>April Writing Challenge

Posted on April 19, 2006 by Annie Rayburn/Carol Burnside

>Yesterday I managed 4 pages, despite the babysitting gig. Yea, me!
Why all this obsessing over page count?

I signed up for GRW’s April writing challenge. It’s not so much a competition as a personal challenge of accomplishment. My goal is to average 4 pgs a day for the month – a total of 120 pgs for the month. See, I figure if I can accomplish that, I could realistically write three category romances a year, plus squeeze in pre-writing, editing and a little promo. Once I’ve accomplished that goal, I’ll work on adding a few short stories and a novella to the mix until I think I’ve reached saturation on my productivity. Anyway, that’s the goal, but I’m not quite there yet.

As of today, I’m a few pages behind in my daily counts, but there’s good reason for that and I still have expectations of finishing the month strong. I’ll explain more about the plan and why I’m behind tomorrow. But for now I’ve gotta go write. Enough of the day has been taken up corraling the ‘toddler’ puppy on this rainy day! 😉

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>Happy, Happy!

Posted on April 18, 2006 by Annie Rayburn/Carol Burnside

>Yesterday, in addition to being the deadline for filing taxes, it was my 26th wedding anniversary. That’s the first “Happy” in the “Happy-Happy” title.

Today I babysat my next door neighbor’s toddler so she could go to the hospital and give birth to his little sister–the second “Happy”. I loaded up my Alphasmart, a notebook, pens and notes and settled in. Obviously, I’d forgotten how much attention a toddler needs. It was nearly 2 p.m. before I got a chance to write anything, let alone jot down notes (who can concentrate with Baby Einstein playing in the background and a toddler shouting MOO?) But when Acton is tired, he’s ready to nap NOW. Bless his heart, that was my chance for writing time. So instead of tackling the First Draft in 30 Days version of my WIP, Taming The Tycoon, what am I doing? Yep, writing this blog entry. (Hey, Randy – I’m back!)

Still, it’s a good free-writing exercise and will get me in the mood so I can get my pages done for the day and maybe even squeeze in a few extra toward my April goal.
!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!
It’s a Girl! Baby Piper arrived weighing 9 lbs, 6 oz. Congratulations go to neighbors Hope, Brian, Jake and Acton on the new addition to your family. Good job, Hope!

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>She’s at it again!

Posted on March 28, 2006 by Annie Rayburn/Carol Burnside

>I told myself I wasn’t going to do this again–try another method of writing, that is. But guess what? Yep, I’m doing it anyway. This time, I’m reading and working on the First Draft in 30 Days (by Karen S. Wiesner) method in an effort to improve my productivity. I love forms and spreadsheets. This book has that. First thing I did was sit down and re-create all the forms in my computer so I could read and fill out at the same time.

So far, I can see how doing all the preliminary work will give you insights and help with the actual scene brainstorming process. I kinda did this anyway, but in a more freeflowing style. So the first part is going pretty fast. I’m working on Taming The Tycoon, the first in my Hellion’s Heirs trilogy. Since the secondary characters show up in their own books soon, I’m paying special attention to the characters sheets.

You won’t see any huge upsurge in page count showing up on the sidebar for a couple weeks. Then I’ll be through the preliminary stuff and can start putting the scenes in order and will be able to tell you how it’s coming along. The goal is to have a rough draft in 30 days, a submittable body of work in 2-3 months.

I’ll keep you posted.

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