CM Dietrich

Official website for CM Dietrich, author.

It’s All About The Words, Words, Words

February 1, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Wow, it’s been a while.

So, 2017 happened. I’m not really a New Year’s Resolution type person, but I do like to take advantage of significant turning points in my life to take stock of where I am, where I’m going. What works, what doesn’t.

2016 was a good year for me, writing-wise. I put more focus into it than I had been putting in previously, and it has been the start of something great. But I wanted something concrete to make sure that I was keeping it up in 2017.

I’m notoriously bad for not keeping track of time. Small units of time I’m generally okay with, but bigger units of time? I can’t remember if something happened last week, last month, or last year. I’ve got today under control, I’ve got yesterday under control, and then there’s this big grey blob called THE PAST which everything else falls into.

So, I figure–2016 was pretty good. Yay me. But there were swaths of time where I didn’t write much, and I have no idea how long those swaths were and how frequently they happened. Also, it was really inspiring to see everyone on Twitter talk about their yearly roundup, their stats, the time they spent writing and the number of words they wrote, and I realized–I’m completely incapable of reporting on that stuff.

I don’t have the data.

So, I did some Googling, and I figured out how to get the data!! It’s this really fantastic word tracking spreadsheet from Svenja (http://svenjaliv.com). And, I figured–I’ll try it out for a month. I’ll see how it goes.

Y’all–I wrote 17,311 words IN JANUARY. In ONE MONTH. And I skipped EIGHT DAYS completely, and wrote less than 100 words on three days and more than 100/less than 400 words on eight other days.

I didn’t do well at tracking my time–but let’s be realistic, I’m also doing a lot of writing as I’m walking, in five minute chunks here and there, and occasionally while I’m lying in bed with my kid. So I’m not gonna stress out about tracking time, especially when I’m making the forward progress that I want to make.

I set my yearly goal at 200k words, and right now?

Right now, things are looking pretty damn good.

Did you set any writing goals for yourself this year? How do you stay accountable? Do you have other systems that you like to follow, or goals that you like to set?

Write Church

October 3, 2016 / / 0 Comments

So my regular writing group did a new thing this week, and in addition to our regular Wednesday meeting, we met at a bar first thing Sunday morning. (Obviously, we’re calling it Write Church.)

And it was just really nice. It was definitely more informal and chattier than our normal Wednesday meets, but it was really nice to have a second focused writing session in a week, and it was great to see everyone twice in a week when I usually just see them once.

Progress on HH … well, it continues. It’s around the 40k mark. I’m having issues with the chapter I’m currently writing, as it’s mostly delving into new territory and laying out some background, and since I’m not excited about it, it’s taking a long time to get sorted out*. But I’m making progress, and I just got to the point where I’m introducing a new character. If nothing else, I now have general background arcs for my two younger characters, one of whom is very concerned about getting in touch with their family, and one who is concerned about what they are going to be when they grow up. And if this next little chunk goes okay, I’ve got an interesting librarian stationed in a moldy library to work with too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to tackle writing the things that aren’t fun for me, specifically when I know they’re going to get cut. When I’m working in Scrivener, I usually just abandon the section I’m on, start a new section, and move on with my life. But I’ve mostly been working on my tablet, and since Scrivener isn’t available on Android, I’m back to using Google Drive. I don’t know what it is, but I mostly** feel that when I’m working in a single document that I should write chronologically, and not skip things.

Things that are Not Fun and Destined To Be Cut usually follow a pattern for me … they’re transition scenes of some sort, written to bridge a gap between a plot point and another plot point. Frequently, they’re exploration sequences, things like ‘I wonder what this character actually needs’ and ‘what would they do as part of their normal day?’. Sometimes, they’re just ‘well, I need to have a different viewpoint character as a break here before I do another chapter with the character I was just with’.

In this case, the chapter that’s slowing me down is all three. I’m finding out some interesting things as I’m pushing through it–but overall, I’m not sure it’s worth it, and I should consider a better way to deal with this type of things in the future.

