regarding the 401 workshops. may cap the sign up list at 10 for each group to keep the zoom sessions less chaotic and maximize individual time for everyone and their work. I've just promised one free lottery spot aka KMJ basketball scholarship to a student who had some extra bad luck this past christmas and reckon I'll offer one of those for each group for the extra talented extra broke or struggling among us. the young hungry lost writers among us for whom the support guidance and creative sparks flying in tight workshop setting may be the difference between a splash of hope and free fall down the black into despair or addiction.
I know those folk are out there. spoke to a couple earlier today. I was one of those folk. fuck still am, some days. also if the six week session is more desirable will adjust the work output to three stories or chapters per writer per shop. I tend to rec five to seven thousand words per story but nothing set in stone. though rarely do you see a ten thousand word story from a new writer that doesn't need a hefty chunk of fat cut from the bone. what else. as mentioned in recent post on stack the last time I ran an online shop it was thirty students from a dozen countries and nineteen different time zones and the 24 hour nature of the cycle and the mass of words produced plus my personal OCD inclinations divided by much slower internet back then it got a tiny bit crazymaking.
meanwhile a couple questions that have popped up elsewhere were do I mind workshopping chapters from a novel in progress or short stories only. chapters welcome. likewise prose poetry if that's your thing. though if there's sufficient interest I may devote one of the future shops strictly to scriptwriting for either screen or comics. another question was do I mind if someone wants to bring in stories that aren't noir or cyberpunk. please. if everyone is working the same vein same style or genre you may have a killer shop but I always found the more different genres on the table the better. I learned as much from jd Salinger and ray carver as I did from james cain or philip dick. likewise the poets. storytellers and poets have more in common than they realize and can never not learn something from each other if they listen and look sharp.
for those of you interested in the first 401 shop either sound off here or drop me a note at w7baer@gmail and I'll start a list. start date for the first group flexible. will announce soon as we have ten names. or if only five or seven show up for the first round that works too.
if you'd like to be considered for the basketball scholarship or have a proposal for sliding scale likewise drop me a note. I did say I was open to folks paying what they can afford. if there's a velvet lurker out there sitting on a pot of gold who wants to sponsor somebody that's another option. anyway drop me a note tell me something about your situation your life your day job your demons and distractions plus a writing sample. I promise to try mightily to accommodate as many folks as possible while still keeping the velvet lights on.
fade.
ps. if there is a daddy warbucks lurker out there sitting on pot of gold dude where you been all my life come on in..
For anyone currently involved with, working on, or having to do with the 9 story Hotel project. We are in the process of migrating the bulk of the work and community surrounding the Hotel to Discord from The Locals, since the Locals is harder to navigate even than Discord, I would suggest you join up. The server is fully populated and set-up for work, talk, and collaboration.
This is the discord invite, it is good for the next seven days, after which I will probably post another one:
Let's see if I'm not as dumb as I think I am. This is the Google doc link for FRACTALS, the Delphine and Balthazar story.
Little iffy on the first section. I think it's good for characterization and to set up some of the relationships, but maybe it could be streamlined or brought into the main narrative. Feels slightly more like the opening of a novel than a story but I'll let others weigh in.
Hope y'all dig it!
EDIT: I was talking with another writer and wanted to clarify something I should've mentioned above. (Trying to avoid spoilers.) The ending of this is purposely ambiguous, in that another writer could pick up with the next story from another character's point of view, Delphine could achieve either of the possible goals (or none of them), or anything in between. And it's kind of subject to change based on what the next story is or what the overall project needs from these characters. TL;DR: If the ending doesn't quite land with the project from a 30k-foot view, no worries, we ...
Newest Althea story, AKA The Room With the Teeth
https://open.substack.com/pub/cjstockton/p/biting-down?r=1ck2p&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
