Sticky Notes Blog

A blog of writing news, tips, and inspiration from Fat Plum

Category: Recommended

Auction for Writers: Bid on Agent & Editor Proposal Evaluations

Bidding begins today on Brenda Novak's Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research. The auction features some of the typical auction-type items like camcorders, etc. But this one also has items availble for readers and writers that are quite unique.

For example, as of his writing, you can bid on a proposal to be read by agent Jeff Herman. The current bid is $16. Agent Meredith Bernstein is offering to evaluate a proposal with a 24-48 hour response time. That bid is currently at $330.

Check it out and let us know if you bid and/or win!

Posted by Judy on May 02, 2008
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended
Comments (0)

How to be cleverer

Here's a nice blog by screenwriter Jane Espenson. In the most recent post, she laments overused punchlines and exhorts us all to skip easy, lame dialogue in favor of something fresher:

I have it on good authority that no fewer than three of the new pilots for Fall series use "That went well" as a punchline. Nooooo! Have I accomplished nothing?!
I also hereby call clam on these mollusks:

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

And

(sing-song) "Awkward!"

And

"I said, 'good day, Sir!'"

Really, people, even in real life, don't use these! They're past their expiration date and they will make you ill. An excellent rule of thumb is "if you've read it, don't write it; if you've heard it, don't say it." Adapt it, sure. Or make fun of it if you want -- use it ironically. But don't expect a genuine laugh.

We all fall prey to such lazy writing, especially in early drafts. Let's all take a vow to push beyond and be better in rewrites.

(Link thanks to the hilarious, always surprising John Hodgman.)

Posted by Cindy on July 20, 2007
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended
Comments (0)

Writers’ Group Announces Thoburn Scholarship for Students

(From the mailbag)

Ligonier Valley Writers announces a scholarship for college and high school students for its summer writing conference.

The Tina Thoburn Memorial Scholarship will honor the woman without whom there would be no Ligonier Valley Writers. After a long and productive career as an educator and writer, Ms. Thoburn helped to found the Ligonier Valley Writers Conference 21 years ago. She hosted the conference picnic in her gardens every summer until the Southern
Alleghenies Museum of Art opened, thanks to her donation of the land and the building. The scholarship recognizes her enthusiastic support for young writers in particular and the arts in general.

The scholarship will be awarded to a deserving high school or college
student interested in creative writing. The recipient will be invited to attend the two-day conference in July free of charge. This will be an opportunity for young writers to hone their craft with the help of
published experts in a supportive atmosphere. Students can focus on one genre or mix and match to explore two interests.

The scholarship is open to all accredited college or high school students in Pennsylvania. Those interested in applying should send a sample of writing of no more than two pages and a letter explaining how they hope to benefit from the conference. The writing sample can be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Application forms and complete requirements will be posted soon on the LVW website, www.ligoniervalleywriters.org.

The scholarship is valued at $250. It includes the entire two-day
conference: the Friday afternoon session on creativity, the Friday picnic at SAMA (where all faculty members will read from their work), and seminars and workshops all day Saturday, followed by dinner, the Thoburn Lecture, and a roundtable discussion on the current state of publishing.

Kirk Weixel, professor of English at St. Francis University, is program director for the conference.

The 21st annual LVW Conference will take place July 27-28 at the Ramada Inn in Ligonier. Faculty members this year include Christine O’Toole, a creative nonfiction writer who specializes in travel; Patricia Easton, recipient of the 2006 Beverly Cleary Children's Choice Award; Richard Easton, author of the young adult novel A Real American; poet and "Prosody" radio host Jan Beatty; and novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Gary Eberle.

LVW is a nonprofit group serving writers and readers throughout western Pennsylvania. For more information about any LVW events, visit the website.

Posted by Cindy on April 20, 2007
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended
Comments (0)

NaNoWriMo: Time to prepare

As promised in this space previously, I have signed up for NaNoWriMo 2005. I have completed the next step as well: creating a working title. The project is called Love in the Time of Caller-ID. (With apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, plus a promise to change the title as soon as I can -- once I discover what the novel is actually about.)

I'll be blogging daily about my fast-paced writing adventures on my personal site, My Brilliant Mistakes. The real writing doesn't start until November 1 of course, but for this final week I'm preparing by listing elements to include in the story, defining lead characters, loosely outlining the plot, and so forth. Drop by and check on my progress; if you're WriMo-ing too, let me know how it's going for you.

