All of these links relate in some way to a recent topic of discussion in the Writing Practicum -- a group of talented writers that I facilitate on Tuesday nights. Each of the first four is a sort of C.S. Lewis-like "Wood Between the Worlds" that serves as a jumping-off place to other, related sites that merit additional exploring...
For those who are outlining a story, organizing thoughts, brainstorming, or heavily involved in plot or character development, mind-mapping is a useful exercise. For highly rated and reviewed (free) mind-mapping software, try FreeMind.
If you are considering signing with a literary agent or manager to further your career, first read this excellent blog post on Questions to Ask before signing with an agent. The comments at the end are also enlightening.
If you are interested in finding ways to harness and direct your creative impulses, this blog post by the author of the bestselling "The 4-Hour Work Week" is a great introduction to the particulars of Lucid Dreaming.
And this blog post contains a very good primer on Personal Branding – important for authors interested in developing and establishing a platform. Pay special attention to the presentation embedded within the post. It's a whole mini-seminar in itself.
Writing Contests of Note
Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards (For poems less than 32 lines.) Deadline Dec. 1, 2009.
Genre Wars Short Story contest. For stories up to 2,000 words. Free to enter. Small cash prizes. Publication in anthology for winners.
And the Big One...
Writer’s Cruise with Cynthia Whitcomb
Depart April 10, 2010 for a 14 day cruise from Miami trans-Atlantic, to the Canary Islands, Barcelona, Spain; Villefranche, France; Florence or Pisa, Italy; ending in Rome on April 24 on the Royal Carribbean cruise line. Prices begin at less than $100 per day (not including airfare). Includes the Writer's Workshop, all meals, great networking, and being treated like royalty.
Find out about what happened during the 2009 cruise. Then, set your sights on the seas!
Showing posts with label competition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label competition. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Let the Judging Begin...
Updates From the Front of the 3-Day Novel Contest
I received word from the Powers That Be in the 3-Day Novel Contest that my manuscript has been received and logged and is now with their judging committee.
Since my entry has been officially processed, I get banner-display bragging rights (see accompanying "I Survived..." pic). I find this oddly gratifying, and suddenly have a greater understanding of the importance of war medals.
And now, of course, those of us who entered the fray must return to our normally scheduled lives while The Committee spends the next few months reading (and hopefully rereading) the submissions and debating their favorites.
In my mind's eye, I see several harried readers half-hidden behind stacks of submissions. Each desperately searches for a manuscript to love. Each knows that the likelihood of doing so is roughly the equivalent of finding one's Perfect Life Partner during happy hour at a singles bar. Hope, however, burns eternal. But time marches on, and no reader can spend too much time on any one manuscript because there are still so many others awaiting perusal. I envision an overworked coffeepot, boxes marked "Yes!" "No!" and "Kill Me, Kill Me Now!" and a stash of donuts to give the calorie-laden courage necessary to begin reading another draft.
The winners will be announced in mid-January, 2010. In the meantime, we are free to work on our drafts however we see fit (I am already inflicting portions on the Writing Practicum members), though we are reminded to save a copy in its original form.
Because of the cataloging process, they don't yet have total figures of entries for this year's contest. One wonders just how many of us were gluttons for such punishment. Best of luck to all who entered -- I feel a certain affinity with them, based largely on a shared lack of sleep.
I'm currently working on a book project that takes one elite athlete's insights, training tips, and strategies and applies them to Real Life. It's shaping up to be a fascinating look at what makes people successful -- no matter what arena they choose to compete in. One of the big tentpole tenets is simply: once you've raised the bar, that level of performance becomes your new norm.
I know that writing a novel in less than 3 days raised the bar on my craft. I would strongly recommend the experience to any writer. Though the contest has been over for weeks now, I continue to benefit from it.
