StoryStudio student Anne Laughlin is published again (the woman’s a publishing machine!), this time in Best Lesbian Love Stories 2009. Anne’s story is called “On Retreat,” and seeing as how she workshopped it in the Advanced Writer’s Workshop, I think she’d agree that she couldn’t have done it without us! Let’s hope she’ll show her gratitude by bringing us cookies. Cookies, Anne, cookies!
Seriously, we’re ever so proud of her, and excited to hear that she’s finished her second novel, which is now being shopped around to publishers. You go, girl!
I still get the tingles. When I hear about a StoryStudio writer getting published, I stop and think, wow, we’re really in the middle of an amazing literary world.
And then, when I get a copy of the published piece or finally find the time to read it online, I shake my head and think, wow, there’s some real talent in this studio.
Here are two writers whose stories have recently been published:
- Liz Radford’s short story, Best for Flight, was published in Prick of the Spindle, and
- Mary Bower’s opening novel chapter from The Second Whack. (BTW, Mary’s been in our Advanced Writer’s Workshop and Story Workout so I’ve had the extreme pleasure of reading drafts of this novel!) won a contest.
Liz Radford’s story is a haunting, affecting story of a young man who comes to learn about his own feelings of love. It’s also about a young boy who knows much more than the adults around him realize.
Liz has been an avid Write-a-Thoner and was in our Reading as a Writer class. I know she’s really been working at hard her short stories and the work is clearly paying off.
The Writing Show is an exciting website with lots of information and just a few contests that they run. Mary’s novel chapter won fourth place in their 2008 Novel Contest. The novel has been progressing with good speed (even if she doesn’t think so!) and it’s been especially gratifying to see how she continues to get deeper and deeper into these characters, never settling for a stereotype or a predictable plotline. Definitely take a look at The Second Whack.
Kudos Liz and Mary! If you’re reading this, take a few minutes to read this work and leave some comments!
As many of you surely know already, November is National Novel Writing Month. In its tenth year, NaNoWriMo continues to inspire tens of thousands of potential novelists worldwide with its message of speedy imperfection. 
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. One month. It breaks down to an average of 1,667 words a day, and obviously it’s absolutely insane. But. The point of NaNoWriMo is to get the words down, to write more than you ever thought possible, to get a solid first draft (or even a really terrible one) down on paper so you have something to work with in your second and third drafts.
I love NaNoWriMo. I love the convergence of so many voices telling their stories. I love the celebration of writing and creativity and caffeine-fueled enthusiastic madness. I love a massive group deadline (second only to April 15 in this country), and the chance to share your deadline-induced misery with 89,999 other people. I love posting wordcounts and feeling like someone other than my own prone-to-excuses lackadaisical conscience is holding me accountable for my productivity or lack thereof. I love reading what my friends write. In fact, I wish that ALL my friends would write at least one novel, particularly if that one novel is a thinly-disguised memoir. Even better if everyone in my family wrote a thinly-disguised memoir, and then let me read it. As long as it didn’t lead to prolonged discussions of commas, punctuated (ha!) with claims that “that’s what the nuns told me to do,” I think that reading novels written by family members would be wonderful.
Will everyone reach 50,000 words? Of course not. But the point is to WRITE, and even 10,000 words in a month is 10,000 more than you might have written otherwise.
If you’re doing NaNo this year – or even if, like us, you’re doing a modified version we like to call “If I’m Writing Thousands Of Words They’d Darn Well Better Be On My Current Novel-In-Progress” (the acronym’s a little trickier) – then you’ll probably need to catch up on your wordcounts by mid-month, and we have just the thing: our November Write-a-Thon, Saturday November 22, 2008. We’ll open the Studio from 9 am to 9 pm, and provide tons of snacks, coffee, soda, tea, and good company, not to mention a fantastic writing space and free wifi, to help you write your heart out.
One word...um, acronym: NaNoWriMo.
While you’re busy worry about if that last semi-colon was placed, Danielle Steele and her heirs are making a fortune. Tell you what. Just write 50,000 words in November and worry about if it’s good after the fact. If it’s half bad, you’ve still got 50 pages that you can keep. Last year, when I tried to write a novel, I wound up with 3 short stories and 4 poems. That’s not so bad. If you can’t do it this month, no worries. There are more similar challenges than there are months of the year to do them in. For a list of quantity writing challenges and more information, visit the site.
The Chicago liaison has posted some NaNo related events for those of you who need an extra kick in the pants:
“Here are some other exciting things you can look forward to this month: the statewide write-in on 11/22; the CTA write-in (date TBD - it will either be Sunday 11/9 or 11/16); the Open Books Virtual Book Drive (see the front page of the ChiWriMo site beginning 11/1 for more details!); prizes for attending official ChiWriMo write-in nights at Open Books; and much more!”
Some of my students told me that a man riding a bus through Canada inexplicably turned to his seatmate, stabbed him repeatedly, and then decapitated him and started cutting him up. He later displayed the head to the other passengers who had since fled and trapped him in the bus. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Out here in the world of the sane, we do better things with our murderous thoughts, such as writing them really small in thousands of identical journals. For today’s story starter, access your craziness. Look back at old journals, or just consider what your thoughts when that guy in traffic cut you off. I think most of us have a wealth of crazy, but if you can’t, try to figure out this guy. He was apparently calm throughout the whole thing, as it though it was the most normal thing in the world.
When you’re done, voila! Serial killer character profile for your murder mystery, ready to go.
Make sure you clearly label this thing a writing exercise. I’d hate to have the FBI investigate you (or me).
