Musings about writing and other things
I looked forward to attending my first book festival as an “out” writer. I thought the Oakland Book Fest would be the perfect coming out venue for me.
It’s a one-day festival. It’s small-ish, it’s local, and the East Bay NaNoWriMo group was in attendance. The panel discussion I was most interested in attending was chaired by Grant Faulkner, Executive Director of NaNoWriMo.
Continue reading “Adventures at the Oakland Book Fest – Keeping it Real”
For your reading pleasure, here are several articles about writing, publishing and promoting I’ve read this week and found useful, thought-provoking, and otherwise helpful. In this edition, I’ve once again focused primarily on the topic of writing, because I ran into several articles on writing that gave me food for thought and tools for improvement. Enjoy!
It may have come to your attention that it’s been a week since I last updated this blog. Fear not, I haven’t been lazing around, but I have been avoiding things. Here are some of the reasons why this blog has gone without a post in recent history:
10. The dog ate it.
When we move from writing a draft to the various stages of polishing it and getting it ready for publication, we also move from isolation to interaction. Without the immediate contrast between those two states of writerly being, I don’t think I would realize how isolating the early stages of writing a novel actually are.
Part of the appeal of NaNoWriMo is the group experience, including some public suffering if you’re into that sort of thing. You can attend write-ins, join sprints (where you write as fast as you can for a few minutes, take a break and then sprint again). Going through the process of writing a first draft novel with millions of people worldwide, and potentially thousands of people in your metropolitan area can give you a sense of companionship even if you never reach out and take advantage of it.
WWW is a meme hosted by Sam A. Stevens at Taking on a World of Words. To participate, answer these 3 questions, and add your blog link to the comments on the linked article above. If you’d like to participate and don’t have a blog, never fear! You can visit Sam Stevens’ blog and leave your W’s in a comment on her Wednesday posts.
I’d love to hear about what you are reading, as well, so please leave me a comment, too!
The Three Ws are:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
