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Thoughts on A Message from NaNoWriMo

I got an email today from the National Novel Writing Month head office, as I suspect many did. I have feelings. And questions.

First, I genuinely believe someone in the office is panicking and backtracking and did not endorse all that was said and done in the last month. From what I understand, the initial generative AI comments were not fully endorsed by all NaNo staff and board members, or even known in advance. It’s got to be rough to find out your organization kinda called people with disabilities incapable of writing a story on their own, and overtly called people with ethics racists and ablists, by reading the reactions on social media — and then your organization’s even worse counter-reactions on social media.

I still think NaNoWriMo has a good mission and many people in it with good goals.

But I think NaNoWriMo is SERIOUSLY missing a point in its performative progressivism. (For the record, I actually support many progressive policies, and I support many of the same concepts NaNoWriMo claims to support, and I applaud providing materials to underfunded schools and support to marginalized groups historically not producing as many writers, etc. The issue here is not “whether or not woke is okay” — it’s whether or not the virtue signaling is still in line with the core mission.)

Also, honesty. (That’s below.)

Thoughts on A Message from NaNoWriMo
painting by Victor Hugo

Review: Les Misérables (with a Z)

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago on a plane en route to ClickerExpo, but I forgot to finish and post it live. Here we go!

Les Miserables playbill

I had the opportunity to see the new tour of Les Misérables this week, and I’m still trying to decide how I feel about it.

I came awkwardly to my Broadway nerddom. When young Laura told my piano teacher I wanted the learn the “Phantom of the Opera music,” I meant Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and I was honestly boggled when she gave me the title track to Lloyd Webber’s show, which I’d never heard of. Then that stage passed, and I came of theater age during the heady early ’90s. This of course meant Les Misérables was a key influence.

Review: Les Misérables (with a Z)
Aeclipse Press logo

Typo Bounty Program!

I self-publish, and I publish traditionally. My work may be read by one editor or a half dozen. I’ve read it myself 5 or 25 times before it goes to press. And still somehow a typo can occasionally slip through.

Bert knows this is wrong.

It doesn’t happen a lot; I work hard to put out clean manuscripts. But I recently found an error in a story I’d sold (published elsewhere), and then this week a glitch ate some layout code and spat up paragraph break errors among hundreds of pages, all of which must be found and fixed manually.

Sometimes it’s human error. Sometimes it’s software. It’s always frustrating, even if they’re generally uncommon. But one advantage of independent publishing over traditional is the ability to correct that stray typo sooner rather than later (or not at all).

Announcing the Typo Bounty Program! /perky kazoo music/

Typo Bounty Program!

Authors & Publishers, check your machine learning licenses

Check your machine learning licenses. Even if you didn’t know you had granted one. Especially if you didn’t know you had granted one.

I have just been alerted by my narrator to a clause tucked into my Findaway Voices distribution agreement. It was the last bit of attached Schedule D, distribution policies about things like poor recording quality, hate speech, and [highly inappropriate behavior with animals and minors], and other categories I never expected to apply to our work, so I hadn’t seen it.

Authors & Publishers, check your machine learning licenses

Laura’s Big Guide to Conference Networking, or, How To Meet People in Mutually Beneficial Ways Without Feeling Like a Salesman or Wanting to Chew Your Eyes Out

I see a lot of writers stressing about talking with other writers at events. The stereotype, of course, is that writers are writers because they would rather sit in a dark room by themselves than interact with other people. And yes, it’s true, I do spend a lot of time with my imaginary friends.

But not only are writers capable of socializing like normal functional humans, it’s essential that they do. Publishing is too big to go alone; you’re going to need to take along some colleagues, for everything from critique partners to comparable marketing to moral support.

I’ve been attending 2-5 in-person conferences a year (except in 2020) for writing and my day job for the last decade or more. I’ve done a lot of conferences. Here are some things to keep in mind and to try!

Laura’s Big Guide to Conference Networking, or, How To Meet People in Mutually Beneficial Ways Without Feeling Like a Salesman or Wanting to Chew Your Eyes Out

More Videos for Creators

Hey, there are a few more videos on my channel which I haven’t given their own posts over here, because they weren’t really “featured episodes” on my show or because they were part of a conference. But in case you’re interested:

More Videos for Creators

Writing Career Maintenance for the New Year! (To Write and Have Written)

Let’s talk about backups, passwords, to-do lists, and oh yeah, goals (but actionable ones!).

Mentioned:

LastPass | Authy | Dropbox | Onedrive | MS Sculpt ergonomic keyboard |
cheap vertical mouse | Trello

Writing Career Maintenance for the New Year! (To Write and Have Written)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rewards & Reinforcement (To Write & Have Written)

There’s a lot of advice out there on using rewards to motivate your writing (especially during stretch events like NaNoWriMo). While keeping your motivation strong is a good idea, a lot of this advice is not terribly scientific, and it can be modified to be more effective.

Let’s talk about the difference between rewards and reinforcement, why we need to be proud of reaching a goal, and what to do when you tend to cheat and get your prize early.

Rewards & Reinforcement (To Write & Have Written)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Why The Shard of Elan owes its existence to trained chickens

Okay, I didn’t realize the full extent of how hilarious that title was until I came back to it. But it’s accurate.

In August of 2004, I checked into a tiny motel in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Each of the dozen rooms was decorated with a different theme, and mine was Coca-Cola.

I was in Hot Springs for three weeks of Bailey & Bailey chicken training workshops. (This is a sort of litmus test — if you work in modern animal training, you probably responded with, “Oh! Wow, cool, what an opportunity!” If you don’t, you probably responded with, “…Wut?” Because this is the author blog and not the training blog, I’ll keep it short and say that Bob Bailey and his late wife Marian were, with Keller Breland and B.F. Skinner, some of the most important researchers and practical administrators of modern behavior science. The chicken training workshops were legendary, and I owe a huge debt of training success to their teaching.)

Why The Shard of Elan owes its existence to trained chickens

Interview with Go Indie Now

At When Words Collide this year, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Joe Compton of Go Indie Now. I have to say that Joe asked some really good questions, different from the typical author interview, and I had a blast talking with him.

He also really did his homework, pulling up photos of this year’s trip to Japan and my dogs!

Interview with Go Indie Now