Very broad span. But I think it may be that the low-scoring judge was using a different scale than the other two. She wrote her key on the scoresheet, saying that 5-6 equaled a C, 7-8 a B, etc. While that's logical, I think the others were doing more of a letter grade equivalent where a 7 was a C.

Anyway, I just talked to a friend who had an even wider variance than I did--and just missed finaling. We're going to get together later and compare notes on our feedback, see if any of the negatives ring a bell.

And I'm purely amazed at your pace on your wip--can you spare a little productivity this way? I've been having trouble getting back into the swing of things now that I'm over the worst of back spasm hell.

I'd love to, but I don't think this is productivity. This is me, midlife, scraped raw, and the story and the history I've been hiding and repressing because it bloody hurts so much.

So this is bleeding. It happens to be bleeding in the form of what I think is a kickass story, about loyalty and protectiveness and a few other big issues between human beings, but it's still my blood.

I doubt you want to bleed.

If I did, it wouldn't be the first time, but my tap's a little dry...I've just made it on to page 3.Seriously, if I had something better to do, I wouldn't, either.

Just finished Chapter 7. Head-on between Bree and the detective. total: 36,240 words. 177 pages.

Enough for the night.

I doubt you want to bleed.

I've already bled for this one, a bit. And probably will bleed some more along the way. While its connections to my actual life are a bit more tenuous, I've still had to open up a few wounds I didn't know were there to really find Anna's voice.

I'm not opposed to bleeding on GP, mind you; just that this aint a slow drip, it's a fucking Victoria Falls. 36,000 drops of blood in two weeks.

Sorry. I'm a skosh punch-drunk.

I'm proofing a novel in progress that hit it's eighth chapter and 36,000th word yesterday, after 1 week and 5 days. And she took the whole weekend off.

People like you and she amaze me. I only dream of writing that quickly or well.

Speed isn't a prerequisite to a novel - it's just that sometimes it happens that way. I wrote Plainsong in just under six weeks; I took that long just to write down impressions of the South of France and Greece, for And Then Put Out The Light.

You never know.

Oh, I know. It's just frustrating sometimes, for me, because I tend to get novel-length, ambitious ideas combined with short-story-length attention span.

Remember that one super-ambitious Willow/Tara fic I was writing that one time, long ago? You probably don't, though you were very helpful with it. Anyway, yeah. I lost my attention on that one so bad that I think I've deleted it. I went back and tried to look at it the other day and it's poof-gone.

I do remember it, actually.

The whole point about fiction, for me, is having something to say. It isn't necessarily the Grand Issues, although the WIP is: loyalty, and the desire to protect, and how those human traits that very often are defined or assumed to be positives can be extremely negative, and destroy.

I just think, if there's a story, a writer tells it. A fiction writer, anyway.