works in progress – Page 15

After digging out of nearly 2 feet of snow on Friday, today was our NHRWA monthly meeting, and they had a treat for us. Our speaker was Hank Phillippi Ryan, she is an investigative reporter for the NBC News station out of Boston, an Emmy award winner several times over along with Edward R Morrow Awards for journalism. She is also an Agatha Christie Award Winner, a Mary Higgins Clark Award Winner, and a Macavity Award Winner for her Mystery/Crime Novels.

She was great.

She compared journalism to writing fiction and showed how the technique for writing an investigative report for the news could be applied to writing any genre.

In working in the Journalism world, there is no such thing as Writers Block – so true. If you don’t make your deadline then you’re fired, plain and simple.

If you ever have the chance to hear her speak – do it! You will be so glad you did.

First Ever – I had a first. I stepped out of my comfort zone today and brought the first chapter of Along Came Neil to my writers group of for a critique. I’m so glad I did. It was like having your own personal editors. I loved the feedback that they gave me and I do plan on figuring out how I can make their suggestions work. I just won’t tackle the revision just yet. I will save their comments and suggestions for when I do the first edit. For now, I will continue writing the rest of the story and bring them one chapter at a time.

ROW80 Update:

This week I think I added over 10k words to Along Came Neil. Tomorrow I will try to hit the halfway mark at 25k words.

You know what? I’m not going to try. I’m going to do it – Goal + Deadline=Progress.

I’m not going to fire myself. Right now I want quantity and not quality. Quality comes later and will be saved for the critique.

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Boston North TV: Award winning author Hank Phillippi Ryan (keepinupwithang.wordpress.com)

Last week at this time, we were having one of those nuance snow storms that we do tend to get every once in a while here in New Hampshire. It took time out from writing to make my snow man. Sadly this week he has come under the weather – so to speak and has taken to lying down on the fence railing. His nose and mouth fell off. I think the dog is much sadder about this than I was. She seemed to think it was her new buddy. She will probably feel otherwise when she finds his Twizzler mouth and carrot nose in the snow as a token of his past comradeship they had in the driveway.

Last week I was trying to make a record word count that just didn’t happen for me. I wasn’t surprised. But it was fun trying.

My goal had been to get as close to 50k as I could before March 1^st. That was the deadline for the NHRWA Query Quandary Contest. Needless to say, I didn’t make it. There is always next year.

My next goal and I think there is a good chance I may make it, is to have Along Came Neil done in 30 days. That would be the first draft, of course. My record stands at 60 days from when I wrote Witch Book.

I do know a lot does have to do with pre-writing. I have to agree with Heather on that. But I am also a plotter. I have to have a strong plot to write fast.

With Witch Book I had a pretty good plot outline to follow. I had used a deck of tarot cards to create the plot for that story and to me it was a wow moment. Having the plot pretty much well defined I was able to get from point A to point B pretty quickly.

Along Came Neil is sort of like that. There is one difference.

I really enjoy writing fantasy. I can get so involved in the world I create that I can get lost in the story I am writing.

Teen Contemporary is different, especially Romance. I have to really think before I begin to write or I will be going back in time to when I was in school. That would make it a historical instead of a Contemporary. I don’t want a historical at least not at this moment.

Since last Sunday I have added close to 4k words. I think this is pretty good progress and I’m not done yet for the day.

90 minute writing sprints do work pretty well too. Writing this post is part of my break from my 90 minute sprint. Next I will check my email, Facebook and Twitter and then hit the coffee pot once more and start the next sprint.

Hope the rest of you have good progress too. If not, remember tomorrow is always another day.

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