Mini-posts from the Night of Writing Dangerously…
5:30 pm Pacific time – have chosen a table and set up my netbook, made my choices for the raffle, and begun entering words.
6:45 pm Pacific time – I hit 50,000 words! I was the seventh one to ring the big bell for winning. Sarah was joking about running back and forth to announce winners all night, but I don’t think anybody’s rung in the past ten minutes or so, since me and the lady after me.
Midnight pacific time – back in the hotel, didn’t keep up with posting throughout the evening obviously. But a few high points:
- Chris Baty gave a great speech about “If we have it in us to write a 50,000 word book in 30 days, what else do we have in us?” I managed to catch all of it in video on my digital camera.
- Rachael Herron’s talk about how to move from Nanowrimo to publication was also amazing – hitting a lot of the things about revisions and query letters that I’ve been thinking about lately, with practical advice from the perspective of somebody who’s recently been through it all.
- I also enjoyed Jen Arzt’s talk about Script Frenzy, though it was more aimed at those who’ve never tried the Frenzy before, not veterans like me. I went up to her afterward and thanked her for the effort that she’d put into running the event, and mentioned the ‘Beat sheet’ series that I was running on this blog a few months ago.
- 2 other writers from our table hit the 50k mark before the night was out.
- I got some great material written for “Harry and Mars”, a short psychological sci-fi piece that I started at the end of September. Turns out it might be even shorter than I expected, for the first draft at least.
Good night!
The Kelworth Files 