Fast Draft

There’s an expression that your eyes are bigger than your stomach. I think that fits my writing goal for my current Fast Draft madness. Lesson to self – don’t start Fast Drafting when you have two chapter meetings that week. And then I’m coordinating our Gateway to the Best writing contest for my chapter and the judging deadline is this week. ergh!! argh!!

Then the day job….the cursed day job! Okay excuses, excuses. Needless to say, lots of time/pages to make up for.

The good thing is my mind is starting to churn about the book. So even if the page count isn’t where I want it, the most important part of Fast Draft is kicking in. That’s the part when you start thinking of the characters and the plot all the time so when it’s time to write, you just do it.

I read part of the opening to Across the Silk Road last night at CORE. The comments were good, the feedback was very useful. Now I have to shelve it away until I can get another 200 pages done. I hope this means that I’m on the right track, but even if it’s the wrong track, trains already left the station. Can’t get off now. Fix it in rewrites, right?

Judge Jeannie

I recently judged for several contests and one of them returned a judge’s grid so you could compare how you scored against other judges. Either it was the luck of the draw or I’m the hanging judge, the grim reaper, the infamous EAST GERMAN JUDGE as we were discussing on the Ruby Slipper Blog.

Well, I didn’t have a bad hair day and I genuinely sit down ready to love each entry. I always give constructive comments and I try to stick to the major issues rather than flood the entry with a bunch of nitpicks, yet I was a little surprised how my scores compared to the other judges.

Watch out! Apparently Judge Jeannie’s got a mean streak.