What to do when your middle sags...and drags...

Emerald City Writers Conference...part deux

For some reason, I didn't sleep well last night. Took me forever to fall asleep, then I was up at 2, and finally gave up at 5. Sad, all this space to myself and I can't even sleep!

Since I was awake, I had no problem making the early morning workshops. Susan Mallery talked about Writing Faster, and since people came to hear what I had to say about that, I knew it would be packed! She scared us all with a schedule, but had practical advice for how to increase our output. Namely :

• write every day. Writing in bursts leads to not writing in bursts.
• increase your daily page count slowly. When you are comfortable with that, increase it again.
• schedule in emergency weeks. Life happens.
• Write forward. If you like to edit, do that after your pages are in for the day

I liked the first workshop so much, I stayed for the second - How to Prop Up Your Sagging Middle...and not your tummy! I love beginnings and endings, so the middle is the part that makes me work...hmmm...I like my hair and my toes...wow, this workshop is a metaphor for life...but I digress... Some hints :

• Have a midpoint. This gives you somethingto write to, and once it is over, it is all downhill from there.
• The middle is what makes your characters relatable and likeable. It is where you explain what you introduced.
• If things are dragging, make something happen. (I use penguins, she suggested burning down the town!)
• Never have more than a half page of introspection.

At lunch they did the basket raffle - buy raffle tickets and maybe you'll win a basket full of goodies...alas, I didn't win...but Gwen did :)

I just ran up stairs to rip off my shoes...they were cutting of circulation in my swolen feet! No more of those until summer! So...now I am in comfier clothes (since I don't think tennies go with my dress) and off to learn some more :)