WINNERS: Write First Pre-holiday Writer's Challenge

JAN BROGAN - Well, I don't get a prize, but I'm a winner -- mostly because I found a system that really works for staying away from email and increasing writing productivity. The setting my I-phone alarm for four times a day and not checking email unless it rings has been a life changer (or at least a routine changer.) I'm not sure why this works while other systems have failed, except I really like the sound of that little bell. I must have a Pavlovian dog thing going on, but hey, I'm sticking to it.

And while I did not get a lot of pages written, I made big progress on a Herculean task of starting a historical novel, which has meant A LOT of reading, a lot of highlighting, a lot of printing out from the Internet, and I sincerely thank Avi Love for the great advice on how to handle Internet research without getting too distracted, and tips to make research feel as productive as writing.

Okay, now for prize winners.

The three winners chosen at random are: (To be counted in the raffle you had to comment as least three times, and you could not be a certainly retailer - who shall remain nameless - who spammed the comments page pretty much the entire contest.)

Ann Oxford, Silver James, and Avi Love.

The prizes - offered on a first come, first choice basis are: signed copies of Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen; Dead Head by Rosemary Harris; a US galley of No Mark Upon Her by Deborah Crombie, ABM of The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan, and a signed hardcover copy Teaser by Jan Brogan.

Although many contributors were inspirational, this time the contest prize will go to Shizuka, for recommendation advice on the kitchen timer and the Freedom and Concentrate programs. The prize for this is a signed copy of One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer Fleming.

Molly Swobada gets the prize for most brutally honest: "Discipline My name is JELLO."

Signed copies of Roberta Isleib's Asking for Murder and Deadly Advice.

All winners - please email me at Janbroganbooks@gmail.com with your address.

Winners who were chosen at random winners should include a first and second choice for the book prize.

Write First Pre-holiday Writer's Challenge

JAN BROGAN: Okay, time for much promised Writer's Challenge.

OH GOODNESS, WHAT THIS TIME? It's shorter. Only four weeks. Mostly so I can slip it in before the holidays start.

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM NANOWRIMO? - (The National Novel Writer's Month writers challenge of producing a 50,000 word novel in only one month, going on roughly the same time.) It's much less ambitious.

WANT TO KNOW MORE? There is nothing to stop you from doing both challenges at the same time, and if you can't keep up NaNoWriMo, you'll still be light years ahead of the rest of us at the Write First Challenge.

HMMMM....?? This challenge isn't so much about output, it's about creating a healthy work habit. In the Write First Challenge, you have to write six out of seven days of the week, and you must write at least two pages before you check your email or surf the web. If you are researching something germaine to your story, you are allowed to go online, but may not depart for EVEN A SECOND from your work research. And you still have to produce two pages.

WHAT IF I HAVE OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES? Like a day job? Then go ahead, check your email all day long and do whatever you have to on the web for your work, but when you come home and get ready to write KNOCK IT OFF. Use your email or your daily dose of The ONION or the Huffington post as a REWARD for getting your two pages done.

WHY WOULD I EVEN CONSIDER THIS? Well, In one month, you'll have about fifty pages written. You'll get to whine, complain, or extol the virtues of the Writers Challenge every Sunday in the JR comments page.

WHY ELSE? Because we are giving away prizes!!

Prizes:
If you post at least three times (on different weeks), we enter your name in raffle and the winners get one of the following books:

Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen

Dead Head by Rosemary Harris

a US galley of No Mark Upon her by Deborah Crombie

an ABM of The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan

A prize will be given for the most inspirational comment: One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer Fleming.

And a prize for the most brutally honest: a copy of Asking for Murder AND a copy of Deadly Advice by Roberta Isleib.

All these copies are, of course, signed.

The challenge technically ends Sunday December fourth - which is the last day to post comments on the comment page. I'll announce winners the following Sunday, December 11th.

Sign up in the comments page all week, tell your friends, and please, TWEET like mad!!

On Writers Challenges or slipping into bad habits

JAN: I admit it, I've fallen into bad habits. I just finished a book proposal for my non-fiction project -- a proposal that took me almost a year as I had to get my head out of the original story structure - used for the screenplay - and shake up my thinking. I had major mental roadblocks and it took a lot of research, hard work and hard thinking to get past them. So when my agent loved the book proposal -- I mentally signed off -- although I've been sitting at my computer working on my fiction, I've been allowing too many distractions.

You know, the email thing. Then there was the baking for Thanksgiving thing. Of course, next there is the Christmas shopping thing. So I was thinking as part of my new year's resolution to issue a new WRITE FIRST writer's challenge for January 1.

