Last night I participated in a writing sprint. It was my
first. The sprint lasted for all of an hour, but in that short hour I
deliberately concentrated on only one thing, writing on my current WIP. Okay,
two things—writing on my current WIP and checking in with Twitter every 15
minutes or so to get an update on my two sprint-mates, Julie Coulter Bellon and
Janice Sperry. Between 9 and 10 pm we wrote, and chatted, and wrote some more.
Julie smoked up her computer keys writing 10 pages before the hour was through.
I only laid down around 900 words—puny compared to what Julie scored. They were
mostly dialogue words, and, I have to admit, I do edit as I write, which
probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do in a competition type of situation.
Will I give up? No! Will I get discouraged because I didn’t
write as fast my friend? No! I now have 900 more words in my story that I
didn’t have before last night. I think that’s fantastic! I’m more than 1/3 of
the way through my book. THANK YOU, JULIE!!!!
Writing sprints are wonderful, they’re fun, they’re
productive!
Have you participated in a writing sprint before, or
something similar?
This is my last post for ANWA Founder & Friends. My tour of duty/fun is up. I leave with a grateful heart for the experience that Marsha's given me. Now I need to apply this knowledge to my personal blog and build the "business"side of my writing. It's a little scary not having a solid reader base to work with, but that is life--to face our fears, and to learn from them.
Odd . . . it's as terrifying publishing this last post as it was the very first one 6 months ago.
You wrote more than I did. I'm about a third of the way through mine too. Mine, however is a middle grade and won't be very long. :)
ReplyDeleteI was worried I'd have to delete everything I wrote because I had no idea where it was going. But then I started thinking about it and a villain was born! He's still pretty rough but I'm excited.
Rough drafts are so hard for me. The sprint was exactly what I needed to get the creative juices flowing. :)
A villain! I love writing villains. They have such great expressions and dastardly ways. Did you write it from his POV? Mine is all first-person POV, so I don't get to tickle the way through anybody else's thoughts, which makes for more creative writing if you want to convey their emotions, I think.
DeleteI wasn't going to give away your word count--didn't think it was my place, but I'm glad you were there to help run along beside us. It made for a better race, even though Julie left us in the cyber-dust. ;D
It's from the hero's POV - 3rd person. The bit I wrote on Wednesday opened the way for the villain. I knew the story needed a little something more, but I didn't expect it to come this way.
ReplyDeleteMy word count was actually pretty good for me. I'm not a really fast writer unless it's one of those scenes I've had in my head for months. :)
Cool!
DeleteDebra, where's your personal blog so we can follow you over?
ReplyDeleteIt's over here at http://debraerfert.blogspot.com. I'm going to try to keep it up to date a lot better than I've had. Actually, I need to if I'm going to sell any books, huh! :)
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