Hello friendsies and a Happy Monday to you!

This week is chock-full of happy news:

1)  As some of you may have already figured out, I finished the first draft of my WIP.  Whee!  I feel like baking everyone in the blogsphere a cake.  Then again, smashing cake pieces through the computer screen would be rather messy (not to mention I’d get crumbs all over my keyboard), so here’s the next best thing:

 

Here’s how it works:

To enter the contest: Leave a comment below.  That’s it.  No tallying entries or or all that icky math stuff, just your shiny happy comment to this post.  Isn’t that easy?

Prize: One lucky winner will get a critique of their first 25 pages from yours truly.
(Standard formatting: double spaced, 12pt font.)

But wait… it gets better!

If you’re not already following this blog, you might want to join the fun.  And spread the word because…

If I make it to 200 followers by the time the contest closes, I’ll double it to two lucky winners.

Contest closes this Saturday (11:59pm November 20 EST)

Hooray!

Hi everyone,

iggi and I have been pondering something.  See, every so often, we come up with wild and crazy ideas like DIY MFA and other cool stuff and we want to give our loyal readers a preview before we make it public on the site.

Or sometimes we’re thinking something could be a good idea but we want to test the waters and see if there’s interest before announcing it to the whole world.  We need the eyes and ears of our trusted readers to give input.

Or sometimes we just have fun news to share and we want to get the word out to all our online friends.

To that end, I’ve set up a little sign-up form in the about tab and if you don’t mind sharing your email and twitter name, iggi and I would love to have you on our contact list.

And don’t worry, iggi and I don’t spam and we will only email the whole list if it’s something REALLY important.  Also we will never, EVER share your emails with any person or group.

And of course, iggi and I LOVE to hear from you so feel free to email or tweet and share your thoughts.  Or just say “Hi.”  Whatever you like.

Dear friends,

I realize that I’ve been a bit absent the last two and a half days and I wanted to let you all know that I’m still here and still have plans to continue my writing projects!

Here’s what’s been going on.  First the embarrassing.  On Monday I injured my right thumb, you know with all that hitchhiking I do when I’m not writing.  Anyway, I spent the week hopped up on ibuprophen and my right hand was out of commission, which made it hard to write.  I couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment until this morning and that was precisely when my thumb magically healed itself.  Feeling like a total idiot, I went to the doctor anyway and learned that there was nothing wrong with my thumb.  Never was.  The most that must have happened was that I flailed around in my sleep and banged it somehow.  I felt like a world-class moron.

But it wasn’t just the thumb that hindered my posting this week.  Truth is, I have a big deadline coming up and I’ve had to focus all my writing energy on it.  That said, this deadline will soon have passed and I’ll be back to my frequent posting schedule as soon as I can.

Finally, this fall has been a time of some big life decisions.  I can’t share specifics just yet, but anyone of you who’s ever had to make a BIG decision knows how it can take over your brain.  That’s what’s happened to me.

In the end, I just wanted to write a quick something to let you all know that yes I’m still here and I will continue to post.  But for the next week or so, it just won’t be as frequent as I promised.  I miss you guys and can’t wait to be back full-swing.

Today is my first non-DIY MFA blog post in over a month.  Part of me is still feeling a bit of withdrawal from the September extrabloganza but part of me is relieved too.  Here are some things I learned from this month-long blogging project (and I think they relate to writing in general too).

1) Blogging every single day with no breaks is hard, but totally worth it.  Don’t get me wrong, it was totally worth it and a lot of fun too, but it was still a challenge.  A worthy challenge, sure, but still a challenge.

2) Planning makes all the difference, but over-planning can kill creativity.  During September, I had a plan for each post I was going to write and when I would post it.  I wrote the posts usually the weekend before they were due to go up and programmed them to go live at the right time.  This was all well and good, but it did take some of the spontaneity out of the writing so the trick was finding a balance between over-planning and planning just enough.

3) I can do it.  I know this one sounds like a no-brainer, but before September I had no clue if I had a project like this in me and if I could sustain the writing for a whole month, every day, no breaks.  Part of the reason I decided to embark on this project in the first place was to prove to myself that I could do it.  Now, when I start to doubt myself–“Can I really finish this novel?”–I’ll just remember September and remind myself that if I could do this project, I can tackle a novel too.

4) Having a topic you believe in makes all the difference.  Having readers who also believe in your topic is even better.  Excitement is contagious.  No matter how excited one person is about a project, the level of motivation will only go up if you put him or her together with equally motivated people.  You guys are a big part of the reason why I made it through this project.  Without your enthusiasm and great comments, it would’ve been really tough.

5) I still have a lot of DIY MFA to share so it’s not over yet!  Though September is behind us and I’ve covered the basics of DIY MFA, there are still plenty of topics to share.  Here’s my plan for this blog going forward:

Monday/Wednesday/Friday: I’ll continue writing about DIY MFA and topics relating to it (like craft or literature), though I won’t separate topics according to day like I did with the DIY MFA “classes”.  Every so often, I’ll do a Monday-Friday week-long series on one topic (and I’ll try to announce when those are coming so you’ll know to check back during that week).  For the most part, though, I’ll be posting more organically, as topics come to me.

Tuesday/Thursday: These will be my “wild card” days when I’ll post things that strike me more spontaneously, though writing and creativity will usually be central to the topic at hand, I may branch out to other topics those days as well.  I also may occasionally give myself a day off on a Tues. or Thurs.

Saturday/Sunday: iggi and I will take a much-needed weekend break so we can come up with new and exciting blog posts for the following week.

Sound like fun?  I hope so.  I’m a little nervous about abandoning the DIY MFA structure but I think this plan will work nicely and if it doesn’t I’ll change things up.  Of course, if I do decide to change things on you, I’ll make sure to let you know.