7/24/09

Candace Haven's Write Workshop

I have no idea where I heard about Candace Haven's workshop.

Maybe it was Facebook. Candy left a link to subscribe to the yahoo group, but it isn't the first time I'd heard about it. One of my former RWI chapter mates, Deanna Ponder mentioned doing her workshop.

Every day for two weeks, Candy pulls a word count number or # of pages to revise out of a hat. Do the daily challenge and you succeed. Go over the daily challenge and you can bank your extra words/pages for another day--kind of like Weight Watchers. You save your extra points for that one big splurge you plan on the entire week. I try not to write on the weekends. That's my family time, so I'll be using my banked points. BUT I'm a miserly son-of-a-gun and don't want to give up my words. So if the count is easily doable (<1000 words) I'll make a point of doing it so I don't spend my words.

It has all the goodies in it that I like:
--no money
--self-paced, up to a point
--challenging
--Yahell is silent

No money is involved. I love freebies. Candace Haven's definitely earned her 2009 PRO Mentor of the Year honor with this one. Love it!

Self-paced. Just like regular BIAW's you only get out of the challenge by how you decide to tackle it. Do it half-assed, then you don't get the positive effects from it. Plus you can do the revised pages challenge if you aren't working on something new.

Challenging. Every day a new number is drawn. Yesterday's draw was the biggest, 3265 words. Now if I had been on this loop prior to May 2009, I'd have been freaking over this word count, but in May I did Barbara's BIAW and logged in 15,000 words in only five days. I knew I could do this.

Yahoo is suspiciously silent. Candy's had some problems with people not getting the messages. I'm one of them, but I don't mind. All I do is head over to the Write Workshop yahoo group and find out today's count. When I'm done for the day I post to the Write Workshop Chat group.

I don't need anyone's 'YAY!' Congrats. blah, blah, blah--and I don't get them since I'm new to the group and many of the members have formed their friendships.
--I get my satisfaction from meeting the challenge head on and defeating it.

So as soon as I learn what today's challenge is, I'm going to be . . .

Writing on.

Today's challenge: 862 words--Easy-Peasy, I'm going to go over to add to my banked word count. :-)

2 comments:

  1. I've taken some of Candace's workshops on her yahoo loop. Always free. Always helpful. Glad you found your way there. Good luck with your writing

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  2. I'm enjoying this challenge. I wasn't even planning on writing until after I sent the kiddo back to school on August 12, but I'm pretty happy with 8500 words over four days on a new story.
    At this rate, I should finish one RS and another MG novel by the end of the year.

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