This is my last day before the official beginning of ‘Fast Draft’, and I feel like I’m rushing to finish up a bunch of little things. I really have no idea how it’s going to go. I don’t know how hard writing 20 pages will be if you’re not trying to edit. I think I’m probably going to end up overanalyzing this because I really want to get some workable writing out of this exercise. But I’m going to try to free my mind and just keep my fingers on the keyboard. Today I’ll be jotting down some notes, just to make sure I have a general feeling of what’s supposed to happen next in the story. And tomorrow…we’ll see.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to keep track of books coming out next year, some almost a year away, and I haven’t come up with anything good yet. I’d likely lose a Post-It note (or get irritated when it multiplied into ten), and I suppose there’s always my Amazon Wish List, but I don’t much like that either. Maybe I’ll start keeping track with a list on the blog…

One in particular I’m looking forward to is Colleen Gleason’s And The Rest Falls Away, Jan ’07. Check out her stunning trailer here. Also Tasha Alexander’s sequel to And Only to Deceive, A Poisoned Season, coming out April ’07.

Despite it’s being in the mid-90’s here, I’m starting to get into the spirit of autumn. And since we don’t have the cool weather, the changing leaves, or any of that good stuff, we have to make due with food. I’m stocked up on candy corn, well really the ‘Autumn Mix’ with the chocolate corn and little mellowcreme pumpkins, I’ve been scoping out Halloween costumes with my little one, and I’ve been making Molasses Crinkles–my absolute favorite fall cookie. Plus I bought a bag of those tiny little Granny Smith apples. Now I know why they were $1.99 for five pounds–those things are SOUR! All I need now is to break out the Halloween decorations. But it seems a little early…and a little sweaty…


Watched Millions last night and thought it was very cute. It is a British film that is unique and funny and just plain fun. My husband fell asleep half way in, but woke up again about twenty minutes later with a second wind and finished watching with me. He liked it too.

I will be posting my ‘Fast Draft’ progress over the next few weeks, but probably not much else…except maybe some complaints and whining. So either stick around or come back in two weeks (please).

Next Monday I’m planning to start writing a ‘Fast Draft’ as part of an online class being offered for free by Candace Havens. Certainly I’ve come across Book-In-A-Month and other similar writing techniques to turn off your internal editor just to get words on the page, but I never really thought the idea would work for me. My first draft is generally awful–at least in my opinion. I suppose I have to get the words on the page to really get started with my writing strength, which is revising something to within an inch of it’s life. In high school, when I was writing drafts on paper, they were almost illegible. So many cross-outs, arrows, rewrites that it was difficult for me to write the final draft from such a mess.

I’ve always been frustrated by how slow I write and how many iterations it takes me to get a final draft I’m satisfied with. And I’ve always been a little nervous about what I’ll do if I ever get a publishing contract. Self-publishing was great in that respect–no deadlines, no contracts–I could write when and how much I wanted. But now my boys are getting older; both will be in school full time next year, and I have the opportunity to try to make my writing a job. So I need to figure something out and make some changes.

About a week and a half ago, I saw Candace’s offer for the class, and I guess my perspective has changed drastically, because I immediately thought, Why not give it a try? So I signed up, and starting next week, I’m supposed to write 20 pages a day for two weeks. (I like the smaller time committment too–shorter than BIAM). So we’ll see…

I’m not starting a new project. I’m about 100 pages into the one I’m working on now, so I’m just going to try to push it to the end and hope I end up with some material I can use.

Candace says that something amazing happens when you’re just writing at that pace without rereading, without editing. She says that there’s often better continuity (which I get), and sometimes strange, wonderful, mysterious things happen: brilliant prose emerges from the wreckage of unedited work to delight and astound. I’m hoping for a good dose of that too.
Catherine Avril Morris is tracking her progress on a similar project. Anyone else??