Thanksgiving – Page 4

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Holiday.

I know I did. This was the first year in a long time that my son has been home for the holiday. It was so good to have him here.

Main Aisle, Macy's 1st Floor, Black Friday — Main Aisle, Macy’s 1st Floor, Black Friday (Photo credit: LarimdaME)

On Thanksgiving night we went out and did the unthinkable and went Black Friday Shopping. What an insane idea that was. I didn’t know that there could be that many people living in the area to fill a store up the way it was that night. I mean everyone was parked everywhere, on the grass, in the road, and up on the highway. Then there wasn’t one single shopping cart to be found in Walmart. People were sitting on them waiting for 10 o’clock to come around so they could turn in their tickets to get their TVs they were waiting for.

I only managed to find three out of nineteen items I had on my list. I should have printed out a map of the store before going. Then I would have known where everything was going to be. Maybe next year, even though Mike said there won’t be a next year. I guess he didn’t have a good time being my personal shopping cart. But he was a good trooper none the less.

ROW80 Update:

This year I did not officially take part in NaNo WriMo. I was too busy struggling to get the first draft done for Road Salt.

So, I am happy to announce folks, the first draft is done. I made it to the end of the story. I even formatted the file for Smashwords and I think it passed the vetting process on its first time around. Now I have to begin the edit process. Hopefully I can have the first edit done by Christmas.

I did not make my end goal for word count on the first draft. One of the problems I have when I write is that I tend to write very tight, almost too tight. When I go back through the story I am sure I will be able to make my end goal after answering the same questions for each chapter.

Who
What
Where
When
How
Why

If I can answer all the above I am sure that there won’t be too many gaps in the story. This is what I did when I did the last edit on Friends of Choice. Just by answering those questions I was able to add another 14k words to the manuscript.

If anyone is interested in being a beta reader for me and giving me some constructive criticism on Road Salt you can view the first draft on Smashwords for free… https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/258513

The more ideas I can get on this story the better. I do know that I need to delve deeper into my characters for this story. That will be what my main focus will be on while I do the first edit.

It really isn’t supposed to be an entertaining read, but if I could make it entertaining that would be all the better.

Stop by to support other Round of Words in 80 Days participants found here on the Linky List of other ROWers

November 17^th I attended the Monadnock Writers’ Group meeting at the Peterborough, NH library. We meet every third Saturday and we are visited by a guest speaker, except the December and June meetings. These two meetings are set aside for the Members Read Around. This is where the members read a ten minute excerpt from their own works, so they can hear and share their voice with the group.

This month our guest speaker was Joe Hurka. He is an interesting writer. His first published work was a memoir which he wrote while his father was still alive. Fields of Light: A Son Remembers His Heroic Father, won the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award.

Fields of Light takes place during the era of war between communism and democracy, during a time of Hitler and World War II. It is a tale of espionage and heroic feats by a man who has since left our world.

Joe has published several other titles as well. Some of these titles are short stories published in literary quarterlies like Ploughshares, Agni Review Dos Passos Review and numerous others.

Before, which is published by Thomas Dunne Books is his only fictional novel.

He shared with us his experience with St. Martin’s Press, how one bad review made the publishing house drop the marketing of his book all together without notifying him that they were going to do this.

When a member asked about his writing process he offered up his thoughts on the matter. “Even when you are in a slump and you are doing nothing but staring at the screen you are still writing, believe it or not. The brain and the consciousness are still at work creating the story that must be shared with the world. It is its destiny to be told.”

ROW80 Update:

Yea! I finally got to the end of the story. Now for the rest of the month and part of next month I can begin working on the edit of Road Salt. I am so looking forward to publishing this story. It has been like writing a homework assignment but I think it will be well worth the pain and suffering my characters are going through. They will all be able to look forward to their appearance in their own stories in the rest of the series and each one will finally have their happy ending as they enter recovery.

I have named the series Wings from Ashes as each of the characters has burned the bridges in their lives to their family and friends while they struggle with the different phases of substance abuse and addiction.

Friends of Choice is the first book in this series and was written two years ago. My characters are still making the bad choices in their lives, but many others like themselves make the same mistake over and over again before getting what life is all about.

During the edit process there will be scene building with the missing description I so hate to divulge in and then there is the character building and I plan on doing a lot of that with this story.

So if I do not see you here on this loop, have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Stop by the Linky to see how the other ROW80’ers are doing…