ROW80 – Page 40 – Linda Nelson

As you can see, this month I am shooting for writing discipline. This is something hard to come by for me. Though I have been doing good so far. This past week I have avoided playing my Wonderful World of Warcraft. I know that if I just open up the game it will be all over for me and nothing will ever get done. So here I am trying to write every day.

This past week I missed my check in for ROW80. I will try not to let this happen anymore, since I will be joining RWA in the coming week.

I went to my second chapter meeting yesterday and you can see I am hook line and sunk.

So I am piling up the challenges for this month. First off I have ROW80, and then I have NaNo looming up ahead next month. I want to finish the first draft of Road Salt by the end of this month and then I will be happy to let it set for a month before I begin the edits. It’s got to have its down time before I begin with the edits, allowing the plots and characters to mingle in my head.

The other challenge I have for this month is BICHOKWED. That stands for (Butt in chair, hands on keyboard, write every day), and this is for the RWA chapter challenge. Talk about added accountabilityJ.

To report my progress for the week I was able to add 3k words to Road Salt this week.

Then the other day I got the prompt from Create Space to check out a new feature they are going to be offering for those who wish to publish from print to Kindle. I didn’t try it out since the manuscript is not complete, but what I did do, which I have done with Witch Book back when I was half way done with the manuscript was to begin the print formatting of the book. I also played with the file format on Create Space for giggles.

Here is the cover design I have at this time. It will be subject to change since I do not think I will be actually using this stock photo on the cover. I like to go and get my own off of Big Stock Photo dot com. But I do think I like the style of the overall cover for this book.

So bare with me, this is what I have come up with:
ß This is a cover made using the Create Space Cover Creator

Remember the cover photo will be changing to go with the Road trip that these kids are on. This is my incentive to get my fingers going and get this done. Oh and notice I came up with a subtitle for the series of books: Wings from Ashes. I got this idea from the theme of the Phoenix Bird that the Phoenix House Rehab uses for its logo. It stands for the individuals arising anew from the ashes of their burnt out life. Because I will be joining RWA, I will need to write some romances so what better series to do this with than the rest of Wings from Ashes. I will commit to four more books in this series devoted to the characters in the first two books. Life as an addict can find recovery which does lead to happy endings. That is all I will give for spoilers for the series.

Okay, that’s it for now…. back to work I go…

Looking for other ROW80 participants? Click the Linky Tool Link… well the link is not working at this time so you can find us on Facebook or twitter, using the hashtag #ROW80

Ah…

Have you ever gone to a writers’ group?

If you haven’t yet you really should check one out sometime.

I’m pumped. My word count for the week is around 2k. This is kind of low with NaNo looming around the corner but then again it really isn’t half bad.

Why am I so pumped?

Today I attended my second RWA chapter group. They meet at the Baker Free Library in Bow, NH. I really like these gals, they are so much fun. In fact I never really realized how fun it could be to write a romance until now.

We had a guest speaker too, one of the things I like about attending writing meetings.

Today’s guest was Shannon Stacey.

She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author from New Hampshire who is published with Carina Press and Harlequin. Her presentation was on Infusing Your Romance with Humor.

What a great topic…

How many times do you try to write with a little bit of wit? I know I try to add at least a small amount of wit in my works. Even Friends of Choice had a smidgen of wit when I wrote the scene where Karla had her old friends sleep over at her new home. I just can’t leave a dark read totally dark, if you know what I’m saying.

She said one of the best things for finding the humor in your writing is by shutting off the internal editor. One of her examples about this was how she accidently came up with the “magic penis” in her book Yours to Keep. Shannon said it was late at night when she was working on this scene and it never occurred to her until she went to edit the story. She almost cut this part out of the story but her editor loved it along with all her readers.

We had a blast listening to all the examples she gave us in how she used humor in her stories and warned about forcing, or trying too hard to make your story funny. She said just write and wait to see where all the pieces fall and try to keep it natural as possible.

You can learn more about Shannon Stacey by visiting her website: www.ShannonStacey.com

Another part of our meeting, a part that I like most besides the speakers is the challenges. One of the members comes up with monthly challenges for us. I guess last month was clean up your office and organize it as best as you can. I didn’t take part in this challenge. I must not have been thinking about how hooked I was to this Chapter Group.

This month’s challenge, created by Lisa, is called bichokwed. This stands for… you got it… butt in chair – hands on keyboard – write every day.

I’m going to do this one. NaNo is right around the corner and I really need to get this manuscript done. I will be happy with even having the first draft done by November.

I’ll even set the draft aside and edit it after NaNo if I have too. I want to get to work on the next book in the Orgarlan Saga for NaNo, or at least start it.

So if any of you want to take part in the bichokwed with me we can use the hashtag #bichokwed on twitter and you are welcome to share my little BICHOKWED logo for you blog if you would like.

I’m just piling the challenges up. ROW80 will go hand in hand with bichokwed this month. Maybe I finally find my discipline I have been shooting for.