Yesterday, I spent 5 hours working on a new novel. I completed 5 pages. Before the 3-Day contest, I'd have been content with that. Now, I'm not. I've been on the front lines of battle and lived to tell about it. I have a better understanding of what I am capable of. I know I have it in me to do better...
I received word from the Powers That Be in the 3-Day Novel Contest that my manuscript has been received and logged and is now with their judging committee.Since my entry has been officially processed, I get banner-display bragging rights (see accompanying "I Survived..." pic). I find this oddly gratifying, and suddenly have a greater understanding of the importance of war medals.
And now, of course, those of us who entered the fray must return to our normally scheduled lives while The Committee spends the next few months reading (and hopefully rereading) the submissions and debating their favorites.
In my mind's eye, I see several harried readers half-hidden behind stacks of submissions. Each desperately searches for a manuscript to love. Each knows that the likelihood of doing so is roughly the equivalent of finding one's Perfect Life Partner during happy hour at a singles bar. Hope, however, burns eternal. But time marches on, and no reader can spend too much time on any one manuscript because there are still so many others awaiting perusal. I envision an overworked coffeepot, boxes marked "Yes!" "No!" and "Kill Me, Kill Me Now!" and a stash of donuts to give the calorie-laden courage necessary to begin reading another draft.
The winners will be announced in mid-January, 2010. In the meantime, we are free to work on our drafts however we see fit (I am already inflicting portions on the Writing Practicum members), though we are reminded to save a copy in its original form.
Because of the cataloging process, they don't yet have total figures of entries for this year's contest. One wonders just how many of us were gluttons for such punishment. Best of luck to all who entered -- I feel a certain affinity with them, based largely on a shared lack of sleep.
I'm currently working on a book project that takes one elite athlete's insights, training tips, and strategies and applies them to Real Life. It's shaping up to be a fascinating look at what makes people successful -- no matter what arena they choose to compete in. One of the big tentpole tenets is simply: once you've raised the bar, that level of performance becomes your new norm.
I know that writing a novel in less than 3 days raised the bar on my craft. I would strongly recommend the experience to any writer. Though the contest has been over for weeks now, I continue to benefit from it.
Yesterday, I spent 5 hours working on a new novel. I completed 5 pages. Before the 3-Day contest, I'd have been content with that. Now, I'm not. I've been on the front lines of battle and lived to tell about it. I have a better understanding of what I am capable of. I know I have it in me to do better...
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Thoughts on the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest
or, Who Needs Sleep When There’s Coffee?
I am still coming down from the creative high of the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest that I participated in this past weekend. This year was the 32nd year of the contest’s existence. Thirty-two years of people willingly putting family, food, sleep, and all things healthy on hold during the final weekend of summer to create a novel where 72 hours earlier there was just an idea.
Of course it’s nuts. We’re writers. We (literally) wrote the book on “nuts.”
Now, I did not think the event would be easy. I’m not stupid. I know better than to mock the muse. So I prepared as best I could.
We were allowed to have an outline and research notes. I had both (less than 10 total pages of random sentences, driving distances, character biographies, and first-this-then-that sequencing).
I didn’t actually write it down, but I molded and massaged the first sentence and the book’s hook in my head for weeks ahead of time, so that when the time came, I could hack it out by heart onto the computer and thus eliminate the dreaded Blank Page Syndrome.
A week beforehand, I got my much-anticipated speech recognition software. I trained it to recognize my voice and speech patterns so that during the contest I could sit leisurely and dictate whatever brilliant ideas happened to fly into my head.
I was so primed and ready that I started typing up the notes to a completely different project just so I didn’t over-think the project I wanted to write about and peak too soon on it.
Then I came down with the Swine Flu. Which is not nearly as funny as it sounds.
The contest was slated to begin at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, September 5. I spent the greater portion of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday flat on my back in bed.
(Actually, I got up long enough on Thursday evening for a friend of mine to drive me to the doctor’s office. I lay down on the exam table while the room stopped spinning and waited for the doc to see me. I voiced my concerns that I might have Swine Flu. While he looked me over, his nurse ventured into the waiting room where she informed my friend, “She’s really sick.”
