They are waiting for your masterpiece. Photo by Michael 1952.
I recently connected with Theodora Goss, a fantasy writer of luminescent short stories whose work I discovered a couple of years ago when I read her book In the Forest of Forgetting. I’m very excited that she has decided to write a Young Adult novel over this summer and has made her plans into a challenge, sort of like NaNoWriMo. I’ve already written the first draft of my YA fantasy, and I’ve had it in my head to finish the second by the end of August, so I’m up for the challenge and will be blogging about it here. I have a bit of a head start right now, because I just finished my second draft revision of chapter three, but most of the book has changed so substantially in plot and character that the later chapters will all be new. So in a way, I’m writing another first draft.
Here are the rules from her blog, if you want to call them that. They’re pretty flexible.
1. The challenge will run June 1st to August 31st.
2. The goal of the challenge is to write or revise a YA novel, or part of a YA novel.
3. To meet that goal, set smaller goals for yourself: words per day, pages revised per week, etc.
4. If you would like, blog about your progress. Remember that failure is as important as success.
5. Anyone can join or leave the challenge at any time. It’s always OK to start or stop.
If you are interested in participating in the challenge, get out your pencil and get ready for June 1! If you want to blog about it, Theodora will put a link to your blog up on her sidebar with the other challengers. I hope she gets lots of participants, because working through the problems of writing a novel is so much better with friends. I’m once again reminded of the power of creative community and how important it is to reach out.
On a related note, tomorrow night starts the WisCon convention here in Madison. I’m so excited to be meeting fellow writers and fans of feminist sci-fi and fantasy in person. You can be sure that I’ll tell you all about it.
[...] I’ve revised three more chapters of my YA book. My plan back at the beginning of the summer YA novel challenge was to have the second draft done by [...]
I ran across this article today and thought what a wonderful idea. Have you had anyone sign up for it or participate? If it is not too late I would love to learn more about it and maybe participate in it if I could. Thanks.
Stone – it’s very informal and never too late to get on board. Check out Theodora Goss’s link in the post above. She started it and a bunch of us joined in. There are lots of links to the blogs of the various people doing this, on her site. We’re all pretty much doing our own thing and then posting where we’re at as we go along.
You can always email me at alex at domesticatedmuse dot com if you want more information!