Uh-Oh

| May 23, 2012

Missed my goal yesterday. Instead of 15 pages, I wrote 11. I’m not too upset about it. I’ve realized I’m winding to the end of the Fast Draft portion of the class. I have the bones of the story, and I need to start thinking seriously about the revision. Today, I’m tired, and I’m meeting […]

Coffee and Thinking

| May 22, 2012

Another night, another set of hours for staring at the dark ceiling. Insomnia is a surly non-friend. I’ve given up the nightly brawl with sleep and fueled up the coffee pot. I’ve been thinking about my book, and about another story I’d like to write, a novella for a publisher who’s looking for shorter e-stories, […]

Randomly Monday

| May 21, 2012

Our local NPR station is running Ken Burns’ The Civil War. My family fought on both sides of the war, and I’ve often lived around battlefields from that war. Right this moment, Sam Waterston as Lincoln is reciting The Gettysburg Address. Can you hear those words without aching for all the rows upon rows of […]

Fast Draft, Day 4

| May 18, 2012

Not so great today. I only wrote 8 pages. It makes me sad, but I realized my conflict wasn’t strong enough, so I’m digging deeper. Fortunately, I’m 15 pages ahead of my overall goal, but I was sort of hoping never to have to use them as banked pages. So–I’m going to try adding to […]

Fast Draft, Day Three

| May 17, 2012

And still learning. Day three, and I’ve written 20 new pages. I like this Fast Drafting. Especially tonight. I stopped mid-sentence in the middle of a scene which I know is more than talking heads. Occasionally, as I’ve been moving forward, resisting my absolute compulsion to edit, I’ve known I needed desperately to get to […]

Fast Draft Discoveries

| May 16, 2012

For the second day, I’ve made my goal of 20 pages in Candace Havens’ Fast Draft class. Yay! that’s 8,768 words I didn’t have before I started this slightly crazy experiment. Thing is, I don’t think it will be an experiment after this for me. I don’t know that I’ll write every book at 20 […]

Exhausted, but…

| May 15, 2012

I made it! 20 pages for the first day of Candace Havens’ Fast Draft class. Five more than my goal, but I always intended to try for 20. The last four were torture. Well–torture getting started, because I took a break that stretched into hours. But after I started them, they flew by, thanks to […]

Drafting Fast!

| May 14, 2012

I’m home from Girls’ Week (and lonely for my aunties and cousin), and I’m starting Candace Havens’ Fast Draft class today. That means I’m committed to write 20 pages every day for two weeks, and then I have two weeks to revise it all. I’ve actually stated a goal of 15 pages, because that’s my […]

Thursday is my Friday

| May 3, 2012

I’m abandoning hearth and home tomorrow for Girls’ Week with my family. I cannot wait. We talk and laugh and eat too much (although my sister/cousin and I have made a pact for this year about that), and watch movies and old TV shows. Seven days will not be enough. I’ve made another pact with […]

Random Wednesday

| May 2, 2012

I love random days! First off, the shower door didn’t arrive yesterday. We have a friend who says that home renovations have a rule of 2: Twice as expensive, twice as much work, and twice as long as you expect when you start the project. We actually estimated cost pretty well, but definitely twice as […]