“Yep!” The doctor said emphatically. “You have it!”
Cue the dancing girls.)
Because I don’t work on Saturday, I knew that I would miss the first hours of the contest, but had figured I could make up for lost time. Had not planned on making up for illness, however.
I very nearly didn’t do the contest. My family hadn’t seen me in days, and had to pick the slack for me all week, I reasoned. I couldn’t ask them to indulge me for another few days.
My husband pointed out that not trying would have been like setting fire to the $50 entry fee. He and a friend of ours didn’t mind running the household, taking care of Cassandra, and bringing me food at regular intervals (though an interesting sidelight of the flu was a complete and total disinterest in food).
My support staff gave their blessing. So, at 8:45 p.m. Saturday – nearly 21 hours after the contest began -- I took the dog and a fresh box of Kleenex and started writing.
The experience was unlike anything I have ever done. It was also completely different than I expected. I figured I’d be drained, sapped, and fried. On the contrary – as the hours went on, I felt that new pathways in my brain had opened up. I felt increasingly energized, seized with creative fervor.
I discovered that my wonderful new dictation software was incapable of recognizing my knocking-at-death’s-door voice. After four days in bed, my fingers weren’t the most coordinated typing instruments. Thank heaven for spell-check.
By Sunday morning, I had 30 pages written. The dog and I curled up on the studio loveseat and grabbed an hour and a half of sleep.
Late Sunday afternoon, I had an epiphany – I was writing almost on auto-pilot. Over 25 pages had flown from my brain onto the screen without me hardly even registering them. I had no idea what I’d written. But I wasn’t tired. Instead, I was… buzzing.
By 3:00 a.m. Monday morning, I was rounding on the 90 page mark. I started thanking God for keeping me cognizant, alert, and aware – and realized that I REALLY needed to get a little sleep, even though there was still a ways to go.
Kestrel and I curled up on the loveseat again, but this time, sleep was a hard time coming. My eyes kept seeing the computer screen and hearing buzzers. My hands had developed a nasty shake. I kept having flashbacks to the 56-hour marathon I once lived through when I was an inmate at an advertising company.
After 2 hours, I pressed onward. By Monday afternoon, with 12 hours left in the contest, I had all but two sequences done. But there was a glitch. An important piece of a character’s puzzle needed to be included. I knew what the piece was – I just didn’t know where to put it.
Sleep would help, I decided, and headed inside, to the comfort of an actual bed for an hour.
Five minutes after I laid down, the Answer for where the piece belonged pinged into my addled brain. Of course, sleep was impossible then….
So, back out to the studio Kestrel and I trundled. Inserted the missing piece – voila! It fit beautifully. Hammered out the ending, laughed out loud at discovering that it was unintentionally funny, and started editing with 3 ½ hours on the clock.
I read and discovered things I did not remember writing. They made sense, though, and moved the story along, praised be!
The final edit was finished at 11:57 p.m. Monday evening.
The next day as I printed out the manuscript for mailing, in keeping with contest editing rules, I did NOT re-read it with a fine-toothed comb, looking for errors. In a sense, that was the hardest part of the contest. Rrrrghhh! Sending out a first draft! The horror!
I expected to crash, comatose, and awaken in 2011 or so. But a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion… It never came.
I finished the contest so jazzed with creative juices that, though I’m exhausted, I’m UP. It’s as if those newly created brain paths would kind of like to stay open and accept some direction. It has been an unexpected, and thoroughly delightful, part of the experience
That’s the long version. In short, here are a few things I learned from the experience:
1. Spending 52 hours non-stop with a new dog results in the dog developing an unhealthy attraction and dependence upon you. This manifests itself by the dog spending the entire night whining at the door when you are trying to sleep for the first time in days.