 

 

*This is a GREAT indication that it’ll get cut in the next edit.

**I do have a few thousand words that have been abandoned at the bottom of the doc and that I don’t intend to use for anything, but they also keep me from having to write into the void of an empty page, so it’s alright.

An Exploration of Fandom

September 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

The very first thing I was a fan of as a child was Robin Hood*. I thought about the world constantly. I read the stories over and over again. What would I do if I got lose in the woods and found Robin? How would I help them rob the rich to feed the poor? Why was there only one woman in the stories, and how come I had to be pretend to be her literally every time we played Robin Hood at school? (I far preferred playing it at home, where one of my sisters would jump at the chance to be Maid Marion and I could finally be someone else–like Robin himself, or Will Scarlet.)

After that, it was Star Wars. Not just the original trilogy–although I so loved that trilogy–but the books as well, the expanded universe that just opened my mind up to the possibilities that were contained within the worlds that Lucas had originally created. There was just so much out there, so many things we could possibly be. In my imagination,  I flew X-Wings, I joined the Jedi Academy with Jacen and Jaina, I stared in awe while Luke Skywalker taught us to use the Force and helped us build our lightsabers. I read all of the books I could possibly get my hands on (yes, even that one. I read that one a lot.).

And from there, it was onwards, through the Belgariad and Mallorean into Stephen King and Anne Rice. I fell out of love with Star Wars when the Phantom Menace came out, and went through a brief period where all I read was Robin Cook**. and it was just after then that I started writing for myself.

Even though I’d spent most of my childhood imagining making my own lightsaber (interestingly, I don’t remember any of the colours of the blades, though I’m sure I had many), when I started writing, I started with original work, and I mostly kept that up. I read a little bit of fanfic here and there, but not much of it, and I definitely didn’t have any need to write any of my own. And fanfic was hard to find, then–Google existed, just barely, but I never knew where I was supposed to go to find the things I was looking for, and it was hard for me to find decent stuff. Livejournal was able to provide for a while, but strikethroughs kept happening, and it was difficult to trust that content would always be there.

Then Mad Max: Fury Road happened, and it changed everything for me.

I wanted–no, I needed–to read everything about it. When I ran out of reading the things that were actually canon, I went back to fanfic. And lo, in the time between when I was a child and now, Ao3 now existed, and there were tags, and there were categories, and everything was beautiful.

After Mad Max, there was The Force Awakens, and my love for Star Wars blossomed and exploded so hard in my chest it was like it had never faltered to begin with. And there was Hamilton, and Leverage, and Stranger Things, and it is so beautiful and amazing that there are so many artists out there that are offering up their visions of what they think, what they see, what they extrapolate from the art we’ve been given to weave their own beauty on top of what we already have.

My family and I went to Sask Expo this weekend, and it was so great. There was cosplay, and there were artists and writers, and there were quilts and stuffed animals and the Ghostbusters car, and it was just so amazing to see everyone out there, showing us all what they love, showing us how much they love it.

I really love fandom, everybody. I really, really love it.

I started writing some of my own fanfic this year, actually putting things down on paper instead of just keeping them in my head. I don’t know what I’ll actually end up doing with it–but hey, I have feelings to explore, and I can explore them in the context of some of my favourite art. That’s a pretty great opportunity to have.

 

 

*Yes, the animated one with the fox. That one.

**I tried to get from Robin Cook into Tess Gerritsen, and still remember the nausea winding around my guts as I tried to get through the start of one of her books, the horror beautiful and compelling and definitely too much for me at the time.

Foreshadowing!

September 12, 2016 / / 0 Comments

It’s no secret that I think foreshadowing is pretty great. When I was waxing on about it earlier on Twitter, I actually referred to it as my “favourite writing technique” and I am pretty sure that’s accurate*.

The thing about stories without foreshadowing is that they’re deeply unsatisfying to me as a reader. I love being surprised by endings (even more so when there’s an awesome twist), but I don’t want the surprise of the ending to be caused by WHAM! a ton of new information! that wasn’t available before just now! that is the only way for this plot line to be resolved! aren’t you surprised!

