Putting Together a Novel Over a Weekend

Posted a piece on Eric Earnhardt's victory in the 48-Hour Pulp & Paper Novel Writing Contest on the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference site (here). Eric's approach is fascinating and revealing, a professional journalist tackling fiction with a lot of the discipline that has made him good at what he does.

Eric is in the public information department at Carilion and was a television journalist before that.

Here's a brief sample of the post:

"When the contest began I took the list of required elements and highlighted the ones that were interesting and familiar. I sketched out a rough 15-chapter outline as a guide (thinking 2,000 words per chapter) and started writing. One of the other contestants had done the math—625 words-per-hour (if you don’t sleep) to reach 30k—so there wasn’t a lot of time to contemplate, just write. I think my background writing for TV news helped. Sometimes the act of writing triggers the creative process. I wasn’t writing because the story was developing in my head—the story was developing because I was writing."