September 1 Newsletter
Prompt: Where there's smoke. Publishing news and post... coming soon. Three Day Novel Contest. And more.
First: a Thank you! to the reader-writers who decided to “go paid” this month. It means so much when those who read regularly and have been around for awhile decide that The Unschool is working for them. I hope you continue to read and enjoy and feel this venture is worthy of support.
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News!
What’s with this photo above? The leaves are still on the tree, but the colours are fall-like. And what’s on the wall to the left? Some poor story-boarding post-its? I’m certain not. But there is something about this image that makes me feel as if I’m about to crawl out of long hours of tough writing—those days when it doesn’t come “easily”—and back to outside life. Even if that’s just outside my head. After the past months (years?) of pressing work, I am going to have some news to share about the re-writing I did back in November; remember? the extensive cutting I wrote about?
I just need for the news to settle and shape, then I’ll bring you up to date. I expect it’ll be a lengthy post about the MOs of the publishing world. Strange workings they are indeed.
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Prompt - fires, smoke, and heat
August has been a tough month for fires in the province. And elsewhere, all over, it seems. Traveled to a music fest that was cancelled its second day. Spent the night coughing after breathing too much… and it’s easy to breathe too much!
I find it disturbing to have been to Joshua Tree National Park as well as Lahaina, Maui, this past year—now both devoured by fire.
photo taken August 2021, Lytton, B.C., just as my son and I were re-routed onto highway 99. In minutes, a bit of light smoke evolved to this dark mass with some ugly amber pulse in its core.
Write prose or poem and post to the Prompt Thread. It can be a current story—this very summer. Or a first memory of a smoke/fire story, or childhood fears manifest.
Let’s leave it open to “some response to fire and /or heat.”
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Archived Post —
Negative Capability
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August posts re-cap
For those new here, on the first of each month, I post quick links to pieces from previous month, a way to keep up to date, to not miss something you meant to read.
The August 1 “potpourri” looked at what we’re doing here in this rather eclectic place of unschool writing. We looked at the summer challenge of “work place” stories. If you’ve been working on one and wondering if there’s still time to post, please email it to me. (alison@alisonacheson.com). It’s never too late. Comments are still coming in on the one posted to date. (Check out the Workshop Space.) This is for paid folks.
In the August 1 post, I included a review of Stephen Marche’s On Writing and Failure, (sub-title Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer).
And the monthly poll asked what you’re working on, with more than half responding with short fiction and essays, and novel-work in second place. Poetry was last… which might explain the mostly-silence which greets my monthly poetry discussion posts.
The August prompt thread was a quiet place this round!
For those working in short fiction, I posted about the differences between short fiction and vignettes or “slice-of-life.” One can be a starting place for another, or enough in and of itself.
Mid-month I did something I’ve not done before, and wrote about writing on Medium, a platform that is making significant changes in our increasingly AI and algorithm-based world. (Ugh to both.) Medium is bringing in a most human element, and I am welcoming this.
I posed about naming your characters; we all have to do this at some point. No comments have been posted to this to date. But I am curious about your struggles with this…?
Last, the monthly poetry discussion piece. And I’m curious about this too. Are the prose writers reading these posts? Finding anything of use in them? What stands out?
Three Day Novel Contest
Those of you who have been here for awhile know about this: I mention it in varying depths of detail just before Labour Day weekend.
Check out the link for registraion and information.
This contest has been happening for 45 years now, and started long before NaNoWriMo. (Which is its own wonderful thing that lasts through the entire month of November. The three Day Novel contest is a mere 72 hours, from Friday midnight to Monday midnight.)
I posted a number of pieces about this a couple years ago, and you can find all here in the 2021 Index.
Archive piece 2 —
Check through all the post; you might want to set aside the weekend (or another 48 or 72 hour period) for your own “retreat,” and the posts are filled with ideas of how to gather ideas quickly and outline, as well as ideas of sleep and exercise; how to get through the hours and make them as productive as possible. It can be a good time to crank out a first rough draft.
Questions?
Happy writing as we make our way into the fall —
Alison