But before I do, I'd love to hear from writers in what there special trials were and what kind of writer's challenge might be most useful. Please feel free to comment here, or email directly through my website www.janbrogan.com

On Creativity

JAN: After studying the "structure" of writing for so long, I've turned my attention to something I used to think was simply innate, but have since learned can be enhanced. And that's creativity. And I've learned something really about being creative.

To be more creative, you have to shut up.

I'm pretty sure it is an occupational hazard of writers that we never shut up. At least not me, and not internally. Often when I'm in a room, I'm not in a room at all. My mind is automatically talking to itself about how I'd describe the room, or what I'd say about the people in the room, or about the event that's taking place. It's as if I'm always writing a letter about whatever I'm doing, instead of actually doing it.

Along the same lines as when you are TALKING, you can't LISTEN, when you are internally WRITING, its impossible to take in all the available sights, sounds, textures, experiences. If you think you know something well enough to write a letter about it, you've stopped really learning anything new.

So in the ULTIMATE paradox, it appears that I have to learn to stop processing all my thoughts in words to be a better writer.

EXPERIMENT: Since I had time to kill anyway, I tried this on the train ride home from NYC Thursday. I looked like just your average passenger, but really I was trying like hell to process all the sights, textures, smells and sounds (mostly sounds because a train is incredibly noisy) without naming anything, without letting the analytical part of my brain talk too much. (Shutting it up completely is impossible.) I managed this for three separate 15 minute intervals.

RESULT: I'm guessing that it takes more than one train ride experiment to have any kind of impact on my writing -- and how will I know exactly, unless I'm writing a train scene? But I did have an unusual side effect. I arrived home in an incredibly good mood that won't seem to go away. And I was also unusually efficient and productive yesterday -- on a Saturday no less.

Has anyone else ever tried an experiment in creativity? Mindfulness? Any tips to share?

Come back tomorrow when we talk about acts of grace

On True Crime Tuesday, I offer a scenario for a thriller and hope to hear some brainstorming.

Wednesday, I interview Leslie Wheeler on the latest in her living history series -- Murder at Spouters Point.

On Thursday, our own Roberta Isleib talks about her new mystery series set in Key West

and Friday (which I always think of as green for some reason)-- well I'll have to figure out SOMETHING good for Friday.

Email Addiction Revisited

JAN: This is how sick I am. These statistics about email comforted me. At least at first. They come from a 2010 AOL survey, which I discovered through PSYBLOG - which is my favorite blog.

1) .59 per cent of recipients say they check email from the bathroom.

Yes, their bathroom. Just for the record, I have NEVER checked email from my bathroom. I think it's probably only the hygiene thing holding me back.

The reason email is so addictive, according to Psyblog is "variable-interval reinforcement" which is a complicated way of saying --even though most email we receive runs from boring to downright irritating, we get enough sporadic "exciting" emails to make us keep checking. We're hoping for that high moment.

2) 47% claim to be hooked on it, 25% of people can't go without email for more than 3 days, and 60% check email on vacation.

Guilty as charged. Always on vacation. Even in France when I had to spend money at an Internet Cafe. And really, is there anyone with email who goes three days without checking it?

3) You check email even more than you THINK you check email. Participants in a study by Renaud et al. (2006) claimed to check their email, on average, once an hour. However when the researchers spied on them, it turned out they checked their email every five minutes.

4.) Email eats a quarter of the working day

In a 2004 diary study (Czerwinski et al) of people in various different occupations. researchers found that, on average, people spent 23% of their working day dealing with email.

Okay, now I'm not so comforted. Now I'm realizing how much time I waste.

5.) It takes 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after an email interruption.

So in other words, all the time I spend meditating and doing yoga to enhance creativity, is blown once I start checking my email.

My solution, of course, is to Write First. Because once I start checking email, I fall into all the bad habits mentioned above.

So come on everyone, confess. Do we have any bathroom email checkers here?? Any five minute interval checkers?? Or do you now feel so much better about your email addiction because everyone else is worse??

Writer's Challenge Winners

JAN: Well, it's officially over, the Jungle Red Writers' Write First Challenge.

But writers, it's never really over is it???

First of all, I want to thank everyone who participated. It was terrific for me to meet you all (via blog of course) and to realize how many of us needed a way to corral our Internet use. This was more fun than I could ever have imagined when I threw out the idea.