2. Trust your instincts. Second-guessing only leads to creative bottleneck. It’s fun to find out what’s behind Door #3!
3. Coffee is, truly, the nectar of the gods.
4. General Foods International Coffees Swiss Mocha Instant Beverage is, perhaps, the most repulsive thing on the planet that one can put into one’s mouth.
5. Nothing compares to having a flock of family and friends who support you even though they get stuck picking up the slack while you wander off to be “creative.”
Official contest results won’t come out for months. Unofficially, however, I have to say that I consider my experience of the past few days an unequivocal creative mountaintop. I highly recommend it!
I am still coming down from the creative high of the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest that I participated in this past weekend. This year was the 32nd year of the contest’s existence. Thirty-two years of people willingly putting family, food, sleep, and all things healthy on hold during the final weekend of summer to create a novel where 72 hours earlier there was just an idea.
Of course it’s nuts. We’re writers. We (literally) wrote the book on “nuts.”
Now, I did not think the event would be easy. I’m not stupid. I know better than to mock the muse. So I prepared as best I could.
We were allowed to have an outline and research notes. I had both (less than 10 total pages of random sentences, driving distances, character biographies, and first-this-then-that sequencing).
I didn’t actually write it down, but I molded and massaged the first sentence and the book’s hook in my head for weeks ahead of time, so that when the time came, I could hack it out by heart onto the computer and thus eliminate the dreaded Blank Page Syndrome.
A week beforehand, I got my much-anticipated speech recognition software. I trained it to recognize my voice and speech patterns so that during the contest I could sit leisurely and dictate whatever brilliant ideas happened to fly into my head.
I was so primed and ready that I started typing up the notes to a completely different project just so I didn’t over-think the project I wanted to write about and peak too soon on it.
Then I came down with the Swine Flu. Which is not nearly as funny as it sounds.
The contest was slated to begin at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, September 5. I spent the greater portion of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday flat on my back in bed.
(Actually, I got up long enough on Thursday evening for a friend of mine to drive me to the doctor’s office. I lay down on the exam table while the room stopped spinning and waited for the doc to see me. I voiced my concerns that I might have Swine Flu. While he looked me over, his nurse ventured into the waiting room where she informed my friend, “She’s really sick.”
“Yep!” The doctor said emphatically. “You have it!”
Cue the dancing girls.)
Because I don’t work on Saturday, I knew that I would miss the first hours of the contest, but had figured I could make up for lost time. Had not planned on making up for illness, however.
I very nearly didn’t do the contest. My family hadn’t seen me in days, and had to pick the slack for me all week, I reasoned. I couldn’t ask them to indulge me for another few days.
My husband pointed out that not trying would have been like setting fire to the $50 entry fee. He and a friend of ours didn’t mind running the household, taking care of Cassandra, and bringing me food at regular intervals (though an interesting sidelight of the flu was a complete and total disinterest in food).
My support staff gave their blessing. So, at 8:45 p.m. Saturday – nearly 21 hours after the contest began -- I took the dog and a fresh box of Kleenex and started writing.
The experience was unlike anything I have ever done. It was also completely different than I expected. I figured I’d be drained, sapped, and fried. On the contrary – as the hours went on, I felt that new pathways in my brain had opened up. I felt increasingly energized, seized with creative fervor.
I discovered that my wonderful new dictation software was incapable of recognizing my knocking-at-death’s-door voice. After four days in bed, my fingers weren’t the most coordinated typing instruments. Thank heaven for spell-check.
By Sunday morning, I had 30 pages written. The dog and I curled up on the studio loveseat and grabbed an hour and a half of sleep.
Late Sunday afternoon, I had an epiphany – I was writing almost on auto-pilot. Over 25 pages had flown from my brain onto the screen without me hardly even registering them. I had no idea what I’d written. But I wasn’t tired. Instead, I was… buzzing.
