First Writing Workshop!!!!

This last week I went to my first writing workshop, I had my first critique group, and I'm so excited!

Ever since last August I've been forcing myself  through the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum, fondly known as OYAN. I'm glad I'm doing it, because I've learned so much by it! Anyways, last week I went to their annual week long Summer Workshop. It was awesome! It was epic! There has to be a new word someone has made up that can describe it! I learned about story building, creating the illusion of reality, how my faith works into my stories via hope and redemption, plotting my stories effectively, and so much more! The speakers were Dan Schwaubauer, Jeff Gerke (aka Jefferson Scott), Jill Williamson, Mark Wilson (he's a community college professor who knows his stuff!), and Stephanie Morrill (she taught a few of the parent lectures). There is no way I'm not going next year! (Okay, only if God some how stops me, but I'm hoping that isn't likely. )

Our critique groups were named after Nebula (geek moment), mine was the Robin's Egg. My group mainly wrote science fiction (which is what I'm working on) with one time traveling story, a modern/fantasy/adventure thing (Even though we didn't know exactly how to categorize it, it was awesome! The author has a very fun and unique written voice), one fantasy, a sci fi treasure hunting story, and more that I can't remember at this time (my bedtime is really soon. . .). I got seven critiques that I'm stalling on going through (I'm holding my breath until I'm farther into my rough draft).

Writing is something that I love. I can see myself writing stories years into the future, it's just something that I do. If God doesn't lead me down any other paths, I'm about 95% certain that I'll be working on my writing skills until the day I die.

To God's Glory,
Joy

Update: Shadow Wings, Chapters One and Two

I want to dig a hole in the ground and hide. 

My second chapter is twice as long as the first chapter with over double the words. The charries all sound exactly as I thought they would, (though Akeem seems much prouder and quieter than he is in my head, go figure) and the story is running pretty smoothly. There are plenty of problems though. The tenses are off, the story is taking a completely different swing than I originally planned it too, and I'm not getting the sci fi stuff in it right! It's hard to describe and write the illusion of reality when you've never really come in contact with anything that is close to it. 

I've also edited the first chapter a lot. Tenses are right now my bane. 

First chapter word count: 998

Second chapter word count: 2,117

Total word count so far: 3,115

Update: Shadow Wings Chapter One

First draft done! 

It's bad. As in, I had my little sister read it, and she was clueless that it was even science fiction. Ouch. But I'm still going on, it's just a first draft. I'll be making lots of notes on it for what needs to be changed. Three pages long when double spaced, much shorter than I first imagined it. That too will probably be remedied when I start editing. . .

I'm not sure exactly what I expected when I first started writing this chapter. Oh, I suppose I WANTED perfection, for the words to just magically show what I saw in my mind,  but that is certainly not what happened. I'll push on, and hopefully I'll finally come up with something I'm willing to post on here.

Word count for chapter one: 923