What's Coming Up: Valentine Day Events

My mason bees are all hatching and it’s quite entertaining to sit out on the porch and watch the tiny perfect new bees encountering the world for the first time. When they reach the sunlight they stop and preen themselves like cats. Grocery deliveries have become a source of great excitement, and I am currently on Fall of year 2 in Stardew Valley. The move to Portland is on hold for at least a couple of weeks while we figure out where the world is going.

While existence has become more circumscribed for many, my life has, weirdly enough, become a bit more social as a result of recent events. I’ve been doing daily co-working sessions, at least one, sometimes two, each day, for a group that includes a bunch of friends and family, current and former students, mentees, and Patreon supporters as well as trying out some different things like videocalls where we all log on and clean our workspaces at the same time while chatting or Netflix Party.

I wrote a piece for Medium on how to run a successful and productive co-working session, and I cannot recommend them highly enough, although I know that mileage will wildly vary, according to people’s process. If you miss coffeeshop writing or working in an office, though, this may be a reasonable substitute. Remember there are scholarships for the Discord server.

I’ve also been doing some consulting for people turning their material into online versions. If you’re undergoing this process, here’s Things to Consider When Converting Your Live Class Into an Online Version. I also turned in book three of the Tabat series, hurray hurray!

Coming up this weekend:

• Get Weird! How to Make Your Fiction Original, Compelling, and Deeply Weird with Evan J. Peterson Saturday, April 11, 2020, 9:30-11:30 am Pacific Time. Taking cues from classic stories as well as contemporary literature, film, and pop culture, workshop leader Evan J. Peterson teaches you the ways to make your writing original, compelling, and deeply Weird. From witchcraft to spirits to unnameable entities, you’ll learn what makes a story unsettle audiences and stick with them for years.
• Writing Interactive Fiction with Kate Heartfield, Saturday, April 11, 2020, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific time. If you’ve ever found yourself choosing between possible endings or plot twists, why not try a storytelling format that lets you explore them all? Games and interactive fiction invite the reader to join in the storytelling process, and invite the writer to consider multiple facets of agency, characterization, pacing and plot. Learn some fundamental principles and techniques for interactive formats, or just gain a new perspective on ways to develop your non-interactive prose.



• The Writer’s Guide to Handselling Books (Social Isolation Edition) with Michael R. Underwood, Sunday, April 12, 2020, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific time. Author and publishing professional Michael R. Underwood shares lessons from a decade of hand-selling books to readers, booksellers, and sales reps. Learn how to put your work into a market context, showcase what makes it special, and connect with readers when selling at conventions. There’s no one way to sell any book, so this class will help you learn to find several different ways to pitch each project for greater success. In this edition, we’ll talk about how to sell books while practicing social isolation via virtual events and social media.
• Fearless Writing: Learning Not to Hold Back with Evan J. Peterson, Sunday, April 12, 2020, 1:00-3:00 pm Pacific Time. What are you afraid to write about? In this class, we create the supportive space to write the things we haven’t yet. We will discover what fears hold us back from writing about the topics and experiences we want to, in the forms and styles we want to. We will move past these fears and write fresh, honest, compelling work. We will practice sharing our writing with one another to dispel the fears of judgment and replace them with encouragement and strength. This class welcomes those writing in all genres and levels of experience and confidence.

Remember that there are Plunkett scholarships for classes; even if you’re strapped for cash, these classes are available. If you’ve enjoyed Rambo Academy classes in the past, please spread word of the school!

Still working frantically on the update for the Creating an Online Presence for Writers book, plus prepping for this weekend’s online class. One big change since the last version is Instagram‘s rocket upward in popularity. Here in 2016, it is the number two social media network in number of users, second only after Facebook.

It lets you post pictures, often with some sort of caption, and see what other people are posting. Unlike Facebook, it doesn’t play fast and loose with what you see, but gives you a stream composed of everyone you’re following.

Instagram features a number of filters as well as some basic editing tools that can be applied to uploaded photos. You can add extra filters with the 100 Cameras in 1 app or if you would like to edit the image extensively, try Pixlr-o-matic (http://pixlr.com/).

For me, the two major advantages to Instagram are that a) it’s accessible via my cell phone, which I have with me far more often than my computer, plus b ) it connects with several other social networks, so I can grab a picture at an event, post it to Instagram, and have it autopost in turn to Facebook and Twitter. Similarly, I use it in the kitchen or at restaurant to snap pictures of food.

What do I post overall? Here’s a breakdown of the last 100 Instagram photos on my stream. Only five categories (event, books, and writing process photos) might be considered promotional; you’ll note those pictures occur roughly one in five times; even there, none of them directly sell a book, just mention it, and many are focused on other people and/or their work.

• things that amused or delighted me: 17
• food I’ve cooked: 12
• the cats: 10
• miscellaneous travel photos: 7
• miscellaneous household photos: 7
• miscellaneous event photos: 6
• books: 5
• my writing process: 5
• birds: 4
• flowers: 3
• photos from the cat calendar Aunt Nona gave us for Christmas with sundry amusing handwritten additions: 3
• refrigerator poems: 3
• restaurant food: 3
• sunsets: 3
• clouds: 2
• dioramas constructed of household objects: 2
• my shoes: 2
• rainbows: 2
• the foam on top of my latte, hashtagged #seattle: 2
• photos of friends/family: 2
• other people at events: 1
• selfies with people at events: 1
• selfies: 1
• things that creeped me out: 1
• holiday collage: 1