Well, yes, I am surprised. But I’m also upset.

Let me back up here.

I have enough experience in real life with getting hit on the side of the head by things that I didn’t see coming. I don’t want–or need–the fiction I read to replicate that experience. I want to have the satisfaction of putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together, and I want the delight and novelty of the final picture not being quite what I expected–but I want that in the context of finishing a puzzle of a dog, and realizing that there’s actually a kitten tucked in at the dog’s feet. I don’t want to start a puzzle of a dog, and then realize that the pieces aren’t actually a puzzle of a dog, they’re a series of obscure tokens that I can trade in at the farmer’s market for a tomato. I did not sign up for this tomato. Nothing about these puzzle pieces indicated there was a tomato coming. I can actually SEE THE DOG on the puzzle pieces, but now that I’ve hit the end, I’m being told that these dog-shaped puzzle pieces are only good if I want to redeem them for a tomato.

I do not want the tomato.

I love the re-read value that comes from good foreshadowing. I love the idea that the story is one story when you read it through the first time, and it’s still the same story on the second go-round, but now it has all these layers, all these extra asides and things that you didn’t see the first time because you were too focused on getting the dog together, but now that you know there’s a kitten in there too, you can see the things that you didn’t see the first time, like how the dog is looking down at the kitten, and how there’s a little tuft of kitten tail visible right on the bottom border of the puzzle, and it makes it seem like everything has more depth this time around.

Nobody wants to redo a puzzle of a dog where it’s actually tokens that can be traded in for a tomato. There’s nothing fulfilling that comes out of that.

So, how do I get foreshadowing into my own writing?

I revise.

Forever.

Because the thing about rarely plotting before I go is that I have no idea what I’m supposed to be foreshadowing. I have nothing. I have a vague feeling about things that I would like to happen, and then I just write and a bunch of stuff comes out that is generally drastically different from the things I anticipated.

But once I’m at the end, I take a step back, and I look at the puzzle, and I figure out what I actually want the picture to be. What kind of dog is it? What colour is the kitten? Do they look like they’re getting along, or is this picture depicting a brief silence before a massive fight?

And then I go back in my edits, and I strip out all the references to the sunflower that I thought I was going to put in at the beginning, but ended up leaving out of the narrative entirely. I make sure that I keep the kitten in mind right from the very beginning. I make sure I’m consistent about the way the dog looks.

And once I’m at the end, I step back again, and I look at it again. And I do the same thing again, and I try to put more layers into it, and I make sure I don’t tip my hand too early, and I make sure that the words are going in the direction that I want them to go.

(It’s sometime during this revision that I generally conclude that I should probably just burn the entire manuscript and start over.)

I don’t always get it. Sometimes I can’t make things work the way I want them to work. Sometimes I can’t see through what I’ve written to figure out how it should work.

But when the foreshadowing works?

Oh, that payoff is so lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

*It’s vaguely possible I’m more in love with run-on sentences than I am with foreshadowing, but I choose to believe that foreshadowing ekes out a win here.

3 Day Novel Complete!

September 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Whoa, I did it. I actually finished the 3 Day Novel contest. (Not going to lie, that’s why this is a Thursday morning post instead of a Monday morning post like normal.)

It was a really interesting (and almost therapeutic) experience for me in a lot of ways. Because I knew I was short on time, I did a lot of things that I normally don’t do–I plotted out the basics of the story from start to finish, I thought about each of my characters briefly instead of just making them up as I went, and I stayed very plot-oriented throughout the entire thing, instead of diving into character exploration as I saw fit.

There were a couple of major benefits to this method.

First of all, I actually finished the damn thing. Start to finish. It clocked in at just over 30,000 words, which is pretty much too short for anything–but it’s done, and during my Monday review/editing spree, I actually didn’t outright pitch sections during the revision, which is a first for me. Part of that is because I legitimately couldn’t afford to pitch anything due to the timeline–but also, looking back on it now, I don’t actually think I would pitch any major sections. That makes this the first manuscript I’ve completed where I didn’t have to just jettison massive chunks of it.

