How To Develop A Writing Routine

A random song: I brought you inspiration...

Me: Oh, thanks!

The song: ...for a new WIP >:)

Me: No-

Rating First Lines of my WIPs Part 2

Intro

Hey, it’s Calliope, and she’s back with yet another low-effort post! I’m making a part 2 to my first post because I recently found some very old writings of mine from when I was just beginning to write, and I want to give them the attention they deserve! There were also a few lines that I really wanted to include in the last post but couldn't fit, so I'm adding them in here. Plus, this has now apparently become a trend, so I'm legally obligated to make a part 2 /j

One sunny day, there was a horse fair in Sunnydale.

4/10

As an opener, this line is drier than a desert

The title of this story is Unicorn Academy: Through the Magic Portal. It was a ripoff mashup of Harry Potter and Black Beauty, and was borne during my unfortunate horse girl phase. Basically, it was about two girls who buy horses that are secretly unicorns, and are magically transported to a unicorn school

Remember how I’ve always said that my first story was a Seekers fanfiction? Well, as it turns out, I was wrong, because this is the first story in my first writing notebook. I even drew a cover for it because when I was a kid, I fancied myself a writer and an artist. (Since then, I’ve discovered that I’m definitely one and not the other.)

Once, giraffes had short necks and were in the horse family.

5/10

...what

I’m intrigued, but in a I-want-to-read-this-just-to-see-how-laughable-it-is kind of way

The title of this story is called How the Giraffe Got Its LONG Neck. But the story itself still makes no sense, even with context

Yeah, I know, I wrote a lot about animals when I was young okay-

Once, there was an old fisherman whose wife died and before she died, she gave birth to two sons, Damon and Jason.

7/10

I’m definitely intrigued, but the sentence should be cut down a little more

This one is named The Magical Boat: A Fable. As a concept, it’s not too bad. In practice...you get quotes like this one: “While the fisherman was at the market, he saw a boat. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to buy it, so he bought it.” (Yes, this is a real quote.)

This line is giving major Chronicles of Narnia vibes and I like it

“Kelly was dreaming. A robed woman knelt down by an altar.”

8/10

I actually quite like this line! This story was a sequel to another story called Secret Realm, where (shocker) the characters found a secret realm. Unfortunately, I lost the Google Doc where I wrote the original story, so I have no idea where this one was supposed to pick up.

I like this image a lot, it gives me fancy fantasy prologue vibes

Subtract the “dream beginning” and I would like it more

“The only joy I ever got out of my early life was visiting the church next to the shabby orphanage I lived in.”

7.5/10

I wrote this story around 6th-7th grade and I remember being really proud of it. I even posted it online. It’s probably lying in some forgotten corner of the Internet at this point-

Religion doesn’t play any role in this story, the only reason a church is mentioned is because it was the home of a piano that the main character loved. Music was the main character’s only joy in life, etc. etc.

Giving Jane Eyre vibes, I kind of like it!

“Because my mother raised me to be the next queen, I know when and what fork to use at dinner. Because she didn’t raise a fool, I know what artery to stick it in so you’ll bleed to death.”

8/10

I’m like 80% sure I got this from a writing prompt on the Internet, but I can’t find it anywhere? So for the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume I wrote it

This sounds like belongs to a YA fantasy with a not-like-other-girls assassin-queen MC who’s leading a revolt to claim her crown, yet can’t decide which guy to pick in a love triangle

It's super dramatic and I kind of love it anyway, so I’m going to give it extra points!

“The entire town had turned out to watch the emperor’s killer die.“

8.5/10

*bangs head against wall* why didn’t I continue this wip it sounds SO COOL

This line's not a 9 because I don’t think it’s *quite* there?

I definitely want to return to this one someday! I shelved it to make room for other projects but I hope to get back to it!

I’m a knitter. I sometimes knit socks.

I have recently got back into doing some writing. This writing has been multi-chaptered.

So, here is a trick I am going to share that I learned from knitting socks. There is a thing called “second sock syndrome” which is when you finish one sock but can’t seem to get around to starting the second. So, when I finish a sock I IMMEDIATELY cast on the second sock and just knit a few rows.

