Scribetacular Summer Scramble — ReCap

Well, I got my butt kicked.

This has been quite a month. I’ve had serious writing months before, and even done NaNoWriMo once or twice, but the whole RACE element? Added just that little something extra.

And you know it was my own fault. When Tyner suggested we have a race, it was I who insisted on decent stakes. None of this ‘taking the other person out to dinner’ sort of thing.

No, this had to involve blood.

[Well, figuratively, anyway, since we both sweated a whole lot of it by the end…]

We decided that the loser must laud the winner in verse at the Surrey conference this year. But the kicker was the final clause — “in an outfit of the winner’s choice”.

Ah, yes — a little public humiliation to sweeten the deal.

The thought of my favourite Mountie reading me a poem in a tutu drove me all month.

But not as much as it scared him, apparently.

And it was not as if I didn’t try every low blow I could come up with. I rallied troops on twitter.

I emailed his wife and waved the feminist banner!

But I was thwarted at every turn.

Turns out he also had troops to rally. Some of them from my own trusted group of friends and colleagues! [Apparently Michael Slade spent the day at his bookie’s yesterday.]

AND he outbid me for the support of his wife, whose head is SO EASILY turned by a pair of new shoes. [Okay, they may be Fluvogs, which does weigh the balance in his favour, I admit.]

And so we battled on. Many, many midnight texts were involved.

“What’s your word count for the day?”

“My head is killing me!”

“Whose idea was this, anyway?”

It came down to the wire. The last day of July, we started the day a mere 200 words apart.

This totally shocked me, actually, because I’d been playing catch-up the whole month. The man can TYPE!

But it was like a new race, all over again.

I did my best — I really did. Round about noon, I found a mistake in the story and had to rework about 3 chapters. COST me 400 words! But worth it, for the story. By midnight last night, I’d logged nearly 5000 words. 

But my adversary? 9110.

NINE THOUSAND WORDS in a single day.

In the end, I had written 60, 662 eligible words. And Tyner? 64, 768.

My butt kicketh-ed.

I’m trying to guess just what I’ll be wearing, as I recite before a crowd [one of whom, a DEAR friend, was rooting against me, as he wants to video blog the event for posterity. Yeah, I’m talking to you, James McCann].

Will it be French Chef kc?

Or Cowboy kc?

Or even Clown kc? [Please note, kc is SCARED of clowns!]

So, if amazing authors, incredible workshops, hysterical live-action Radio Drama and massive fun are not reason enough to attend the Surrey International Writers’ Conference this fall, you mght consider attending just to witness the public humiliation element of my final act of contrition.

So was the pain, agony and [now] the humiliation worth it?

Well, yeah, of course. I have an almost-finished first draft of a new novel. A VERY silly novel, for grown-ups this time, and still Super Sekrit for a while. And I think Tyner will agree with me.

So will you, when you get to read ’em!

Thanks to all for joining in, writing along, sharing our pain! Oh, and I think we have a couple of books to give away. Will report on that, asap.

 

 

More soon…

 

~kc