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The Clarion West Write-a-thon is over.  As far as goals. I got Chapter 49 all done…oh yeah and it turned into Chs 49 AND 50.  I have a complete MS to the end of the book (but I don’t feel like it’s good enough yet).  Finally, I got one of three sponsors…Oh well, two out of three ain’t bad!

So from here out, I will make a diary entry whenever writing or writing related things happen. I’ll update at least once a week, even if I’m not in writing mode.

Thanks, Clarion West!  Your write-a-thon got me over a hump!

Today is the last day of the write-a-thon. I got one sponsor, YIPEE! Thanks, Sponsor! I celebrated by starting in on Part 4, Rahcel of In a Mortal Shadow.

Proof of finishing the Write-a-thon with a bang:

Rahcel. Falion tried not to look down at the twisted limbs and broken bodies of men he’d once fought shoulder to shoulder with in his sworn duty toDarii…men he’d helped murder. As his horse passed from Kellen into Rahcel in a storm of thundering horses, he should have felt relief. He’d delivered her from her imprisonment in Lumiden into the hands of the Starriders. He’d freed her, but in so doing, he’d imprisoned himself. He felt a wall as adamant as granite mortar itself about his soul. He was alone; no one behind him would have him and no one ahead would trust the turncoat he’d become.

Today is an easy entry because I can show you what I did. I finished writing the Comic Con San Diego Blog and brought the new site for Leasspell online. 

Thank goodness only a week left on the write-a-thon! Then I can go back to ignoring my writing and MS without a guilty conscience! Okay, less of a guilty conscience.

Good news is I did get back on the puter and start writing, but alas, it was not on my manuscript. I started writing up a blog for Comic Con. Man, it’s hard to write up only a 600-1000 word blog on the 5-day extravaganza that is SDCC!

I got back from Comic Con yesterday.  I had a great time.  I sought out the panels with fantasy writers on them and went to three.  Loved them.  I talked to several of authors, just a passing sentence.  I listened.  I tried to take notes.  But if I’m honest, while I was sitting in the audience listening to them, I imagined what it would be like to sit up there, next to them.

On one of the panels, someone asked how a person could become an author.  The three panelists gave the same answer: Write.  I wish they had said more.  Writing is only a middle part, I think.  First is the imagining, then the learning (because writing well doesn’t just happen), then the writing.  After that, I know there is more, because I’ve done the imagining, the learning, and the writing, and I’m not there yet.  But what comes next, that takes entirely new skills that I didn’t learn when I got my Creative Writing Degree, or my editing certificate.

I was in line for the Fantasy of the Realm (or some such) chatting, when one girl asked me what my novel was about.  I couldn’t tell her.  I don’t have an elevator pitch.  I’ve written a novel that rivals Name of the Wind in length; I have no skill to boil my story down to a sentence or two.  Yet here I am, faced with putting together a one page cover letter that has a paragraph description of my novel.  I could just do it and send it off, but all my research says that if you blow the cover letter or synopsis or whatever introductory material is required, they may not even read you manuscript.

So I think I have more steps to learn than just, write.