The Root of Inspiration

I didn’t cross the finish line for NANO this year, and I don’t feel like I failed. I could talk about the stress of the last year (and did on in my personal newsletter), but as I enter the final weeks of 2020, I’ve written close to half a million…

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2021 Prompt Calendar

Welcome to the 2021 Prompt Calendar! These short story prompts are designed to give you a little push in the creative department if you aren’t sure where you want to put your words. We don’t consider these “challenge” prompts so no pressure. If you wish to participate there is no…

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Head Canon Fodder

I wrote fanfiction privately for years. I really didn’t fully comprehend the scope of fandom until the late 90s. The Internet exposed me to a profound cultural experience, the likes of which I didn’t know was possible. In a way, fandom saved the writer in me. It gave me a…

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Creative Synergy

I’ve been participating in National Novel Writing Month since 2002. I avoided organized groups and even the website itself at that time. Writing was a very solitary endeavor for me as a young woman because it was such a personal thing for me. The idea of sharing my work with…

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The Ugly Underbelly of Fandom

There is a certain kind of writer who attaches no value to their own work on an emotional level. They write for attention. It’s the same kind of “writer” who dreams of writing a book so they’d be rich and famous. This is also the kind of “writer” who wants…

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Fetishizing Actors in Fandom

I could spend a whole year talking about the fetishizing of men in fandom because it is widespread and it leads to some truly ugly behavior on the parts of fans. It breeds contempt for show creators and sometimes obsessions with actors that can and have gotten dangerously out of…

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10 Reasons to be a Polyfandmous Writer

Having one fandom can be isolating. Creatively speaking, the canon of your fandom could and probably will provide a very narrow window of exploration. Especially with a fandom that will have no canon material to offer you. One fandom means, you’ll often gravitate toward siloed spaces for your fandom or…

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The Wild Hare Project

One of the websites I maintain for fandom is the Wild Hare Project.  In the scope of things, it flies under the radar quite a bit, which I prefer as it is a writer-focused archive, and that’s straight-up unicorn circumstances in fandom where every single other archive is geared explicitly…

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Rough Trade Thoughts

The writing challenge environment isn’t for everyone. Rough Trade is built on personal accountability—everything about the design of the challenge is focused on providing an environment where authors can stretch and challenge themselves. The basic rules stay the same from one challenge to another while the theme changes to give…

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