So, when you finish that chapter, IMMEDIATELY just write one sentence of the next chapter. Trust me.

“There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape.”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Art: Gust of Wind (La Bourrasque) Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer 1896

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

“No need to force yourself to do something the “right way” if it’s not your right way. Your job is to honor your process.”

— Andi Cumbo-Floyd

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

-George Eliot, letter to Maria Lewis, Oct. 1, 1841

Rating First Lines of My WIPs

There once was a very young filly named Mirabelle who lived on a lovely farm. She had a kind owner, and the horses who lived with her were very nice.

5/10

Major horse girl vibes

This might make a good children’s book, so it gets a couple extra points for reaching its target audience

I used to have a thing for writing stories from the POVs of animals, I think it was because I was a big fan of Erin Hunter books at the time

Author’s Note: This font I am typing in is Happy Monkey, for the story, and this is Handlee, which is my friend’s font. Remember, this font is mine and this font is hers. In this story, I am Ivy Keid, and my friend is Hailyn Keid. (My friend wishes to remain anonymous.) Got it? Cool. Let’s get on with the story. (Oh, and this may not make sense in some parts. So what? It’s a story. It doesn’t HAVE to make sense.

3/10

Younger me, I hate to break it to you, but a story does have to make some kind of sense

If it isn’t clear, I was going through a qUiRkY phase when I wrote this

I wrote this with my best friend, so I remember having fun writing it despite cringing at it now!

Heart racing, feet pounding the ground, Alara ran for her life, the monsters that would soon snuff out her life like a candle pursuing her relentlessly. She leaped over a fallen branch, and heard a series of loud thumps. She didn’t stop to check whether they’d fallen. She zigzagged through the streets and ran on into the darkness, where her people were hiding, where they had been chased out by the creatures of the darkness.”

7/10

Younger me was really trying to be hardcore huh

Actually I like this first line, but why is it so wordy, and what’s up with the confusing writing style?

This entire story was literally plagiarized from inspired by The City of Ember and I have fond memories of writing it

“You still reading that science fiction crap?”

A voice interrupted Joseph. He looked up from his copy of The Cyber War. It was Arnie, the class bully. He was one of those kids who never was caught when breaking the rules. The kids all complained about him, but the teachers never did anything because they never caught him. Make fun of his name, and he’d have you in a headlock giving you his infamous Sandpaper Noogie. No one ever sat in front of him. Kids would rather pull a desk to the other side of the room than sit near Arnie Jones.

6/10

Oh, look, a main character who likes books :) it gets a point just for that

This is unironically funny now, but I don’t think I was trying to be funny while writing this

Arnie Jones may be one of the best bully names I’ve ever come up with (for some reason, bullies featured prominently in my early stories--I wasn’t even bullied, so I have no idea why that was)

There’s nothing more awkward than being with four complete strangers and knowing that you might die with them.

6.5/10

If I want to know what I was reading at a point in my life, all I have to do is open up a WIP from that time, and I’ll immediately know what books I was liking at the time. This is one of those WIPs. In this case, it’s from my YA dystopia phase (yeah I had a lot of phases, don’t @ me)

From this first line alone, I’m getting huge Divergent vibes with some Percy Jackson flavor (it gets half a point solely for that)

I ended up abandoning this WIP after 4 pages, so I’m not really attached to it

“Halt!”

The soldier’s voice easily cut through the bustling plaza, as did its owner. Aydin pretended not to have heard and hurried on.

8/10

Points for the en media res, a point off for the second line being confusing

I wrote this around 7th-8th grade, which was when I started to get more serious about writing (although I abandoned it after 10 pages...in the middle of a sentence)

I might return to this one someday, I had a lot of fun with it!

Everyone says that time heals all wounds, but no amount of time could have prepared me for seeing my sister in her casket.

9/10

The intrigue? The hook? The mystery? Amazing, immaculate, we love to see it

Maybe I’m a little bit biased, but I think this is the best first line I’ve ever come up with!

This is from my current WIP, Pawn, btw ;)

this is your daily reminder not to correct other people’s grammar if they’re not asking you to, especially if it’s something they can’t help :)

why do i intentionally read books with cliffhangers knowing that the sequel won't come out for another year. why do i do this to myself.