Posts by Janie Sullivan:
Changes
The Center for Writing Excellence is going to be going through a transformation over the next several months. First, I want to thank all of you for the tremendous support you have provided over the past three years. I have had emails and letters from writers thanking me for offering the uniquely challenging Fiction in Five contest and for the encouragement the Center has given to writers who needed an extra push to ‘get out there’ and write.
While the contests have been very enjoyable, I believe it is time for a change. For that reason I have already put the Genre Contest on Hiatus and once the June Fiction in Five contest is over it, too will go on Hiatus. I will then work on them over the next several months and introduce a new contest in January that will be fun, challenging, offer exciting prizes and provide opportunities to writers to do something a bit different.
The Third Annual Fiction Anthology will come out in July or August and it will feature all the winners from both contests over the past year. The cover design will be an original piece of artwork from one of you. I am offering a contest right now to see whose art will be picked for the cover. For a $5 entry fee, you can submit your 4″x4″ writing related art and have your friends vote on it. The winner will receive 90% of the entry fees. The winning art will be featured on the cover of the Anthology and the artist’s bio will be included inside the book. For more information click this link: Cover Image Contest. Everyone who votes will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of the Anthology.
Another new feature to watch for is the launching of our Online Workshop Series: Writing Excellent Fiction. The series is scheduled to start in late summer with the first three courses:
Plot and Structure
Characters, POV, and Emotion
Dialogue
Each course will be 6-8 weeks long, with at least two live sessions (via Webinar), weekly reading and writing assignments, and a discussion board for students to share their work with the instructor and each other.
I am looking forward to the new year, and the upcoming summer planning for the new year. As always, your encouragement, ideas, and support are appreciated as the Center for Writing Excellence moves forward.
An Excerpt and a Question
OK, here is the excerpt from the novel I am working on in CampNaNoWriMo: The people were becoming more agitated as the day progressed, acting more like a mob than a crowd. They were shoving and pushing each other, trying to get to the front. The scaffold loomed ominously over the [...]
The Letter E
What an odd title for a blog post. One might surmise that I am going back to Sesame Street to expound on the letter E; however that is not the case. (There are about 30 videos and games about the Letter E at Sesame Street.com, but that will be another post on another day. Maybe.) [...]
Character Takeover
I am doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month, along with the NYC short story challenge. I just discovered that if the story I co-wrote for the first round of the NYC short story challenge is chosen as one of the top five out of the 25 entries in our heat, we will move on to the [...]
Why Do We Blog?
I have recently had several questions about blogging. When one person said she did not see why she needed a blog, it took me a few minutes to be able to form an answer that made sense. It got me thinking, why DO we blog? I came up with the following reasons: As a writer, [...]
Crowdsourcing for Writers Part 3
In this final post about Crowdsourcing I want to talk about marketing. As you are probably aware, if you self publish your book, you are responsible for the marketing of it. The time to market for a self-published book is a matter of days versus months if you go the traditional route. What that means [...]
Crowdsourcing for Writers Part 2
Yesterday I talked about Crowdsourcing as a way to get help, information, and feedback on your outline for a self-published book. This concept comes from Guy Kawasaki, author of APE, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. Today’s discussion will cover the second of three parts to this innovative concept for Indie writers. Once you have digested all the [...]
Crowdsourcing for Writers Part 1
According to Wikipedia, the definition of Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. I attended a Webinar yesterday where Guy Kawasaki, co-author of APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur spoke about his success [...]
Are You a Writer? Are You Sure?
Over the past few weeks I have heard various writers say things like this: “If you are MEANT to be a writer, you would write a minimum of 10 hours a week.” or “If you are serious about being a writer, you would write EVERY day.” or “Writers ALWAYS carry a notebook with them.” I [...]
Why a Writing Workshop?
One of the questions I keep getting when I mention the face-to-face writing workshops that the Center for Writing Excellence is now offering is: I already am a writer, why should I take a workshop?” OK, that is a very legitimate question. I did some research and I found several Websites that provide a multitude [...]
Janie Sullivan, Director
Center for Writing Excellence
1st Annual Fiction Anthology
2nd Annual Fiction Anthology
Develop and Deliver an Online Course
Developing Characters that Speak