Field's End, "...serves the writers’ community and nurtures the written word through lectures, workshops and instruction in the art, craft, and profession of writing." Their website is at http://www.fieldsend.org/index.html.

They offer writing classes, an annual conference, and fall events. They also have a monthly round-table series, which features local Pacific Northwest authors. Field's End is affiliated with the Bainbridge Public Library. Their events are--for the Seattlite like me--a beautiful ferry boat commute away.

This year, because of a family birthday, I cannot attend the SCBWI conference on April 10th, 2010. So I am planning to go to the April 17th all day Field's End conference at Kiana Lodge near Agate Pass. I'll post my own summary, post conference.

Recently, I signed up for an art class. And learned how little I know about drawing.

I draw landscapes with reasonable accuracy because it is a way to quiet my brain. The writer in me stops, shuts up, takes a nap. Thoughts become non-verbal, which is another way of thinking, seeing, feeling, breathing. It is a good way to be.

So I thought that I would learn how to draw faces, but it's incredibly hard to portray human beings. To capture their look. Not as easy as taking a photograph. Recognition is all in the lines of forehead, nose, the space between the nose and the mouth. Cognition is just a different kind of art.

31,765 Words

Here are my 2009 National Novel Writing Month statistics:

• 50,000 word goal - 31,765 words written = 18,235 short.
• 18,235 divided by 1,667 average words per day = 10.93881224 more days of writing.
• OR = two ridiculously long writing days of 9,000 some word per day.
  

What I really achieved:

• Some 32,000 words closer to the ending of my big project.
• Two major insights.
• Three days--over the Thanksgiving holiday--of reading the entire trilogy, from start to the "finish."

The exercise of writing is more important than the word count. National Novel Writing Month 2009 was an exercise for me; it is highly likely that all those words will never be read at all. But November 2009 counts because those 32,000 words will bring me closer to the grand finale. In a trilogy where each draft book is easily 100,000 words, this means that less is more.

National Novel Writing Month

Can you write 50,000 words in 30 days?

You can find out if you try National Novel Writing Month.

Call it nanowrimo for short. The folks who started the crazy enterprise say it is, "A fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

I've tried nanowrimo three years and succeeded twice. This year, I'm going for it again.

Two keys things equal a high word count.

1) Get rid of the internal editor. You know the one who lives in your head and tells you can't, shouldn't, couldn't, nope, not good enough, make it better, better than better, sorry it's not perfect. If you don't have one of these lovelies, you are a lucky, lucky writer.

My internal editor is a sharp lady, about a 105, with ruthless taste. She is sometimes mean and nasty. I imagine she only has two bad teeth. The other 30 teeth are long gone, lost in multiple verbal brawls. She loves red ink. She can paralyze me at times, but I've become good at converting her into a force for the good because who would want to read raw, clunky, and baaaaaaaaaad writing? However, even internal editors need vacations. So for the month of November, I gear up and hunker down. I've got to get 2,000 words a day which can take anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours. No time for my internal editor, which brings me to the second key point.

2) Ignore everything and anything which would take you away from getting your writing done. This may include but is not limited to: dishes, laundry, the really good book your friend told you to read, TV shows you like or don't, phone calls, online forums (they are a dangerous black hole sucking up anything coming near them!), and people in general. My personal favorite thing to ignore is sleeping, but this creates some interesting problems during the daytime.

Everyone may have their own best advice. Certainly the folks putting on the show, who maintain the National Novel Writing Month website do a great job of keeping you going. But really, the long and the short of writing a novel is you have to spend the time writing and writing and writing and writing the novel.

Nanowrimo is a just the hyperdrive way to do it.

Any takers?

Found jump drive -- Lessons Learned

1. Efforts to find jump drive: On Monday, leave work early; go to scene of the incident (cafe and market); ask staff about jump drive; look around; be annoying to other customers; put up flyers on bulletin boards, flyers include picture of lost jump drive, owner's first name, cell phone number, and email; walk home retracing steps of Sunday afternoon.

2. Ways to make peace with the loss: Eat veggie chips and ice cream for dinner, and spend evening reading a page-turner thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson.

3. Random check/still obsessing: This morning look in all pockets of Patagonia fleece jacket, not the jacket worn on Sunday.

4. Discovery: Find jump drive in pocket!

5. Unresolved mystery: why oh why did I move the jump drive from its regular location (small pouch in purse) to a pocket of a jacket that I wasn't wearing that day? What was I thinking? (Obviously was not thinking at all.)

6. Lessons learned:

a) Label jump drives.

b) Do not put so much work on one jump drive.

c) Sign up for 2 GB free storage with mozy.org.

d) Buy external hard drive or new computer this weekend.

e) Password protect everything.

Lost Jump Drive

They go by lots of names: jump, flash, or thumb drives. They are easy to use, store a ton of writing, or whatever else you need them to, and they are tiny enough to carry around wherever you go. In your purse.

Tiny enough to lose. Like I did tonight.

I have a ton of writing on my little gizmo. All of my current projects and drafts. Yes, I also back up all my writing on the hard drive of my computers and email myself current drafts to two personal email accounts as an added precaution. I have the projects I'm working on, and even ones that are on the metaphorical shelf, saved. So what then is the problem?

Well, on that jump drive I kept about 10 years worth of work, and not all of it was password protected. Lost. Out there on the cement somewhere, about to be run over by a bus, tucked in a corner forgotten, or even worse...somebody is reading my stuff right now this very minute before it's submission ready. Raw writing. Crappy drafts. Hundreds of them. God help me, but it's a feeling that will make you sick to your stomach. (The journals were password protected; at least I had enough sense to do that, hallelujah!)

I've called both Cafe Zoka's and the little grocery story where I bought some soup to see if anyone turned in my thumb drive. Tomorrow I will visit the cafe, the grocery, and walk the same way home to see if somehow my personal jump drive jumped out of my purse or my pocket along the way.

Learn from my mistake: if you store your writing on jump drive, please do the following:

1. Password protect all the files that you don't want some stranger, rightly curious maybe or bored silly, to read.
2. Email yourself copies of your work and save in multiple locations.
3. Label your drive with your name and cell phone number.

P.S.
And if you see my jump drive (pictured above) somewhere in Seattle, can let me know?

Thoughts on revisions

Nearing 9:00 p.m. and time to write. Another trick is to plug into loud music and spent some time spewing words into the pages of a computer journal. Then once you have a flow going, switch over to the project at hand.

in reference to: Echo Arna (view on Google Sidewiki)