By 3:00 a.m. Monday morning, I was rounding on the 90 page mark. I started thanking God for keeping me cognizant, alert, and aware – and realized that I REALLY needed to get a little sleep, even though there was still a ways to go.
Kestrel and I curled up on the loveseat again, but this time, sleep was a hard time coming. My eyes kept seeing the computer screen and hearing buzzers. My hands had developed a nasty shake. I kept having flashbacks to the 56-hour marathon I once lived through when I was an inmate at an advertising company.
After 2 hours, I pressed onward. By Monday afternoon, with 12 hours left in the contest, I had all but two sequences done. But there was a glitch. An important piece of a character’s puzzle needed to be included. I knew what the piece was – I just didn’t know where to put it.
Sleep would help, I decided, and headed inside, to the comfort of an actual bed for an hour.
Five minutes after I laid down, the Answer for where the piece belonged pinged into my addled brain. Of course, sleep was impossible then….
So, back out to the studio Kestrel and I trundled. Inserted the missing piece – voila! It fit beautifully. Hammered out the ending, laughed out loud at discovering that it was unintentionally funny, and started editing with 3 ½ hours on the clock.
I read and discovered things I did not remember writing. They made sense, though, and moved the story along, praised be!
The final edit was finished at 11:57 p.m. Monday evening.
The next day as I printed out the manuscript for mailing, in keeping with contest editing rules, I did NOT re-read it with a fine-toothed comb, looking for errors. In a sense, that was the hardest part of the contest. Rrrrghhh! Sending out a first draft! The horror!
I expected to crash, comatose, and awaken in 2011 or so. But a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion… It never came.
I finished the contest so jazzed with creative juices that, though I’m exhausted, I’m UP. It’s as if those newly created brain paths would kind of like to stay open and accept some direction. It has been an unexpected, and thoroughly delightful, part of the experience
That’s the long version. In short, here are a few things I learned from the experience:
1. Spending 52 hours non-stop with a new dog results in the dog developing an unhealthy attraction and dependence upon you. This manifests itself by the dog spending the entire night whining at the door when you are trying to sleep for the first time in days.
2. Trust your instincts. Second-guessing only leads to creative bottleneck. It’s fun to find out what’s behind Door #3!
3. Coffee is, truly, the nectar of the gods.
4. General Foods International Coffees Swiss Mocha Instant Beverage is, perhaps, the most repulsive thing on the planet that one can put into one’s mouth.
5. Nothing compares to having a flock of family and friends who support you even though they get stuck picking up the slack while you wander off to be “creative.”
Official contest results won’t come out for months. Unofficially, however, I have to say that I consider my experience of the past few days an unequivocal creative mountaintop. I highly recommend it!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Extreme Mustang Makeover Blogs
The Mustang Heritage Foundation is holding an intriguing competition for horse trainers.
100 Trainers. 100 Mustangs. 100 Days.
Early in June, 100 pre-selected trainers got their fresh-off-the-range BLM Mustangs (by lottery -- no choosing which horse they received). On September 22, those trainers will meet at the Will Rogers Equestrian Center in Fort Worth, TX, in a competition to see who has done the best training job. The Mustangs will be auctioned for adoption afterward.
Some of the trainers have started blogs on their involvement in the project:
* Cornerstone Training (Steve and Wendy Hilton Smith)
* Rockin N Ranch (Ted Noland)
* Bar T (Jimmy Thomas)
Here's a complete list of the 100 competing trainers.
While the Mouse is Away
... The cats have been playing.
Yes, I'm back. I swear -- I go on hiatus for the teeniest little bit, and all sorts of screws go loose. I logged on to post about the Mustang Makeover today, and --
lo and behold!
I was locked out of MY OWN BLOG! For some unknown reason, my blog had been flagged as a Spam Blog. (Mind you, one of the last posts I made several months ago did, indeed, use the word "spam." Because I had over 200 comments to one blog post and -- you guessed it -- not ONE of them was legit. So I disabled that little gizmo. As if I have the time to go through and remove 200 crap posts every day. Yeesh!
