Words of Barrett

I have been remiss in my blogging…but not so much with my writing. As of last night I crossed the 21,705 word mark for NaNoWriMo. This after spending the entire day before at an editing workshop, which I might add was superb.

My local art RWA chapter, LERA sponsored a one day conference featuring the remarkable and renowned   Margie Lawson. The woman is a dynamo—a brilliant and talented dynamo.

We hit the ground running at 8:00 AM and I straggled out to my car around 5:15 PM. Every synapse still crackled and my brain was bleeding–but in a good way. During that period we got down a number of different topics including: Powering Up Emotion-four levels of writing success, The Edits System … (embrace your pink!)*, Writing Dialogue Cues Like A Psychologist, and Writing Body Language Like A Psychologist.

World Class Wordsmithing. Uh Huh. Do you see what I mean? Brain. Bleed.

She barely stopped for oxygen, the rest of us were surviving and caffeine and numb     butt-cheeks. (To be fair, our extremely capable event coordinator, Tammy Baumann and her team created a beautiful space in a warm comfortable room with a view of the Sandia Mountains. Hello. What’s not to love?

It was a small group, which allowed for some wonderful interactions with some very talented women,with whom I’ve been associated for the past two years. It also gave us an opportunity for one-on-one time with Margie. And we were provided an incredible buffet luncheon created by the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. (which is a great place for meeting.)

I was so overloaded with information that by the time I got home all I could do was walk the dogs(mumbling affectionately), prescribe an adult beverage, and stare at the TV screen while Tia and her parolees rescued pit bulls.

Sunday morning, I jumped out of bed ready to grab my five colored markers and rip through my work-in-progress hoping to find the perfect spots to insert a small, medium, large, and big gulp “emotional passage”. Instead, I opted to work on my nano project—which I did with fury. 2,887 words in approximately five hours. And, damn it, Skippy, I had some pretty friggin-fine phrases in there, if I do say so myself.

Today I’m flagging a bit, but the coffee is beginning to kick in and I just infused my blog site.woot. So thank you LERA ladies and my special thanks to Margie Lawson, teacher extraordinaire.

To all you writers out there, if you want to kick start your words into something much more powerful, check out: Margie Lawson.com

Really. Do it.

(Need more encouragement? Our LERA president, and Best-selling author to Darynda Jones,”First Grave On The Right”—is a proud Margie grad.)