I am entering my third year of Round of Words in 80 Days Challenge. It is hard to believe that I’ve been blogging for this long, when it seems as though I started keeping a blog only yesterday. This challenge has helped me write Witch Book, Road Salt, and Along Came Neil. That is a total of three novels.
Kait announced that this round we should use Deliberate Writing as our topic of discussion. That is such a terrific idea.
I’m an indie author. The writing life for an indie author is not easy, nor is all the hard work that goes into being this type of writer. Someday, I am sure it will all pay off.
How does deliberate writing fit into the indie world?
It is the biggest part of an Indies world. We have to write with Deliberate Persistence or we will never get anywhere with all the self-promoting and self-publishing we need to do.
Deliberate Persistence is the power of inertia that keeps the stories coming. If we didn’t practice deliberate writing, many of us would have given up long ago. We just can’t give up.
It is practice, practice, practice… That is how our stories come about.
This past year has brought me a lot of growth with my joining RWA – Romance Writers of America. I took part in month after month of online workshops given by several of the Chapters of RWA. One in particular was YARWA – Young Adults Romance Writers of America. I think I got a lot out of them too. It sure made the steep cost of their membership well worth paying.
This year I will be focusing on writing fantasy and honing those skills.
Over the past year, I gave a lot of thought to when I was young I used to play a game of make believe with a good friend. We used to say to each other before we came up with our daily skit – let’s make believe that this happened, or that happened, and we are so and so. I remember those days well. It was when I was five and six years old. I don’t know if she remembers them at all. I apply what I learned from playing these games to my writing. Now instead of having the make believe being about me, it is about my characters. So I came to know, after all those years gone by, I had been practicing fiction long before I knew what I was doing. It was just some childish game. The game became a writing tool in the end.
Enough of my ongoing Deliberate practice…
I am to state what my Deliberate practice will be for this round.
- Orgarlan Saga needs a new plot outline for the next book in the series. I’m subconsciously cooking it at this time. I did finish up the time line for the first two books. Now I just need to decide who wants what and why, then the plot will come together like a puzzle.
- Blog more deliberately. I have been lax in this area in the past. I must make every check-in, even if I have nothing new to report.
- Maybe take a look at one of my slush pile unfinished works to see if anything can be done to resurrect the story line.
- Continue to take part in more of the online workshops offered by the RWA Chapters.
- Learn to put together a Self-Publishing workshop to be given locally in my area. ß—– Just thinking about this gives me the jitters. A good friend of mine keeps telling me I need to do this.
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Linda Nelson 
I definitely sympathize with goal #2. I’m completely haphazard about my blogging habits and that’s something I’d like to improve during this round.
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I definitely have to make the choice to blog even when I have nothing to report. 😦
There’s a workshop building course I took a while ago. It was fantastic. He said one of the ways to build a workshop is to get four or five people together from all experience levels in the area you want to create your workshop for. Ask them what they want to know about (and problem areas they wish they’d known about before they did it on their own) and build a workshop for them. Run through the workshop and figure out what they liked and didn’t like. You’ll have content and a general idea of where to go.
Then find ten people who’d like to beta the course, ask them questions at the beginning and, along with the content you’ve already created, add what they’re interested in knowing. At the end of the beta course you’ll have feedback from all, a syllabus, content you’ve already created, practice, and a plan. Plus you’ve gained 15 people who are excited to be a part of your first workshop and can spread the word to everyone!
I love taking workshops so I get so excited when I see others taking them and talking about creating some.
Good luck with your goals for round 4!
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