- Help relearning how to read, for our short-attention-span brains
- Help restarting your writing, if you're having trouble breaking a dry spell or have everyday-life challenges
- Writing instruction or criticism
- Help finding an agent or publisher
A bit of context:
A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that I had forgotten how to read.
I've always been the epitome of a bookworm, reading by the nightlight as a child, reading as I walked across campus as a teenager, reading on all my work breaks as a young adult. I bathed in libraries. I slept, reluctantly, only after my book got too heavy to hold. Now I could hardly remember the last time I'd read a full-length book.
I considered myself a writer. But I'd written less and less over time, and I'd had dry spells of many years.
I firmly believe that being a reader is important to being a writer — possibly more so than any of the classic "writing rules" such as "write every day" or "write in the morning." In fact, I detest those hard-and-fast writing rules: they encourage folks who have disabilities or chronic illness, children or other family who depend on them, demanding jobs, other daily challenges, or just different styles to simply give up on writing.
NaNoWriMo is obviously a useful kick in the pants for some, but it doesn't work well for many. In 2011, I created an anti-writing-rules Facebook page called InNoWriSa — "International Novel-Writing Semi-Annum" — with the goal of helping people write a novel in half a year rather than in a month. I thought we'd all take the process bit by bit, together, sharing hints, approaches, and ideas. But it turns out Facebook isn't great for sequential, long-term discussion. Page subscribers don't all see every posting, and they don't necessarily see them in order.
Bringing these threads together — helping us return to reading, helping us return to writing, and helping us figure out the right process for us, instead of being discouraged by prescriptive rules that can't work for everyone — is the goal of this blog.
