Yeah, I’m doing that Clarion West Write-a-Thon thing. The goal is to raise funds for Clarion West, the excellent SF writing workshop I attended eleven years ago.
This year I’m working on the same thing I was working on the last time I signed up for the write-a-thon, though I am working on a new draft of it. A lot of the vague outline is the same, but some of the details differ:
Encourage @gordsellar (class of 2006) to finish his novel in @ClarionWest #Writeathon: https://t.co/0CPVvwV5a9
— Kate Schaefer (@KateSchaeferZ) June 22, 2017
He says the novel has alchemists, gin distillers, brewers, proto-feminist revolution, and the evil plotting Habsburgs. I want to read it.
— Kate Schaefer (@KateSchaeferZ) June 22, 2017
As I noted (in the full conversation with Kate, which for some reason I can’t seem to embed here), the evil plotting Habsburgs are out, but mollies, rogues, and the early Georgian British navy are all in (yes, all three in one scene, even), which I think is a rather fair trade. (And leaves the evil plotting Habsburgs available for some other future project…)
I appreciate the encouragement. Another way to encourage me is to sponsor me, which will raise funds for Clarion West. If you’re in the U.S., it’s even a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, so you can write off the donation.
People who sponsored me in the past have earned the right to name characters in the book—a pair of horses and one of the female revolutionaries, specifically—the horses were runners-up, while the revolutionary was the top sponsor of that year. (Which reminds me, I better go ask them for the names they’d like me to use…) Still, getting suitable 1700s-fitting names is tricky, so this time around, I’m offering the following:
My top sponsor for this write-a-thon will have the right to be immortalized (or have someone else immortalized) as the victim of something terrible in the story. The book doesn’t have a lot of killing going on, but I can work something out. I’ll weave in his or her physical doppelgänger, for the purposes of wreaking grievous harm on the poor figure. Would you like it to be your look-alike to meet such a terrible fate in the book? You know what to do: sponsor me!
Oh, and for those wondering how the book progressed since the last write-a-thon, well… I guess I’ll write something up about that, in more depth, next week. For now, I can say it’s a new draft, and coming along swimmingly. Outlining seems to have finally clicked for me as something I can do, and something that helps me write better. I’m approaching the halfway point on the draft, the third serious attempt at drafting it. There’s small chunks from earlier drafts, but mostly I’m writing it anew, from scratch, and the book is a lot better for it.
More on that later.