Chapter Three
Practice, Junk-Write, and Publish (And the Fine Lines Between)
Achieving Elysium
Gods, I am so mad. You have no idea how mad I am. Why? I had written a whole 3/4 of a chapter, for a whole hour, and whoop de doo, it crashes. And I lost my work. Okay, onto the subject. Again.
The first step to writing is to practice. By practice, I don't mean just doing school assignments and publishing stuff on FanFiction. I actually mean practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. I know you've probably heard that word a billion time, (so have I) so it doesn't hurt to hear it a billion and four times. Probably more. What I mean by practice, is just write. It doesn't have to be on any certain subject, like Percy Jackson, and it doesn't have to be fan writing. All you need to do is write. It can even be something as small as a paragraph. It can't be a sentence; that is not practicing. Sometimes it doesn't take more than ten to twenty minutes a week for a good practice. It doesn't have to be on paper, either, 30% of my time, I sit in a car or seat (somewhere boring with extra time and no electronics) , and I stare at the wall and write in my head. I usually forget it at the mention of more exciting things, (food) but I've at least managed to write something. I've managed to practice. Of course, you can't write in your head all the time. You have to put something down. You're more prone to forgetting, even though it's practice. It's good to be able to look back. As I said before, it won't take much time. Today in math class, for about thirty minutes or so, I wrote three short paragraphs about just whatever popped in my head. I drew a picture of a monster and I wrote a bit on it. I wrote on the prompt The End of the World. I also wrote a little something on Hershey's Kisses, because I wanted chocolate. I'll share The End of the World with you today, as an example. Ugh, I have to re-type because my browser crashed. I really need a better computer.
The End of the World
The earth groaned in protest as the asteroid scientists called Apophis slammed into it. Jocelyn screamed. A violent shaking rippled through the world. Near her, a building crashed down, sending clouds of dust and debris into the air. She coughed. Her eyes stung, but she latched onto the seemingly steady ground. Suddenly, the world tilted, and Lyn scrambled to find a hold before she could drop into a dark abyss. Her searching fingers found a crack to hold onto, and Lyn screamed in terror as her legs kicked at air. Something heavy hit her, and she cried out again in pain. Her arms screamed with the effort, and she couldn't hold on anymore. As she fell, she thought, This is it. This is the end of the world.
There y'all go. My eleven sentence paragraph. Eleven sentences! The Hershey Kiss one is only five sentences. It's not that much! A little practice goes a long way.
Part two: How to write a good fanfiction.
Just kidding. Part two is about the fine line between what I call 'junk writing' and 'publish writing.' There's a big difference. Junk writing is writing stuff you aren't going to publish. Ever. Sometimes you might, but it usually has to be cleaned up and fixed. Publish writing is when you write to publish. No, I don't like that. Okay, let's try that again. Publish writing is when you:
a. Write out the whole thing.
b. Edit and add things. To most people, know as Revising & Editing.
c. Correct all grammatical, spelling, and writing mistakes.
d. Look over it.
e. Publish it. That sounded bad. You aren't a professional writer, right? So (e) should be... Allow people to read it.
Yeah...not a lot of people do that. Most people have betas to advise them and correct mistakes, but it's better to make sure. I, personally, am not a beta (why I'm writing this, which means I don't have to beta) and I, personally, do not have a beta. I wouldn't make a very good beta, either, because in many of my fanfictions, if you look hard, you'll see grammatical errors and some minor spelling mistakes. My WordPad (I don't have Word :( ) doesn't do spell check. It's horrifying.
Speaking of spell check, if you don't want to re-read it over again, or if you're afraid you'll miss something, there is a SPELL-CHECK box for a reason.
Take advantage of it.
Okay, so there is a difference between junkin' and publishing. Junkin' is not a word, so just warning you, please don't go around saying,"I'm junkin' my writing." I do think there is slang like that,"I'm junking your house." But on paper, no. Don't write junking. What happens when you use Junk and Publish (meaning you take the junk and you publish) is your quality has dropped. Dropped. Dropped. Gone to below zero. That was a metaphor, (ish) okay? You really don't want to freeze your readers' butts off like my science teacher's classroom does. Let me dig a little deeper. When you junk write, it's sort-of like practice, I guess. It'll be too short, or too undeveloped, or something that will tell you," Don't publish me!" If your work is junk, it's practice, and you don't publish practice.
Got it?
Remember: Seven Plots, the Cupcake, and Practice, Junk Write, & Publish
See you next time!
Achieving Elysium