I DID, however, receive something recently that looked as if it came from me. It had my e-mail address on it, AND the picture from my Blogger Profile. If I didn't know who I was, I'd have certainly thought it looked legit. Good Lord. There's a special circle in hell for spammers...
So -- anyway -- since it appears that I can't stay away for any length of time, I guess the BlogWorld and I are stuck with each other.
My Life So Far
Been very, very busy lately:
* Got Theo (the Wonder Percheron) started under saddle (thanks to attending a great clinic by Cornerstone Trainer Steve Smith here in Coloma, at the end of May)...
* Am in the middle of a major project for the United States Hunter Jumper Association...
* Taught a 4-week Writer's Workshop in April...
* Completely updated and redesigned the Muse Ink writer's resource site...
* Been working as a story consultant for a feature film in development at Vineyard Productions...
* Was a featured speaker for Authors Access on "Ghostwriting, Co-Authoring, and Collaborating...
* Celebrated my 19th wedding anniversary this past Tuesday...
* And much, much more!
Also, July is the official release date of The Rider's Pain-Free Back. The book was excerpted in the May and June issues of EQUUS magazine -- something I found quite exciting.
So -- things haven't stopped here. Full speed ahead. And NO SPAM, please. This is a vegetarian establishment!
100 Trainers. 100 Mustangs. 100 Days.
Early in June, 100 pre-selected trainers got their fresh-off-the-range BLM Mustangs (by lottery -- no choosing which horse they received). On September 22, those trainers will meet at the Will Rogers Equestrian Center in Fort Worth, TX, in a competition to see who has done the best training job. The Mustangs will be auctioned for adoption afterward.
Some of the trainers have started blogs on their involvement in the project:
* Cornerstone Training (Steve and Wendy Hilton Smith)
* Rockin N Ranch (Ted Noland)
* Bar T (Jimmy Thomas)
Here's a complete list of the 100 competing trainers.
While the Mouse is Away
... The cats have been playing.
Yes, I'm back. I swear -- I go on hiatus for the teeniest little bit, and all sorts of screws go loose. I logged on to post about the Mustang Makeover today, and --
lo and behold!
I was locked out of MY OWN BLOG! For some unknown reason, my blog had been flagged as a Spam Blog. (Mind you, one of the last posts I made several months ago did, indeed, use the word "spam." Because I had over 200 comments to one blog post and -- you guessed it -- not ONE of them was legit. So I disabled that little gizmo. As if I have the time to go through and remove 200 crap posts every day. Yeesh!
I DID, however, receive something recently that looked as if it came from me. It had my e-mail address on it, AND the picture from my Blogger Profile. If I didn't know who I was, I'd have certainly thought it looked legit. Good Lord. There's a special circle in hell for spammers...
So -- anyway -- since it appears that I can't stay away for any length of time, I guess the BlogWorld and I are stuck with each other.
My Life So Far
Been very, very busy lately:
* Got Theo (the Wonder Percheron) started under saddle (thanks to attending a great clinic by Cornerstone Trainer Steve Smith here in Coloma, at the end of May)...
* Am in the middle of a major project for the United States Hunter Jumper Association...
* Taught a 4-week Writer's Workshop in April...
* Completely updated and redesigned the Muse Ink writer's resource site...
* Been working as a story consultant for a feature film in development at Vineyard Productions...
* Was a featured speaker for Authors Access on "Ghostwriting, Co-Authoring, and Collaborating...
* Celebrated my 19th wedding anniversary this past Tuesday...
* And much, much more!
Also, July is the official release date of The Rider's Pain-Free Back. The book was excerpted in the May and June issues of EQUUS magazine -- something I found quite exciting.
So -- things haven't stopped here. Full speed ahead. And NO SPAM, please. This is a vegetarian establishment!
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