Posted by Cindy on October 25, 2005
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended, What's up with us
Comments (0)

Write a novel in a month

It's time again to dive into NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month. You write a fifty thousand word first draft of your novel in thirty days. Why? You choose why:

To show yourself you can
To show other people you can
For the sheer joy of writing
Because you haven't done anything really hard in ages
To get your novel off to a fantastic start
To finally get yourself over your writer's block
Because everyone else is doing it

Writing commences November 1 and ends precisely at midnight on November 30. In between there are tears, sweat, screams, and agony, plus a damn good lot of fun. And at the end there's a termendous swell of achievement. It cannot be beat.

There's no cost to sign up, but the non-profit organization who runs the event and manages the website appreciates donations. The website is great -- it's a meeting point/support group/cheerleading section all rolled into one. It helps you track your progress, share your joys and sorrows, and keep yourself going to the bittersweet end. See it all at www.nanowrimo.org.

I've completed NaNoWriMo twice, getting a solid draft of a novel each time. I'm working on one of those novels now -- well, not exactly working on, but thinking daily about and sort of missing. I've been mired in other projects for some time and having trouble getting back in the writing groove. Among the few rules of NaNoWriMo is the restriction that you must start an entirely new book: No revising or reworking old material. So I plan to naNoWriMo a new book this November, to bully myself out of my rut and turbo-charge my writing practice. Then I'll restart work on the in-progress novel in December.

I encourage you to join in too. Let me know if you sign up, and we'll egg each other on.

Posted by Cindy on October 04, 2005
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended
Comments (0)

Thinking of those in need

We at Fat Plum would like to add our voices to the chorus calling for aid for those affected by Hurricane Katrina. We encourage you to donate to the American Red Cross. You can donate online at their website: www.redcross.org. We also suggest you donate blood to blood banks, which are chronically in need.

Remember too that while donations immediately after events like these, they fall off again within weeks. Yet need doesn't go away. Please consider donating again when you're able.

Posted by Cindy on September 02, 2005
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended

50 thousand words in 30 days

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. It happens ever year, and it's a terrific event. From the website:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Can it be done? Yes. I've "won" (that is, finished) NaNoWriMo twice, and both times I was very proud of the result. My mother completed it twice too, creating a full draft of a novel each time, while still working and preparing all the family's Thanksgiving activities.

So get out your pens, typewriters, laptops, Alphasmarts... whatever you need, and get going!

Posted by Cindy on November 01, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended

I wish I thought of this!

Booksfree.com: Borrow, Rent, or Buy Books and Audiobooks A library without late fees ? and you check out titles from home. What Netflix did for movies, Booksfree has done for paperbacks. For a monthly fee ($8 to $30, depending) you can borrow books and return them in a prepaid mailer whenever you finish. But what if the title is a must-have for your library? Buy a new copy for up to 30% off.

Posted by Julie on September 11, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended

"Written from 12:26 to 12:47 (I got a phone call for one minute) in my awesome windowless office."

The third-place winner in McSweeney's Twenty-Minute Stories Contest has been published: Goodbye Ernie Flynn by Wendy Molyneux.

For three days now I have been followed by an ambulance. I first noticed it while I was driving home from a lecture I gave at a museum. I am not an artist or an art historian. I work for a company called Safety Net. We help employers figure out if any of their employees are shoplifting, embezzling, or planning heists. It is my job to teach the employees how to spot colleagues who might be stealing or planning to steal. I also teach the employees how to resist if any of their colleagues try to rope them into some sort of scheme. All of our teachings are based on Christian principles, but we don't tell them that. Not everyone believes the same way, and I accept that.

Posted by Cindy on May 07, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Inspiration, Online publishing, Recommended

When context clues aren't enough

We haven't yet seen one of these in person, but we're eager to: the Franklin Pagemark Dictionary, an electronic dictionary that does double-duty as a book mark.

From the product description:

An essential reading companion, this Merriam Webster electronic PageMark dictionary is ultra thin and lightweight so you can use it as a bookmark. A quick and easy reference for over 274,000 definitions, it lets you create your own word list for easy reference, and includes phonetic spell correction for over 80,000 words. Fun and convenient, it features a built-in crossword solver, word games, a clock and full-function calculator, plus a Rolodex databank to store names and phone numbers.

Sounds neat. But when they come out with the matching thesaurus, I'll be among the first to order.

Posted by Cindy on May 05, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended

Contact Fat Plum