My local RWA writing group has an event we do every other month that we call “Blast Week”. Basically, we go to a chat room and as many as want show up. One person is the “host” and generally runs the show. It usually runs for two hours. During that time, we “blast” through our writing in 20-25 minute increments. You write like crazy for twenty minutes, come back and chat for a little bit, then blast off again. Blast week is a great way to kick start your writing. It makes you really focus for that twenty minutes – and you’d be surprised how much you can get done in that amount of time. Most times, the twenty minutes flies by so fast, you don’t realize it’s happening until the host calls you back.

Though I wasn’t in the “mood” last night, I went to the blast. I’ve been struggling with my writing of late. Partly because of vision issues I’ve been having – being on the computer for more than about an hour gives me a vicious headache. But mostly because I’ve lost some of the joy of writing. It happens. All writers go through these highs and lows. But the blast last night brought me up. I found a new direction for my WIP and got almost 1200 words done for the day – mostly thanks to the blast. Plus chatting with them helped with a plot point I was struggling with. The blast for me was…a blast. 😉

So thank you to Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers (www.cprw.org) for pulling me out of my slump. And it’s only day one of blast week!