterproof anymore as the kids found out (wet butts!).