As some of you already know, this year I want to do a workshop that lasts at least one week on my blog. These are meant to be intense, short workshops. In January I did a workshop on Organizing Your Novel, and this month I'll be doing a workshop on characterization. These workshops are designed to help writers with a first draft figure out what they want their story to look like in the next draft, and to help them figure their characters out as well.
I've come up with a theoretical list of workshops for the next year. I'm hoping for some input on what you think would be most useful. Take a look at my list and let me know what you think. Suggestions are welcome.
January-Organizing your novel
February-Characterization
March-Editing
April-Developing a Religion
May-Dear Diary Workshop
June-Developing Mythology
July-Developing a History
August-Increasing Your Productivity (Scheduling workshop w/prompts)
September-Short Story workshop (writing a short story)
October-Character and Plot Building month long workshop
November-Nanowrimo related workshop
December-Short Story Editing
What do you think of this list? Which workshops are you most interested in? What do you think could be better replaced by something else?
Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday. It was hectic; a friend of mine ran into some trouble and I had to help her out.
I just want to say thank you to everyone for reading and thanks to all those who participated in the workshop. I would love to see your feedback, so if you have any comments-things you thought worked well, things you thought didn't, things you think it would be interesting if I tackled next year-let me know. My email is diannalgunn@gmail.com
Today is the first day of Nanowrimo. It's time to begin your novels; to write that first sentence and see where the words take you.
Try to write more than you need to today. You want to write two or three thousand extra words today, so that if something happens midway through November you have a little bit of wiggle room as to your word count.
This is the beginning of a crazy, month-long journey that will sometimes feel like it was years, and sometimes feel like it was only a few days. You are likely to learn things about yourself and what you are capable of over the course of this month.
When you're ahead of the game, just keep going. When the words are flowing, let them out, let them go. You're writing a story here, a novel.
And when the going gets tough, find a way to make yourself write. Go to the forums and find someone who will have a word war with you. If you're really desparately lost, go to the forums and let the world know your situation. Someone is bound to help you out-the forums are full of great people.
Remember that Nanowrimo is about challenging yourself. And even if you don't write 50, 000 or more words, you're still a winner just for trying-and you'll probably get more done than you would if you hadn't tried.
Good luck-now stop reading and start writing!
This is a list of ten things you can look forward to here on this blog over the coming year. I've been planning quite a few workshops and things to do around here to make life more interesting. I've also been debating making a forum for these workshops. Anyone who would be willing to help me run it should contact me at diannalgunn@gmail.com about it.
Here are some things you can expect to see:
1. Early Releases Of Ebooks Bleed and Myths of Tamraq will both be announced here before anywhere else. I will also be releasing a couple free PDFs of myths. A Cutter's Journey will be announced here and on its own website a week before I go to any of my regular forums and places to announce it.
2. Nanowrimo World-Building Workshop This will be a two week workshop, with a half hour exercise every day. You can expect things like building a God, building a religion, looking at architecture, looking at weather, culture, and art. It will be run in the second week and second last week of October.
3. Nanowrimo Pep Talks I will be doing a weekly pep talk for Nanowrimo once again on this blog this year, because I had lots of fun last year. I'll also be looking for a couple other Nanoers and asking them to do guest post pep talks.
4. Dear Diary Workshop This will be going on next February. I will be doing my own Dear Diary, and each day have a list of questions to consider when writing your own. More on this later, when I have a proper 'course' outline type of thing.
5. World-Building Workshop This will be a multi-post workshop, each post focusing on a different part of the world building. There will be two exercises a week. This and the following few workshops already have basic outlines, and I'm seriously considering starting a forum for the different workshops on this blog.
6. Religion-Building Workshop This is another multi-post workshop which will be six weeks long, one exercise per week. It will cover how I usually build my religions and have various questions to ask. One of the exercises will be myth-building.
7. God-Building Workshop The Gods are characters too. This will be a four post workshop, two posts each over two weeks, about how to create a God.
8. Culture-Building Workshop This will be a six week workshop like the Religion one, with exercises focusing on art, myth, music and language.
9. Character-Building Workshop This workshop will be like the others, showing how I develop characters.
10. Plot-Building Workshop This workshop will cover various ways to build plot, including my reviews on two or three different methods and an overview of my own personal method.
These and much more will be coming over the next year. Thinking about it, I will be creating a forum in October which will have sub-forums for each workshop so that people who do the workshops at any time can discuss them.
Thanks for reading,
~Dianna
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