“NaBloPoMo is your experience. It’s your 30-day posting process, and you can use the space on your blog in any way you choose:
- You can access daily prompts through BlogHer.
- You can post a work in progress.
- You can experiment with a new style of writing.
- You can join in with NaBloPoMo to bring you back from a writing hiatus.
- You can meet other NaBloPoMo-ers if you’re hungry for community.”
–This post from Alexandra Rosas on BlogHer.com is what made me officially sign up for NaBloPoMo, even if I am committing myself to taking it just one week at a time.
“Basic Rules of the Candy Giver:
- give candy to kids
- don’t give tainted candy
- have porch light on
- tell kids they are cute/scary/etc (optional)
- be mostly friendly (not optional)
- turn off light when the candy runs out
Basic Rules of the Candy Taker:
- wear costume
- go to houses with porch lights on
- skip dark houses
- stay on walkways
- don’t litter
- say thank you
- bonus rule: kids coming should yield to the kids leaving to help keep the groups moving”
–Amy lays out the Halloween Social Contract
Looking to learn something new about how to do what you do online? Here’s an unexpected resource: NPR.com‘s Editorial Training–freely available to help, even if you don’t work for NPR.
“In this constantly changing media world, it can feel impossible to find the time and space to hone your storytelling techniques, learn something new or experiment with new tools.
(A)nyone in public media (and outside public media, for that matter) can access our Editorial Training website. You can browse through best practices for audio, digital, social media and visual storytelling.
We suggest using this site to:
“Walk into your local bookstore, head to the YA racks and try to find a science fiction or fantasy-themed book that more than fifteen years old. It’ll be a rough assignment. YA has a high audience turnover rate — kids keep aging out of the demo, don’t you know — and the new kids want their own books…Certainly you can’t expect new readers to the genre, including young readers, to backshift several decades — or, well, you can, but it would have the same effect as suggesting to a teenager today that if they want to see a movie about people their age, they should watch The Blackboard Jungle. Sure, it’s fine movie, and an important one. It’s just not especially relevant to the teenager of today. It wasn’t made for them, in any event. It was made for their grandparents.”
–John Scalzi is talking specifically about SF/F here, but the observation may apply to other genres too: “No, the Kids Aren’t Reading the Classics and Why Would They”