Second of all, it forced me to summarize. Let me start by saying that I’m not satisfied with the result of the summaries–some of the coolest things in the story (in my opinion) actually ended up happening in summaries instead of happening in narrative. But it also prevented me from wandering into ‘what if this’ and ‘what if the other’ and ‘also let’s explore this third thing’. I directly narrated the things that were most important to Sophia’s arc–and I summarized everything else. This method also meant that I maximized the time I covered. Overall, in thirty thousand words, I covered seven months of time, which is a ridiculous record for me.*

Third of all, I absolutely destroyed all of my previous wordcount records. Prior to this, my wordcount record had been set in 2003. I was in grade twelve at the time, and the day that I started my science fiction novel, I managed to get 10,123 words written (yes, I remember the exact wordcount). I have never even touched that goal since then. I had a smattering of 5k days during NaNoWriMo 2015, but most days were way less than that. I had multiple years (2005 – 2014) where I hardly wrote at all, and even when I got back to it in 2014, I was slow and unfocused. But during the 3 Day Novel contest? I banged out a reasonably consistent 1800 words per hour. Some of that is due to the style I was writing in–my 3 Day Novel submission was done in a somewhat snarky first person, with occasional asides to the reader, whereas HH is more of a layered introspective overwrought poetry. But I think I’m just getting better at focusing and more efficient at saying what I want to say.

Drawbacks to this method?

I’m completely wiped out, physically and emotionally.

Words are hard now.

Overall, I think the 3 Day Novel was a huge success, and I’m pretty excited to get back to revising what I wrote once I’ve let it sit for a while here.

 

 

 

*To put it into perspective, I’m 26k into my rewrite of HH, and I’ve covered three days.

3 Day Novel time!

August 29, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Yikes, is the 3-Day Novel Contest ever coming up quick.

This is the first year for me–I’ve done (and won) NaNoWriMo for the last two years, so taking on the 3-Day Novel Contest as a new challenge seemed like the obvious progression. The timing is either terrible or fantastic this year–I return to my day job literally the day after the contest ends. So on one hand, I’m likely to be exhausted when I start back to work, but on the other–at least I won’t have any time to fret about going back.

Because I’m so bogged down in rewrites for HH, I wanted something completely different. I’d originally planned to write a serious book, but after looking at my back cover blurb, I think it’ll end up being more of a snarky book than anything. The genre is YA urban fantasy, probably loosely based in Saskatoon (though I don’t know if I’ll specifically name the city). Here’s the blurb:

Sophia is sixteen, and what’s supposed to be a carefree time in her life has devolved into futile attempts to balance school, her part-time job, and her boyfriend. James is smart, handsome, and older—but he’s also controlling and pushy, and when one of their fights turns violent, Sophia accidentally sets James on fire while trying to escape.

Terrified and unable to figure out how the fire even got started, Sophia confides in her parents and her dad, in turn, confides a secret back to her—she’s not the only one in the family that’s set someone on fire. She has a half-brother twice her age that she’s never heard of—and right now, his place is the only place her parents are willing to send her while the repercussions of the James incident are sorted out.

Before she knows it, she’s travelled halfway across the country to an unfamiliar city and her half-brother’s sterile apartment. Elliot’s boyfriend, Thad, is warm and welcoming, but Elliot himself is cold and wants nothing to do with her. She knows she’s supposed to sit and wait, she knows that her parents are working on sorting things out back home—but she can’t spend the rest of her life sitting in an apartment that could double as a showroom. What she finds when she adventures outside will change her life forever …

(I’m definitely pulling too many punches in the summary–what she finds is a Secret Scientific Research Project for Strangely Talented Children and Adults. Things get complicated.)

I actually was looking out for future me (that is, the me that will be frantically editing things on Labour Day) and wrote out a vague plot summary, so at least I have some idea of where I’m going with this.  Usually I go into projects with way less of a skeleton than this, so hopefully I’m able to just slam some meat on these bones and call it a day (she says, while quietly figuring out how many words she has to write in an hour for this to even be feasible). ((It’s a lot of words. Don’t think about it. The numbers get scary.))

