Sophie Kinsella and some writing progress

I got a reply back from Sophie Kinsella late thursday night which I found really helpful. I asked her whether she'd had any writing training (as I am still undecided on the whole course thing). Here was my reply:

Hi Cheryl (my doppelganger)

I have never studied novel-writing (can you tell?!) However many years ago I went on the Robert McKee screen-writing seminar Story which has lots of useful ideas for structure. They can be applied to novels too. So I would recommend that.

Sophie

How cool is that!! So anyway I looked this up and it looked really good. He is running seminars in November but as I am saving for a house right now I decided on the cheaper alternative in the meantime:

I picked this up at my local Waterstones (where I got double points!!) and so far it's been quite insightful. I'm only a few pages in so far as I've been busy writing but I'll keep you updated on my thoughts.

My writing progress today is quite newsworthy. I did no writing on Saturday as I was nursing a hangover and was out later that day with a friend. Sunday I somehow managed to spend a whopping 5 hours (no idea how that happened) playing scrabble on facebook - luckily for the novel I am rubbish at it so the addiction didn't last much longer than that. Today I made up for it though. I (somehow) in the space of 7 hours managed to write 4545 words taking me to around 34,000 words so I'm nearly half way there. I've a few evenings to myself this week so I aim to take advantage of that and get myself to that light at the end of the tunnel just that little bit sooner.