Do Your Least...

I went to the session with Tracy Groot where she said this. It really resonated with me. I still need to work on it, but it has helped me tremendously.

A photo posted by Breathe Writers Conference (@breathe_writers) on Nov 11, 2016 at 12:21pm PST

Breathe Writers Conference

I had the opportunity to attend my very first writers conference over the weekend. The Breathe Writers Conference is held in our neighboring town and took me about 40 minutes to get there. I was looking forward to it, but also a bit nervous, too. I'm not a "go out there and meet new people" type of person. On Friday, it went from 12:30pm to 8:30pm and on Saturday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. There were 18 states represented at the conference! I meet people from Ohio, New York, Texas, Illinois, and Tennessee plus Michigan, of course. All of my sessions except one were in class 102! 

My hope was to make some connections with some people local to me so we could form a writers group. I had wanted to go to another session by Susie Finkbeiner, but it was the same time as the one by Amelia Rhodes. I was thinking later that maybe Susie's might have been more what I needed, but then I remembered that it was in Amelia's class that one of the other participants mentioned also wanting to find a writers group. This precipitated me asking her if she wanted to see about forming one together. We exchanged emails along with another friend of hers.

When filling out the registration, it asked if I wanted a one on one with an agent/publisher/author/etc and my instinct was to check 'no', but I figured it was a good way to learn, so I checked 'yes' instead! Mine was with Bob Evenhouse, a local author. I talked to him about where I was in my journey and what I need to work on.

I learned:

• Reduce "time vampires" from my life so I can get more creativity time. 
• Authenticity wins over perfection any time
• It comes down to taste. Not everyone will like everyone's voice
• Use words to create a deep and vivid "dream"
• Take advantage of 'Idea Friendly Times'
• Create in the way God created you to create
• Strive for excellence
• Take joy in quiet accomplishements
• Ultimately, we have an audience of One

Friday:

Susie Finkbeiner: Claim Your Voice

Cynthia Beach: Capturing the Intensity

Plenary Session: Editor's Panel

Amelia Rhodes: Making Time to Write

Dinner table decoration

Evening session monologue: Alison Hodgson

Keynote Speaker: Steven James

Saturday:

Sarah Grimm: Writing Flash Fiction that Sells

Bob Evenhouse: Worldbuilding

Plenary Session: Don Perini

I almost forgot to take a picture of Ann Byle: Best Practices for the Living the Writing Life
with her is Zach Bartels who I forgot to take a picture of during "Morning Words"

Last Session with Steven James

My "Idea Friendly Time Capture Machines" for writing down ideas as soon as I have them.

I bought some "craft" books based on recommendations from the weekend

My First Critique

Last week on Seekerville, I won a "gentle 5 page critique" from Missy Tippens.  I was excited and a bit nervous at the same time!  It would be the first time for anyone to read any of my writing other than family members (and however few people have found my "Happy New Year Flash Fiction".  I got her critique back today.  She gave me some pointers and places to clarify and work on.  She also pointed out things that I had done well.  I was very encouraged by her critique and motivated to keep on writing.

My "Workstation"

I don't have an office or special place to write, but I've been using the laptop at the dining room table.  I was having some problems with neck/back strain, so I started evaluating my work area.  The first change I made was to enlarge all my screens to 110% (does that mean I'm getting old?) and put a footstool under the table.  That helped some, but I was still finding myself leaning forward to write or view the screen.  I decided that if the laptop was another 2" or so higher, that would be a big help.  I scrounged around the house to see if I could find anything that would work.  I tried all sorts of lap desks and trays and didn't find anything that worked very well.  Most of them were too tall.  I did some research online to see what was available and saw a few that I thought I'd look into further.  Then I found a "laptop lift".  At first I thought that it would be annoying, but then I realized it would work better than what I was originally thinking of getting.  In the middle of my research, I needed to run to the school to pick up my daughter who hadn't heard that her Odyssey of the Mind meeting had gotten canceled before the bus left.  On the way home, we stopped at one of the thrift stores in town to see if they had something that would work.  I immediately found a Fellowes brand lift!  It looks like an older version, but for $3 I snatched it up!  It is adjustable, so I can change the angle if I want.  So far it seems to really be helping me be able to sit back in the chair and still type comfortably.  I also had gotten a cozy soft blanket at Goodwill last night since the corner I sit in tends to be sort of chilly.  I am all set now to write in comfort!

My workstation with "new" computer lift and cozy blanket

Musing on my Novel

For this month's challenge, I've been writing my story straight onto the computer since it's easier to count the words that way, but I normally write in a spiral bound "1 Subject" notebook. (I have written bits and pieces of "Perfect Love" right into my Word document, but mostly used the notebook.) There is something about actually writing the words to paper that I like.  Plus when I type it up, I use that time to semi-edit, also.  I decided to type up more of the part I'd written before and realized I was typing what I'd written last year during my 'write at least something' challenge for NaNoWriMo!  I only wrote 960 words last year in "Perfect Love" for the whole month!  I did write in another story, "Secondhand Heart" also, so it isn't my total word count for the whole month, but I was happy to see how much better I've been doing this year!  I've typed up 35½ pages (35 front and back, plus one front) and have 22½ left to type up.  Up to the point where I'm needing to enter the handwritten part of the story, I have 16,232 words.  If I average the same number of words per page, then the handwritten part that I haven't typed would come to about 10,287 words.  The rest of the story that I typed straight into Word comes to 9,408.  That means my story is approximately 35,927 words long at this point. When I select all and do 'word count', it counts the **** I have for scene breaks as a word, so it isn't super accurate, but a nice ballpark figure!

NaNoWriMo 500 Words Challenge: Day 5

My word count for today was 545.  I continued with the picnic scene that I started yesterday.  This brings my total word count for the 5 days to 2690!

An Introduction

It's sometimes hard to think of myself as a writer since I don't work on it every day and I don't have anything published.   So I decided I needed an "author blog" reserved exclusively to writing, so I could work on my "author persona".  I've been writing stories as long as I can remember.  I recall writing a story when I was 8 years old using all the letters I'd learned in cursive about a cat stuck in a tree.  I tend to want to write the perfect story the first time around and need to remember to just get it down and edit later!  Hopefully that will get easier in time ☺

I live in West Michigan with my husband of 16 years and our four children, ages 5, 6½, 8, and 10.  Besides writing, I enjoy knitting, crocheting, tatting, gardening, reading, sewing.....  I am a contributing writer for Home & School Mosaics and have been blogging for 7 years.