Wish me luck!! And good luck to everyone else participating in the challenge!

 

When Words Collide Wrapup!

August 22, 2016 / / 0 Comments

 

So, I’m back from Wmughen Words Collide 2016! It was tons of fun–definitely recommended, and I’d like to go again next year*. It was bigger than I had expected! I mean, I should have known due to the number of simultaneous panels that it was going to be big, but I was still taken aback a bit.

The conference was split between two halves of the hotel, so there was a lot of skywalking back and forth. The walking was definitely appreciated–I had this idea that I was going to get to the gym every day that I was there, and I made it twice, but that was it. So the walking was a nice way to get stretched out between panels.

I had two sessions scheduled with editors to take a look at parts of my manuscript. Both were on Friday, which was great because it didn’t leave me much time to stress out over it. The suggestion was to give each editor something different. Since I’ve really only got one manuscript on the go at the moment**, I sent Jodi McIsaac the prologue, and Meghan Masterson the beginning of Chapter One. I got really great feedback from both of them that basically confirmed my gut feeling on the manuscript–it’s reading really well overall even though there’s finetuning that’s needed (with an emphasis on removing ineffective repetition).

I went to some really neat panels and presentations. If I had to pick highlights, they would be Adam Dreece’s presentation on worldbuilding, the awesome panel about creating magic systems, and Victoria Smith’s fascinating talk on blogging. I’ll blog more about these later as I start delving into the details of what I learned and applying them to my own work.

There were a couple of unexpected things I enjoyed at WWC too! One of my friends talked me into attending Noir at the Bar, which normally I would not have done. It was so cool though! Basically we were all crammed into this room off the bar, drinking beer (or whatever) and listening to authors read sections of their noir work aloud. At the end, we got to vote for whose reading we liked the best. It was really great for me because I’m not familiar with a lot of Calgary authors, and this was a really great introduction to people and their work. It also reminded me that noir is a genre I want to get comfortable working in, so I’m going to start focusing my reading list in that direction and see if I can create some time between revisions to work on some short stories.

The live-action slushes were, again, something I wouldn’t normally have gone to. They were mostly divided out by genre. If you wanted to submit, you put the first page of your manuscript on a pile at the front of the room. The pile was shuffled, and then a reader picked a random page and started reading it to a panel of editors. If an editor hit a point where they stopped reading, they raised their hand. As soon as the majority of editors had raised their hand (or the page was finished), the reading stopped, and then there was a brief discussion on why the page had or hadn’t maintained interest. It was awesome just to see what editors were focused on–what worked, what didn’t, where the red flags were.

It was inspiring enough that I ended up putting my first page in during the High Fantasy panel. The High Fantasy panel was tough–the previous LAS I’d been to was about 50/50 on whether or not the page would be read out in full, but I don’t think there were any pages completed in full during the High Fantasy panel. They made it about halfway through my page–and even though I’ve read the prologue out loud to myself numerous times, there was still a glitch in the flow that I didn’t catch until it was read out at the LAS–and that’s when I lost everyone!*** Again, I got some really great feedback.

Overall, I’m really glad I went. It was nice to have some time by myself as an independent adult, and it felt like very responsible self-care that I chose to spend that time focused on my writing. I’m really motivated to keep continuing with my work now, and looking forward to the next opportunity to go!

Plus, I came home with a mug. What’s not to love?

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Life permitting.

**I love you, HH, but you’re eating my brain.

***I marked the spot to come back to during revisions.

 

Revisions Forever and Ever and Ever

August 9, 2016 / / 0 Comments

As everyone in my writing groups is aware (I sigh a lot during meetings), I am in the midst of a massive revision of my dark fantasy/horror novel, HH*. I first came up with the idea for the novel in 2005, and have been working on it sporadically since then, but it wasn’t until NaNoWriMo 2014 that it actually came together into a full manuscript.

