I’ve been wanting to organize some more informal get togethers with Quark. I heard from Gamila that it’s really the informal get togethers that Aneeka threw together back in the day that got the ball rolling with the writing group. Of course, when I was talking online with Drek about this and venting / bouncing ideas off of him, his response was “doesn’t informal mean that it isn’t planned?” Well…maybe…
So, today was the first day of Nanowrimo, and Drek and his wife Kyla were kind enough to host a sort of “informal” (but planned) writing party. It was a lot of fun! We basically all got into the same room and wrote in our stories together–while listening to music, snacking on food, sharing our wordcounts, playing with the cat, etc. After long days and lots of studies, it was very relaxing and a lot of fun!
I gave Danke and Onlera a ride to Drek’s house, which is pretty far away from campus. It was really just the five of us, but I think we all had a good time. Onlera hasn’t really made it out to too many meetings before, but she seemed excited about it now. And Danke has been showing up to almost every meeting, but hasn’t yet submitted anything. I think that’s about to change, though. As writing group leader, I’ve taken it upon myself to help everyone overcome the shyness and lack of self-confidence that seems to prevail among aspiring writers (holy cow! It is easier to write 50,000 words in a single sitting than it is to convince Aneeka that her novel is not the worst story in existence! Even with empirical proof!) 😉
I was a little bit surprised that I only got 1,100 words in two hours. 400 of those were from something that I realized I needed to insert in a certain place, in order to give the novel a little bit more direction and build up the tension earlier. Basically, Ian and Aaron consult with each other on what they should do, after they make it to the capitol city, and they figure out that the coalition rescue fleet will arrive in about nine months, so they decide that their highest priority is to find out what hit them and do what they can to disable it before the fleet arrives and gets hit. Other than that, just continuing the scene I’m at right now–at the feast where Ian realizes that by local law, he won all of the bandit women as slaves when he killed their husbands in self-defense, and he makes the extremely unusual decision to free them. More cultural awkwardnesses and misunderstandings! How fun!
So, basically, the writing party was a TON of fun and I’d love to do it again! I don’t know if I’ll be able to host parties here at the FLSR, since there really isn’t a space that’s empty and relatively quiet for 2 full hours. I’ll see what I can do, though.
