Welcome to the last part of the iggi U celebration!  Starting today iggi and I are hosting a weekend-long blog party here on this blog.

What’s a blog party, you ask?  It’s a chance for you to share your blog with the rest of iggi U and also a chance for you all to find new exciting blogs to follow.

Sounds like fun?  Here’s how it works:

• Be a follower here at iggi&gabi.
• Leave a comment on this post, sharing your blog info and telling us a little about what you blog about.  Also tell us what iggi-licious yummies you plan to bring to the party!
• Invite some friends and spread the word.
• Visit at least 3 new blogs over the weekend and leave comments.  Follow those blogs if you like.
• I’ll check the comments throughout the weekend, visit as many blogs as I can and follow them if I’m not already following.

So come on in, enjoy the weather (it’s always sunny at iggi U) and meet some fellow bloggers and writers.

As for what iggi-licious treats I’m bringing, I’ve made iggi’s favorite: Brazilian chocolate truffles called brigadeiros.

Hello DIY MFA peeps!  Are you enjoying commencement week so far?  I hope you liked the guest posts because I know I sure did.

Today I wanted to take care of some DIY MFA orders of business.  First, the exciting news.  Some of you may have noticed the bright blue button in the sidebar already, but our online DIY MFA community is now up and running.  So come join, share your DIY MFA experiences and connect with other writers.  Most importantly, have fun!

Second, for our last big DIY MFA celebration I’ll be hosting a Weekend Blog Party right here on this blog.  The idea is for everyone to have a chance to promote their own blogs and find lots of new blogs to follow (not to mention, gain some new followers too!)  I got this idea from Karen G’s fabulous blog Coming Down the Mountain.  She hosted a Labor Day BBQ, and I participated.  It was loads of fun and I got a ton of new followers and found several great blogs to follow as well!

• Blog Party starts Friday!
• Be a follower here at iggi&gabi.
• Leave a comment on Friday’s post, sharing your blog info and telling us a little about what you blog about.  Also tell us what iggi-licious yummies you plan to bring to the party!
• Invite some friends.
• Visit at least 3 new blogs over the weekend and leave comments.  Follow those blogs if you like.
• I’ll check the comments throughout the weekend, visit as many blogs as I can and follow them if I’m not already.

Finally, the contest.  As you all may recall, those DIY MFA participants who registered at iggi U were automatically enrolled in a contest.

Prize: a free critique by yours truly on up to 25 pages of your work (double-spaced, 12pt font).

This morning I picked the winner using the oh-so-scientific method of writing names on paper and pulling one from a hat.  And the winner is…

*drumroll*

*fumbles with envelope*

*opens envelope*

Bess, please email your piece as a .doc file and I’ll send you your critique by the end of October.  Congratulations Bess; can’t wait to read your piece.

And thank you to all of you who helped make the DIY MFA extrabloganza so much fun.  You guys rock!

Today we have our Student Speaker guest post and blogfest!  SA Larsen (AKA Sheri) was one of the first people to join in on DIY MFA and has been a part of this blog community since… almost since when this blog started.  She’s a young adult and middle grade writer, wife, and mother to four humanoids. A romantic at heart and self-proclaimed chocoholic, she’s a lover of all things paranormal and the owner of the infamous Graffiti Wall on Writers’ Ally. She can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Read on for Sheri’s take on DIY MFA and don’t forget to scroll to the bottom, to read other posts by other DIY MFAers.  And now, here’s Sheri!

Writing is an evolution for both writer and the works he or she produces. A successful writer is not merely one who is published, but one willing to constantly train and mature within the craft.

Over the last four weeks, iggi U has taken us from one well mapped-out element of writing to the next and given us our own in-house Do-It-Yourself MFA. Totally cool! Technique, reading habits, and inspiration have all been covered. I, for one, will take with me the sense of community developed here and Gabi’s enthusiasm for the written word. It’s contagious, and I love that.

The idea of mind mapping is one of the exciting techniques I’ve honed while at iggi U. It almost reminded me of my theatre classes when the instructor gave us a phrase, and as we acted it out, he’d toss another completely unrelated phrase at us. This kind of activity is great, pushing us out of my comfort zone and beyond our average, mundane thoughts. Personal translation: resurrection from the cautious and otherwise boring scenes, plots, or sub-plots I might have come up with. It’s an innovative way to stretch those mental and creative muscles. I’ve tucked this tool away in my creative writing arsenal for the next time I’m jittery about taking a writing risk.