Truly, this challenge was one of the high points of the summer. Writing is just so incredibly emotional, and this challenge energized me on a level that went beyond page count. Writing first was somehow symbolic. It reminded me that no matter how I sometimes try to avoid it, I am not happy unless I am a writer first.

But enough about me. Now it's time to talk about you.

I can only hope it was as valuable for you as it was for me. If it was, we are all winners. But here are winners chosen at random from the comments pages: First, second and third prize winners.

Winners:

First: Annoxford

Second: Lora96

Third: Lynn (of the alpha smart)

Here are the winners chosen by category. This was really tough because so many people said so many inspired, insightful and helpful things.

Fourth: Most insightful: Pat Marinelli - for her line posted over my computer: I control the Internet, it doesn't control me.

Fifth: Most inspired: JM Reinbold - who managed to stay with the Writers' Challenge while dealing with family illness and hospital visits.

Sixth: Most helpful: James Montgomery Jackson - for how to strike a deal with Internet research while staying true to the challenge.

And a special new category I just added:

Honesty in cheating: Colleen Collins - who admitted to a FULL HOUR of prewriting Twitter (slapping wrists), but the part I loved, likened it to gorging on chocolates.

Winners must contact me at jan@janbrogan.com with email and snailmail address. First place winner gets to choose which book he/she wants. After that, I issue them according to what's left.

If I don't hear from you by Friday: I pick new winners.

Prizes (listed alphabetically, so egalitarian, don't you think?)

Royal Blood (Rhys Bowen)

Teaser (Jan Brogan)

Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel (Hallie Ephron)

Dead Head (Rosemary Harris),

Asking for Murder (Roberta Isleib)

Air Time, (Hank Phillippi Ryan)

To make you smile, whether you get a book or not, I'm leaving you with this gift:

A really funny bit about dating writers. Hysterical. And true: http://tinyurl.com/2aw49qb

And thanks again for making my summer!!!

Writers Challenge VI

JAN: Well, I'm finally back home and oddly thrilled at the cooler weather and to be working at my own desk again.

I'm deeply immersed in my non-fiction book proposal, which has meant fewer new pages and many more rewritten pages, so I'm not sure how to keep count anymore. But what's important to me is my attitude. The new energy I've gotten from writing every day.

What I'm taking away from the Write First challenge is this: I'm going to keep writing every day, even the weekends. At least a page a day. I've also learned that Internet isn't really a problem for me, After next Sunday, I'm going to go back to allowing work interruptions for online research if I need to. (Is this a relief, Jim? )

But I'm going to stick with no email -- for me until 1 p.m. I'm really a hardcore addict. Once I start, I can't stop. And I'm going to be blogging about research into email addiction the week of October 4th on Jungle Red.

I will be announcing the official winners of the Write First Challenge next Sunday, September 19th - which I think might be a day earlier than I promised. I say "official winners" because I think a lot of us are winners, especially me. Aside from the new lease on my writing life, I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing from all of you - your struggles, your successes and your cheating.

I feel like I have all these new writing friends, and I hope to meet as many of you in person as I can. If not the New England Crime Bake this November, surely at another writers conference or at one of your book signings.

In the meantime, tell me: What parts of the challenge will you keep, if any?? What's the first thing you'd like to ditch?

Writer's Challenge Update III

JAN: Pat Marinelli left a comment that I copied, posted to the bulletin board, and adopted as a Mantra.

I control the Internet. It does not control me. I control the Internet. It does not control me. I control the Internet. It does not control me.

Yes, I have been way more productive. As of today, I only have two to three pages left to finish the first draft of my novel. But the productivity goes beyond page count. I find myself in the world of my novel all the time, even when I'm shopping at Costco. I've also had more success researching my non-fiction book, and although there are still hurdles to climb, I find everything falling just a little neater into place.

I'm winning the battle with my internet addiction. Admitting I'm powerless once I just "check my mailbox." And turning it all over to a higher power: In this particular instance, the Writer's Challenge.

My proudest moment? On Friday, I had an early physical therapy appointment and pre-vacation errands in the morning. I didn't get a chance to write until 1:30 in the afternoon. I didn't check my email or go on the Internet until after 3 p.m.

And you know what? It was even a waste of time even then.

I'll be en route to Martha's Vineyard today, and by the time I unpack and write my page, I likely won't be able to check the blog until late in the day, but I'll be reading and responding to comments and looking for inspiration. Or is it fortitude? Maybe just a common bond.

Please tell all. What was your proudest moment? Or your weakest one?? And remember page count is only part of the story.

Write First!