Stringing Words recruiting drive

I’m happy to announce that I’m starting a recruiting drive for Stringing Words, the writer’s forum and community that I started to admin two months ago. SW is never going to be a big place or a well-known destination, but I wanted to get the word out about what a cool site it can be and possibly attract a few new regulars, and right now, in the middle of the third Platform-building campaign, sounded like a great time to do this.

Stringing Words was originally started by three incredible writers who met each other in the on-line writing events that sprouted up as ‘spin-offs’ from National Novel Writing Month: like JanNoWriMo, NaNoEdMo, and April Fools Novelling. Along with a few other regulars, they decided to set up a year-round community to stay in touch.

One of those founding admins was Gale, a friend of mine from the Hamilton NaNoWriMo group, and now one of the Hamilton ML’s. She’s the one who got me to sign up at Stringing Words – I don’t remember exactly when, because the original version of the community got hacked and lost, before it was on its own domain.

SW has meant a lot to me over the past three years or so, and helped me to push past my old limits, both as a writer and as a person. One by one each of the founders have moved on to focus on new opportunities, most recently Misa, who
announced the publication of her novel ‘Ironhaven’ this summer. That was when I decided to take on more of a leadership role myself.

There are many things that I love about Stringing Words. It’s a community of supportive writers, it’s a great place for declaring goals that you want to accomplish and having other people hold you accountable to them, and if you need it to be, it can be a good place to commiserate about how hard it can be sometimes to write, or to procrastinate.

So, if you think that you might be a good fit, or just want to come see what the fuss is all about, I’ll give you that link again: Stringing Words.

We now return you to your regular blog programming. Six Sentence Sunday should be up in – I dunno, twelve hours or something.

Nanowrimo Day 25: Thanks list

Of course, as a true Canadian, I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family back in early October with my family, but being in San Francisco on American Thanksgiving, it was hard not to think of some other things and people that I’m thankful for, a lot of them relevant for this blog, so:

– I’m thankful for all the wonderful people at the Office of Letters and Light, who make such incredible events possible for writers all over the world.

– I’m thankful for everybody else who has taken the time to set up or moderate a participatory writing website, including: Stringing Words, Nanowriye, JulNoWriMo, JanNoWriMo, April Fool’s, NaNoEdMo, NaNoFiMo, and many others.

– I’m thankful that I have the financial resources and vacation days to take a trip like this one.

– I’m thankful that I have family, friends, and coworkers who are supportive and encouraging about my crazy writing ambitions.

– I’m thankful for everybody else who has opened up their pocketbook and donated to support NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy going.

– I’m thankful for everybody in San Francisco who has made me welcome at a write-in, which has been just about everybody I’ve met at a San Francisco write-in.

– I’m thankful for all the incredible writers back in Hamilton in the Nanowrimo group – and the Hamilton Writers group at Chesters who’ve given me great feedback on all kinds of excerpts.

– I’m grateful to Ammy from the sfbrowncoats group for offering a ticket to the Dickens fair to a complete stranger.

– I’m grateful to the entire gang at Stringing Words for their encouragement, critiques, support, and sense of mutual accountability.
I’m probably leaving some people out, but I’ll leave it at this for now. Happy holiday, if you’re in America, and Happy Thursday to everybody else.