I was 10 days into a 50-day writing workshop called “50/50 Fall 2008” when Hurricane Ike arrived last September. Several days of pandemonium and 11 days without power pushed the workshop to the back burner, where it remained until recently. Except for one anomalous book review, I didn’t make time to put anything else on the blog for most of a year.
A couple of weeks ago, I revived the 50/50 workshop as part of the process of coaching a friend through an exploration of her own writing. I’d been working the exercises for 10 days or so before it occurred to me that I should post them at Incompleat Iconoclast. I’m putting up the newer pieces as I write them, but in the interest of not burying my few subscribers in a whole bunch of messages at once, I’m spreading out posting the older ones until I get caught up. (But I’m dating them at the time I wrote them so that they’ll appear in chronological order on the blog.)
I’ve signed up again for “50/50,” Max Regan’s 50-day online workshop. “Students will receive a writing exercise via e-mail each day and will write at least one page of text a day,” says Max’s introduction to the course. Fifty days, fifty pages—hence the title. For more information about the course, visit Max’s 50/50 blog.
The class provides no mechanism for feedback; its purpose is merely to inspire and stimulate participants to cultivate or expand their every-day writing habit. I’m planning to post my 50/50 output here again, however, so that friends and fellow writers who’ve expressed interest or curiosity about my writing can take a look and give me some comments. [View the archive of my 50/50 pieces from the spring 2008 course.]
If you’ve found your way here, either because I invited you or just by accident, I’d love to know what you think. Please post your feedback as a comment on the posting to which it applies, or if you’d prefer not to make them public, . (Or call me on the phone if your critique is likely to make me cry.)
I embarked on a new initiative today. Inspired by what I’ve accomplished in the Boot Camp, I’ve set an ambitious new goal: to write 3,000 words of first-draft text every day. It’s my hope that with this commitment, I’ll push my daily writing routine to a new level and generate some material I can get published.
Today’s 3,000+ words took the form of several fragments—the very raw beginnings of a few stories and essays mixed together with assorted rants and ramblings. I’m going to select a chunk of 1,000 of those words to send to Max as today’s submission for the Boot Camp class, but I’m not ready to post anything (else) new to the blog today.
I’ve added a subscription plug-in to my blog software. There are two levels of functionality:
General public:Subscribe without becoming a registered user to receive a notice whenever something new is posted to the site.
Registered users: If you become a registered user of the site, you get a few more options. You’ll be able to manage your subscription profile to receive HTML* or plain-text notifications, excerpts versus full posts, and specify the categories about which you’d like to be notified.
You can also now keep up with the discussion of a particular article by clicking the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” button when you leave a comment. It’s not necessary to be a subscriber or registered user to make use of this feature. You can also “subscribe” to a discussion without leaving a comment.
So many options!
Note: Your registration or subscription on this site is entirely private. Your information is available to me and me alone, because this blog is privately hosted, not offered through one of the big blog-hosting services. So you won’t get any spam or advertisements as a result of subscribing or registering here.
*I don’t recommend the HTML option. You’ll receive the complete initial text of each posting, but I almost always find some typos and make a few edits AFTER I post the articles online, so if you want the edited versions, you should visit the site and read the articles here.
I’m so excited! My blog has been cited by Bingo News (“Complete Bingo Resource”). I’d like to thank the spider or robot responsible for this moment in the sun.
I never suspected that there were resources for bingo players. Oh brave new world…!
To anyone who’s been reading this blog, my apologies for the long lapse since the last posting. In mid-April, I made the decision to sell my house, and I’ve been working like a madman ever since to move and get the house ready to go on the market. Please stay tuned! I’ll have much to say when this project is over.
I’ve changed the settings for the blog so that you no longer have to be a registered user to comment on articles. I don’t know if that requirement was holding anyone back, but it seemed to be an unnecessary restriction.
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