Phone Lines Are Open

Yesterday we wrote about Deborah Anger's Poetry Butt Camp: Get Off Your Assets and Write.

But what about fiction writers? Well, remember way back to last week guest blogger Mary Kay Zuravleff issued her writer's challenge?  MKZ checks in with us today, via her newsletter:

"Almost everyone in novel class is 4K words farther along than he or shewas last week. Join now, and you can make up the words. You’re expected to
have 8K words of a novel written by Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 4 pm. That’s a firm deadline.

So far, I’ve credited Chris Baty and his book No Plot? No Problem!
everywhere but in this newsletter. He claimed November as National Novel
Writing Month and enjoys an online following at NaNoWriMo.org. If you’re
inspired by us but are presently busy, his ship launches November 1.

We’re also reading E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and five short
novels: Jane Smiley’s Ordinary Love and Good Will, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby, Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Kaye
Gibbons’s Ellen Foster."

—Continue reading MKZ'z inspired butt-kicking here—and don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter!

Personally, I love that her workshop is reading short novels in addition to writing 1,000 words a day. Does anyone else have a favorite SHORT novel title to share? Yes, we're compiling lists again…We will run a complete list of your favorite short novel suggestions in a few weeks. Thanks for playing along.

TGIF!  xxoo, tHB

Comments

[Colleen Rich]

I love short novels. You are more likely to reread something that didn't take you two months to finish. Two of my favorites are Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Sula.

[thb]

"Balzac + the Little Chinese Seamstress" is the book selection for All Fairfax reads this year. Join me for discussions of this title at area libraries--I am teaching it all week at libraries around the beltway! xx, tHB