OMG – it’s over. It has been three weeks since it finished and I still am recovering from the Program.

For those who don’t know, the 100-Day Program is run by The Write Practice and is designed to help people finish the first ugly draft of a novel in 100 days. Along the way, there are daily e-mails either cheering you on or giving a tidbit of advice. Links to detailed lessons are included as well as interviews with authors. It was uncanny the way some of these showed up when I truly needed them. I sometimes wondered if there was someone watching over my shoulder.

A part of the program is the development of the community. The participants submit their work on Friday and give feedback to three other writers. Having been part of The Write Practice Community for a while, I knew that there was tremendous value in this.

The first item of business as soon as you join is to create a synopsis, an outline and calculate the number of words to write. Here’s my dirty little secret – I had an ugly first draft so I could use this program to get it into shape for the editor. I wrote the synopsis and outline in under a week. The number of words gave me pause. My genre is urban fantasy. A typical word count is 90,000. I had 43,000 – oh well, I thought. I can just add more description and lengthen it that way. So, the weekly word count was set at 6,000 words.

How, in the world, I thought I was going to be able to do this while keeping a full-time job, an active dog who needs 2 hours of walking per day, time spent travelling to work, normal households chores like eating is beyond me today. Enthusiasm has never been in short supply on my part. The first month sailed by and I was on track. And then, life interrupted. One week I was able only to get 500 words done. It doesn’t take long to get really far behind, even with rallies once in a while. My favorite week has to be the one where I was sick as a dog and could stay home. I met my word count that week.

Keeping up with reviews became another challenge. I got some comfort when other writers shared their apologies about not being able to provide feedback in the closed facebook group. BUT – Giving and getting feedback became my favorite part of the program. Anticipation walked with me throughout the weekend while I waited for my reviews. Then disappeared after my first review.  And showed up again on Friday.

Before I knew it, it was over. The 100-days had gone by and people were drinking champagne on a webcast in celebration. It was like attending the prom when you hadn’t graduated yet. It wasn’t finished. I could not put “The End” on the last page. Shame, disappointment, and frustration were my friends that day. They stayed for a visit.

The good news is that they didn’t stay permanently. Two days later, determination arrived. She packed up shame, disappointment and frustration and put their suitcases on the lawn. She reminded me that I was a writer and Abigail’s story needed to be finished. It was important. So, I sat with my laptop, waiting for the words. They didn’t come. I finally gave up and took time off. It felt like a luxurious holiday. There were no deadlines, no stress to get something finished. Then a funny thing started happening. Scenes kept popping up in my mind, forcing their way until I had to pay attention. The story is flowing once more. My keyboard has become my friend again.

For the uninitiated, a few words of advice from the lessons I learned:

1. No matter what, join. The discipline that the program institutes helps to build habits that will stay with you in the long haul.

2. Give feedback when you can. There were weeks when I could not. I felt bad about this. But – what happened was that I got to read many chapters together when I returned. It felt like I was reading a book and it became easier to provide constructive feedback.

3. Don’t hesitate to ask your fellow writers for advice. One of the areas that is a challenge for me is to be able to give the reader enough description of surroundings and characters so that they can imagine them. A fellow participant did this beautifully and so I reached out. They explained their process and now I have a tool that I can use. As a bonus, some of the feedback that I got after I posed the question gave me other tools and suggestions.

4. Your outline is a only tentative plan. My outline was based on an already-existing first draft. And so, it should have been easy to follow. This got derailed in week 5 when my story took a 90-degree turn. It’s not that it became totally redundant – it didn’t fit my new storyline – but there were still good ideas in there that could be and were incorporated.

5. Finish the program even if you don’t finish your book – I can guarantee you that you will be much further ahead at the end than if you quit because you are challenged to meet your word count. And you can beat your chest and say “I did it.”

6. Go to the party at the end – it will bring a sense of closure for the program and will give you the motivation to do the next step – whether that be continue writing the first draft or to start editing.

So where am I today? I am continuing to finish this story. It is not moving ahead as quickly as I would like and yet, that’s okay. I worked on other writing things, like this website. I am committed to write weekly posts – they are short and will be good practice. And I have returned to The Workshop Community at The Write Practice.

Would I do it again? Yes, a resounding yes. Now that I know what to expect, I will set more realistic goals. Because, next time, I want to write “The End” on my manuscript when the program finishes.