The writers of Hamilton

I had a great time at the Hamilton Writers meeting last night, at Chesters’ beers of the world. There was a good turnout, eight of us, with a mix of HW regulars, friends of mine from the Hamilton Nanowrimo group who were coming for the first time, and one other guy who was an occasional member of both groups.

There was some great conversation as we assembled – Laura talking about her tiny house, and I showed my Holly Lisle manuscript notes to anybody who would take a look. Many burgers and fries were eaten, and beer was brought.

Then, it was sharing time. I went first, with most of the revised Father Ismay story, and Rob gave us another chapter of his thriller. Then Gale booted up her little netbook and read from the opening of “Murder in the Parish”, her Nanowrimo mystery story from this year, and Alex read something that he was working on involving a guy who has a UFO encounter and gets spooky powers.

It was just a great time spent with nearby fellow writers. We all need some every now and then.

Fanfic flashback: Please Stand Up

I’ve been thinking about this story quite a bit yesterday. Partly just because I really like it anyway, it’s a fun little adventure, and writing it was possibly my most amazing Nanowrimo experience ever – I chose this project for National Novel Writing Month 2006, and by November the 30th, I had finished it, at a little over 100,000 words – yes, that’s right, it was a double-length Nano. The words just seemed to be flowing out of whatever I was typing on that month, my friends.

It also has a great little fight scene at the end, but mostly what I want to talk about today was the road trip structure. I wanted to do something a little bit more organized than my usual pantsing when I decided to do this story in Nanowrimo, and the idea of the road trip seemed to fit a lot of the other stuff I knew would be going on.