September 2024 The Great Substack Prompt Celebration
September 2024 The Great Substack Prompt Celebration
Your Inspiration Invitation
Welcome back to The Great Substack Prompt Celebration!
Let’s begin by explaining what this is and why we think you should join us.
What is the Great Substack Prompt Celebration?
Fictionistas was created to support you in the fiction you are already writing and sharing on Substack. One of our ongoing activities is the Great Substack Prompt Celebration, which allows us to encourage each other, stretch our writing muscles, and stop writing alone.
Each month, Nicole Rivera of the Stop Writing Alone substack community and Jackie Dana, writer of Unseen St. Louis (nonfiction/local history) and Story Cauldron (fiction), host this month-long writing prompt activity.
We begin with a live writing prompt party in which we get together on a Zoom call. In this call, we share a writing prompt, set a timer and write, and finally read aloud a first draft of a short fiction piece with fellow Fictionistas members. (Read on for a link to this month’s call.)
To continue the celebration — and to ensure no one misses out on what Nicole playfully calls “writing fitness with friends” — the prompt is then shared here on Fictionistas, along with an invite to share your polished fiction on the Fictionistas Substack page based on the prompt. In between, we like to engage the community in conversations about their writing and writing process so we can continue to learn about each other and share tips, tricks, experiences, and lessons learned.
In the end, we hope that our ever-growing community will find your Substack page, read your fiction, and share it with their own followers in their social media spaces. Active participants will get a chance to write in and outside their comfort zones, meet fellow fiction writers in the trenches with them, and, perhaps best of all, read lots of new-to-them writers.
Let’s begin for our chat topic of the week:
Let’s Talk About “Oh No NaNo!”
The NaNoWriMo* controversies continue to mount. With the change in leadership, the past accusations of a slow move to intervene in a mentor grooming complaint (How To Be.. article), and their most recent acceptance of AI submissions (WIRED magazine article),
Where do you stand with NaNoWriMo*?
*NaNoWriMo is short for "National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit online writing community/challenge that hosts many online and in-person events in November
Many authors are publicly making statements. Here’s your chance to make yours. What role has NaNoWriMo served in your writing, if any?
Ready to Write? Mark Your Calendar & Grab the Link
You officially have one week to warm up before this month’s fun begins. Remember, Fictionistas who join the Writing Prompt Party will be the first to get this month’s prompt and the first to get some real-time reactions to their first drafts!
Your Official Invitation to the Party
The September Writing Prompt Party will be on Thursday, September 12, 2024, at 6 PM Eastern. We would love to see you on the live call, but if you can’t make it, we will post the prompt for Fictionistas after the meeting.
Topic: FICTIONISTAS Writing Prompt Party SEPTEMBER 2024
Time: Sep 12, 2024 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89636663598?pwd=AeyoWKyP76xiEY3XNEbIvlhOONpJFv.1
Meeting ID: 896 3666 3598
Passcode: SepFICTION
Let’s write together this month, Fictionistas!
I’m Jackie, a fiction author, freelance writer, and historian. I enjoy rooting for the underdog and stirring up trouble. Unsurprisingly, my alignment is Chaotic Good. My Substacks are Unseen St. Louis and Story Cauldron.
I’m Nicole, creator of all things Stop Writing Alone, including a podcast, a YouTube channel, and a Substack community hosting multiple monthly Live Zoom Events for writers seeking community. If you are ready to truly stop writing alone, join here.
Thanks for reading Fictionistas! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
I was a big fan of NaNo when I discovered it a decade and a half ago. I wrote year after year. I even got my wife to write with me one year. I 'won' and polished and published a book from it. I used it as curriculum in a middle school elective class and after school program when I was teaching.
Now... I hesitate to say I've 'outgrown' it, but I'm writing bigger projects now, and, like many other writers, feel more comfortable distancing myself than embracing it in what may be its final hours. It was a lovely thing for a season, but the leaves have turned. Like the moon, and Rome, and revealing fashions, great things rise and fall, and I look back at fond memories and forward to see the next one.
I have been participating every single year since 2013, and have won every year. I served as a Municipal Liaison for several years and have organized tons of write-ins and NaNo prep workshops. I have written, more than once, about how much better of a writer I am because of NaNo. And I made so many friends through my participation over the years. Indeed, you would be hard pressed to find someone who loved NaNo more than me.
All the stuff from earlier in the year - the forums drama, the grooming, the reinvention of all the rules and procedures, already left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. I had already decided not to do any NaNo write-ins or workshops in part because of their new crackdown on using their trademark and in part because my local MLs listed my write-ins as official "Come Write In" events because they were at a library, taking credit for them even though they had nothing to do with them and hadn't even reached out to me.
But now, with all the latest BS about AI, I'm no longer going to associate with NaNoWriMo at all. (And this is ironic because I actually think AI can be a such a helpful tool for brainstorming, story structure, and so forth). I will still work on a project in November because it's fun, but I won't even be using their website (which honestly has never been terribly functional since the redesign several years ago). I will still organize write-ins but will not promote them as part of NaNo.
It's really a shame to see something I once loved implode in such a spectacular fashion, but all good things come to an end eventually.