Writing Groups

I am coming up on a weekend with my Scribes writing group. We have a great time learning and laughing together. This is an amazing group of writers: Cy Adams, Diana Hurwitz (check out Di's website and blog), Rita W., and Sharon P. I learn from both editing their work and having them edit mine.

Writing groups can enhance your writing and make you a better writer or they can be a frustrating experience and time waste. It is critical to find the right group for you. It may take time. Try a group out and if it doesn't feel right, don't stay with it. Look for a different group until you find the right one. I think the most important thing in finding the right group is to pick a group with writers at or slightly above your skill level. The best type of group is made up of writers that bring different viewpoints and experiences. It is useful to have different perspectives on your writing during the critiquing period. In the Scribes, different writers emphasize different things in their critiques (such as visceral responses, character motivations, technical accuracy, story structure and plot, legal and historical details, emotional understanding of the characters, dialogue, etc.) which is extremely helpful. When everyone agrees on a problem in the writing, it is a red flag to me that I need to go back and fix it. When no one agrees, it is fascinating to listen to the discussion between the other writers and I often find new ideas coming to me by simply listening to the discussion. Ultimately, when you get feedback, you have to decide what is best to incorporate for your story. You must be true to it, using comments and ideas that resonate.

Writing can be an isolating profession and being in a writing group can help you avoid writing in a void. My wonderful Scribes have not only helped me to improve my writing but have enriched my life by being a part of it.

Writing Buddies

With less than 1,500 words left to write to reach the 50,000 word mark, I want to mention my experience with NaNoWriMo writing buddies. As with many things in life, having support and encouragement can make the difference between success and failure in an endeavor. Last year I lurked on some of the NaNoWriMo writing threads. I was reading a thread related to writing buddies. There was one request that caught my eye and I sent that person an email. Much to my surprise we connected. Steve had done nano for several years and he pushed me whenever my word count dropped. If I was struggling, he just seemed to have the right words of encouragement.

The following month I took a trip to the S F Bay Area and managed to meet him for a cup of coffee. It was great to have the personal contact after only interacting online.

This year, he didn't decide to participate until the last moment and I wondered what the month would be like without his support. Fortunately, he did decide to participate. During the first week, we had a friendly competition to see who could write more words each day. Much to my surprise, I was in the lead that week. Then I had a crazy schedule for the weekend and he pulled ahead. I could never catch up with him after that. When my spirit lagged, he once again seemed to have the words I needed to read to keep my momentum going. I achieved my word count goal several days early this year, exceeding my experience from last year where I only reached my word count on November 30th around 11:30p (just in the nick of time.)

Words, Words, Words

Words. They flutter around in my mind. I'm not just searching for the right word for my sentence, the one that will help my world come alive for my reader, but lots of them, 50,000 to be exact. I've passed the 40,000 word mark and I know I will make it. I had hoped to be done by tomorrow when my son comes in for a visit, but that is impossible at this point. Assuming I keep my same pace, I will hit 50,000 words early next week. What's next? The novel will not be done. I am guessing it will end up in the 70,000 word range, so I'm hoping to continue working on it with the goal of finishing a rough draft before the end of 2014. I hope I can do it!

Bleary eyed

It is day 14 of NaNoWriMo and my word count is like a roller coaster. One day I've hit an all time high, the next day my schedule is crazy and my count drops like a rock. I think that yesterday was my worst day so far coming in under 1000 words. Today, I managed to write 1,950 words. My average is 2,112 words per day. I am way ahead of my count from last year.

The novel is moving forward. Some paragraphs feel like they were written by a 10 year old and some feel brilliantly written. Sometimes my characters make me laugh until tears dribble from my eyes and sometimes they get mad at me for the things I put them through.

In the past, I've struggled with allowing bad things to happen to my characters. I think this novel has helped me overcome that.

nanowrimo Day 7

I started this month in a blaze of glory with all thrusters firing. I'd been easily meeting and sometimes exceeding my word counts each day. On Thursday my experience changed. My characters decided to play hide and seek with my brain. I tried cajoling them to come out and they refused. So, I resorted to bribing them with hot chocolate and whipped cream. It worked well until they demanded squares of Ghiradelli Chocolate. I told them this would only happen after dinner and 1,700 words. In the end, I managed to eek out just over 2,000 words. Friday was a busy day; and between appointments and a migraine that hit me early evening, I fell far short of my goals.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog!

National Novel Writing Month begins Saturday, Nov. 1. This will be my second year participating. I will be writing a Young Adult Steampunk novel that I am working on with my son. We have a good part of the plot worked out along with many of the characters. I don't know if I have 50,000 words in me for the month (I write at the pace of a banana slug), but I'm planning to give it my best go.

In addition to my prep work on the novel, I have spent time this month learning a new writing package that I won over the summer. Scrivener is an open ended, immensely flexible, writing tool. It has a relatively steep learning curve but after spending a couple days going through the tutorial and then playing around with it on my own, I've decided to use it in November. I hope to have a chance to give it a proper review but, in the meantime, the things I like about it include the flexibility of storing all my notes, research and pdf files within the same software that I am using to write my novel, the seamless organization and accessibility of those files, and the ease of creating and using index cards (also within the software) for organizing my story.