I never plan my zero drafts in advance. I have a general concept of my characters (who generally have settled into themselves by 10 or 20k in), and only a vague concept of my plot (I generally know the start, and then the end, and then everything is just a blurry mess in the middle), and then I start to write and figure the rest of it out as I go. It’s great in terms of forcing my brain to figure things out on the fly, and allowing me the maximum amount of flexibility in terms of getting from A to Z.

It’s not great for producing zero drafts. My zero drafts are, quite honestly, disasters. (I’d even go so far as to say if you’ve ever read a draft of mine that was decent and reasonably smooth and I told you it was a zero draft, I was lying. It’s always at least a point five draft before other people see it.)

When I finished HH, I was really excited about it. The worldbuilding was inconsistent, the setting was thin at best, and the characters wandered around a little bit before they finally settled into their selves, but I was really passionate about the story I was telling, and I felt there was a ton of potential in the worldbuilding to create something special. HH is the … fourth** zero draft novel I’ve completed, and the first one where I looked back at it and went “actually, yeah, even after finishing it I’m still super passionate about this story”.

Since 2014, I’ve had a couple of false starts on the revisions. I kept trying, and then petering out, and getting started, and feeling overwhelmed, and resolving to do it this time, and getting distracted. Also video games. I played a lot of video games***.

Then I had my kid. I don’t know how it works for other people, but yikes, did having a kid ever put my free time into perspective. Before the kid, I felt like I had as much time as I needed to write, and consequently, I never wrote, or I wrote without being focused on it, or I planned a lot to write and then did something else instead, or I didn’t plan to write at all, or I flew around in World of Warcraft making raven noises and swooping in on everyone’s herb nodes. You know, important stuff.

But since the kid? HOLY SHIT THESE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES MIGHT BE THE ONLY FIFTEEN MINUTES I GET FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON GET THEE TO THY KEYBOARD.

So my priorities have shifted. I’ve been putting a lot of work and a lot of words into the revision. The original draft of the novel went 80k****, and I added some bonus scenes afterwards to finish it out at just over 100k.

This revision, which I’m comfortable calling a first draft***** and letting other people read, is currently at 30k, and there’s so much story left to tell that I’m giving serious thought to splitting the damn thing in half. But we’ll see how the story unfolds, and we’ll see who needs what from whom, and when.

Here’s the hook as it stood a few months ago:

The last thing Asheni remembers before passing out is the mysterious object in her palm, the swarm of something eldritch and unidentifiable flowing toward her, and the blinding pain in her arm. She wakes up lacking all three of these things, as though they never happened–but all the same, everything else has changed.

Now her twin brother won’t speak to her, her partner is looking for answers to questions he shouldn’t know exist, and no one in the village, including the children, will make eye contact with her. The Seer is prophesying the end of the world again, which normally would be something Asheni would ignore–but they’re starting to lose contact with the surrounding cities.

Asheni has to balance the supernatural demands of her job in the present, the threat of her past coming to light, and a very uncertain future both for her, and for the people she cares about.

There’s definitely some edits that need to happen here. For instance, the bit about no one making eye contact her is interesting narrative. If one of the main character has to navigate everything when no one will look her in the eye? That’s a big deal. Ask me if it’s in the original draft of the novel. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

Oh, well, it must be in the revision I’m working on now? Hell no.

I literally made it up for the hook because I thought it sounded cool. And it does sound cool, so I should try and work it in. But as of right now, it’s not in there.

Same with the bit about the Seer prophesying the end of the world. It should be in the actual manuscript, but as of right now, it’s not. It’s actually part of two entirely separate subplots (‘the end of the world is coming’ & ‘the end of the world is not coming’) that I need to weave throughout the narrative. Neither of these subplots are directly pushed forward by the main characters–it’s more like the main characters end up sandwiched between both narratives.

And that isn’t even getting into the matter of the referenced ‘supernatural job’. I’m gonna hang off on discussing that one for a while, though. I’m testing out something in the first draft where the reader is about six chapters in before they finally figure out wtf everyone has been doing, so I need to see if that works before I commit to whether or not it’s going into the hook.