If you’re anything like me, once I have a scene or a chapter in mind, I tend to go on autopilot and just write. I’m definitely a pantser. Outlining is too restrictive for my squishy brain. Grid out my gray matter and you might as well have erased my thought process entirely. But Gabi’s lessons on the In’s and Out’s of Plotting and the Character Compass, not to mention TADA—which is magnificent, BTW—got me thinking. An itemized list of capital A to G with numbers trailing behind like the Pied Piper isn’t necessary. But I also don’t need to abandon planning all together. I can ask myself simple questions, analyzing conflict, and character traits and growth as I write. If I find any weaknesses, I can turn to the mind mapping method to develop more. And even if I find solid, engaging conflict, I can still use this technique to add a little heat and spice, and maybe deepen the plot in a way I hadn’t thought of yet. I call this non-restrictive, and I’ll definitely be applying this to my writing rhymes.

The last element I’d like to mention is the idea of Reading Like a Writer. This happens to be a topic I’ve studied a lot. Don’t get me wrong; it is vital we read for pleasure. But learning to have that ‘writer’s eye’ while reading other’s work is a form of invaluable training for a writer. I plan on honing this method even more now.

Overall, iggi U has been a wonderful experience and has given me insight into my personal workings as a writer. And best of all, the lessons and discussions can be a continued writing resource by the simple click of a key and a link.

I’d like to thank Gabi for sharing her talents and love of writing with us.

Thank you Sheri, and thank you everyone who helped make DIY MFA a success.  Now, check out these awesome links below.

Today’s keynote speaker is Benjamin Andrew Moore, a fellow classmate of mine from the New School and the non-fiction and comics editor at Verbal Pyrotechnics.  Ben’s writing caught my eye and captured my sense of humor with its satirical wit.  This guy is FUNNY!  But what’s great about Ben’s work is that it’s also honest and real, and while he might have an ironic way of wording things, when you cut through to what he’s really saying, you realize he’s talking about something more serious than just good-humored fun.

Ben has a “satirical blog” Come Look At My Chest Hair and is a writer for Screenrant.com.  As Ben says: “If you need to warn people about the content of the Chest Hair blog, be my guest.”  It involves chest hair; you have been warned.  🙂  Without further ado, here’s Ben’s take on DIY MFA.

Ninety percent of everything is terrible, give or take.

Ninety percent of movies are terrible, ninety percent of television shows, ninety percent of plays, of videogames, of board games, of human beings, of restaurants, of clothing lines, of orange and grape-flavored beverages, and of books. Fiction, ninety percent of the time, is laughable, bland, stupid, trite, purposeless, and—say it with me—terrible, terrible, terrible. I wish it weren’t true, dear readers, but so it goes!

The problem is, nobody takes risks and nobody’s original. Formula is king and clichés are its freaking court jesters. Humor is hard to come by, drama is over-serious—not to mention pretentious—mysteries are ham-fisted, vampire love books aren’t even romantic, and while Holden Caulfield was unrepentantly awesome, his millions upon millions of knock-offs were most definitely not. The Chocolate War? I mean, are you kidding me, Robert Cormier?

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It really doesn’t. That ten percent of quality is proof.

As writers, all you have to do is not rip off the books and stories and ideas that came before yours. It’s okay to be influenced by the things that you love, but it’s not okay to just re-do them with your prose in place of—say—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s. The Great Gatsby was great, sure, hence the title. But that doesn’t mean you should rewrite it. That doesn’t mean you should rip it off.

Be bold. Take risks. It’s lame, and it’s clichéd, and it probably even sounds stupid, but go big or go on home. Please, I beg of you, just try to create something that’s never been done before. A high fantasy book shouldn’t be the Lord of the Rings Part Fourteen. Historical thrillers shouldn’t be reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code, which in and of itself was a just rip-off of Angels and Demons, which in and of itself was just another in that ninety percent, give or take, of terrible books.

The DIY MFA is the perfect opportunity to grow as a writer on your own terms, away from the occasionally cannibalistic world of Creative Writing. Hell, if people despise your writing, that doesn’t even mean it’s bad! Once upon a time, people hated Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, William Faulkner, William S. Burroughs, Stanley Kubrick, Vincent Van Gogh, and so on, and so on, and on, and on. In fact, people hating your writing might actually mean you’re doing something right. Bravo.

Being creative isn’t easy. Truth be told, it’s can be really, really hard at times. But then if it’s so damn difficult for you, why’d you start writing in the first place?