For what it’s worth, I think that’s been one of the hardest parts for me so far–figuring out how to properly seed the narrative. What needs to show up where, when do the secrets get revealed, how do the secrets get revealed? Who knows what, and how do they talk about it?

The original draft of the manuscript was completely in Asheni’s head. I used third person limited past tense, and we only followed Asheni. But then, after the draft was finished, and I was adding a few extra chapters to flesh things out, I got into a wierd headspace where I was writing flashback chapters in italic’d present tense.

When I got into this draft of the story, I figured I’d give it a go in present tense and see what happened–and I expanded the viewpoint characters to include three additional people as well as Asheni. I think it’s telling a better story now–but I know it’ll require extra work to ensure that each of the four voices is stylistically consistent. (That’ll probably be my second draft–physically dividing the story into the four parts, and editing start to finish, voice by voice.)

So that’s where I’m at with this. It’s an unfortunately slow slog, at least in part because this is the largest revision I’ve ever tackled. But I’ll get there eventually.

And I’ll try to keep the sighing to a minimum, at least while I’m out in public.

 

 

 

*working (acronym) title.

**I had to pause and count on my fingers.

***It hurts my feelings to use the past tense there, but accuracy is important.

****Not all written during NaNoWriMo. I only eked out a victory.

*****I typed in ‘one draft’ here, since I thought that was went after ‘zero draft’, and yikes, was it wrong-looking.

When Words Collide 2016

August 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

When Worlds Collide 2016 is almost here!! I’m registered to attend this year, and I’m really looking forward to it. It seemed like it was so far off in the distance when I initially bought the ticket and booked the hotel room, and now all of a sudden, BAM! It’s right around the corner!

I am super excited about this–firstly because I’ve never been to a writing festival or conference before, and secondly because this will be my very first solo trip since before I was pregnant*. I’m going to miss my family a lot, but I also miss uninterrupted sleep**.

There’s a couple things that are different at WWC compared to similar events I’ve attended. First of all, the sheer scale of the event–there’s ten separate things going on at once! I’m used to having to pick between two or three things that interest me (and another one or two that don’t), but there’s some tight competition for a bunch of the slots at this one, so I’ll probably have to throw some darts at the page to figure out what I’m actually going to attend. Second of all, I’ve never attended a conference that was almost exclusively panel-based before–so I’m curious to see what that changes about the overall experience for me! (Luckily, you don’t have to wonder, because I’ll blog about the whole damn thing.)

Luckily, I thought ahead when I was getting everything booked, and gave myself some extra cushion in my schedule. I’m planning to drive in Thursday morning, after I dump the kid at daycare, and then I’m free to wallow in writing and art until Monday morning, when I head back home***.

It’s funny. I was really apprehensive about even going. When I first heard about it, I was like “oh, that’s lovely. Maybe another time.” But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I talked it over with T, and he was supportive of me going. Initially, we weren’t sure how we were going to handle it–whether I would go alone, whether he and the kid would join me mid-event, whether they would just travel with us–and we were keeping all our options open. But as the event got closer, I realized that I wanted to be focused on writing as much as possible, and I broached the possibility of going alone, and we figured out how to make it work. (Apparently we make it work by me leaving. Very straight-forward.)

So…it’ll just be me! And I’m very excited. It’s only a few days away now. I still have to pack, print business cards, etc … but hey, that’s not so bad. The important part is that I’m going!!

Oh, and my word count goal for the weekend is 10k. I’m looking forward to seeing whether I absolutely crush my wordcount, or whether I gleefully ignore it because I’m having too much fun doing other stuff. Either way, I’m looking forward to a great weekend.

 

 

 

*Hilariously, my last solo trip was also to Calgary, but that was back in 2014, and it was mostly for work.

**I predict this will be the most uninterrupted sleeping I’ll have had since, oh, mid-2014.

***Honestly, the only thing this trip is missing is a divided highway between Saskatoon and Calgary. >.<

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