Prompt: "Scene 2"

It's been too long since I've added to my list of prompts, so here is one of my favorites.

This prompt will require you to have a play that you haven't read or seen performed before. There are hundreds of plays online for free, but here are a few if you need help finding one. A movie script is likely to have scenes that are too short and too much action and direction within the parenthetical text.

As with many exercises/prompts in writing drama, the key here is to pay attention to how to minimize telling and focus on showing. Fiction obviously employs more description than drama, but many writers use this description  to try and dump huge, clunky chunks of exposition or try to tell the reader what to think about what's going on or another character. With only dialogue and sparse description to work with in drama, a writer is forced to find other ways to tell their story. Valuable lessons, even when taken back into prose.

Prep: Read the first scene of the play. Pay very close attention to how the writer shapes both the characters, the exposition, and the tension using only dialogue and a few stage directions. No matter how awesome, compelling, embroiling, and interesting scene 1 is, stop reading.

Prompt: Without reading past scene 1, write a scene two of the play. Continue to use the characterization you noticed in scene 1 and develop the plot and tension.  Write at least three pages (or more if you wish).

Don't forget to have fun!

Last Call For Votes and Nominations (Best Magic System and Best Series with a Single Arc)

You and a friend could
change the whole game.

What is the best series with a single story arc?

What is the best magic system in fiction?   

First of all, thank you for putting up with an entire week of donation stuff. I try to make that sort of thing just a post every couple of months, but the end of the year means some extra work and we were deep into month two of the next year. This weekend, I'll get the The Best of W.A.W. updated so that the monthly best reflects the titles that went on to 2015's best.

But now we need your input because the old poll is almost over and the new poll is going up soon.

So please go and vote on our Best Magic System Poll. The current results are incredibly close and you could make all the difference. Even the titles that aren't doing well are six books all but tied for fourth place.

Secondly, go to our Nominations Post for Best Single Series Story Arc and nominate some series (or second the nominations that are already there).  We have just enough to do a tiny little poll, but more titles would make things more fun!

Thanking 2015's Donors

Pretty much all of W.A.W.'s meager income (running at a about two dollars an hour for the work I do) comes from donation from my generous readers. I discontinued generic Google ads a few months back after I noticed that no matter how many sleazy ones I blocked, more would take their place. So now it's really totally my donors who make this rocket get off the launch pad.

That's you all.

Even though I can't ever thank you enough, I wanted to make sure everybody got one last call out before we head into 2016.

2015 saw more small donors than last year but not as many as 2013 (I got a lot of small donations after Creepy Guy); however, it has also seen a growth in a few people who are simply blowing me away with their epic generosity. Larger donations and ongoing donations have both nearly doubled (even though this year was a lot of jazz hands). When I started, I thought for sure I would be dealing with lots of small donations but it turns out that nearly half of what we make here at W.A.W. comes from about half a dozen people.

Because of all of you, I have to work fewer hours at both teaching and as a househusband to meet some of my expenses. Two years I was able to go from two classes a week to one. Last year I was able to hire a professional cleaner to come in once a month and this year they're coming bi-weekly. This cuts my househusband hours way down.  We also have some sitting help with watching The Contrarian for a couple of hours on some of my longer days. All of that is going straight into more writing time.

Perhaps the biggest news on that front is that this summer, I won't have to divide myself between househusband and summer school. The summer school gig is a cushy one, and it's hard for teachers to get summer teaching gigs, so even though my kids drive me nuts and by the end of the six weeks I'm ready to burn the school down, I'm going to keep it. However, my usual mental split where I'm coming home and tagging in to do a few hours of toddler wrangling after a day of teaching, and then spend Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday weeping uncontrollably isn't going to happen this year. You gave me the opportunity to drop summer school through donations. I just chose to drop everything else instead since summer school is a cherry gig.

Please don't forget that 10% of every penny Writing About Writing makes goes to my local library earmarked for local Children's Literacy programs*.

*Our current beneficiary

The long term goals of W.A.W., should things continue to grow, are roughly the same. (I mean besides the groupie threesomes, of course.) Eventually I hope to farm out more housekeeping so I can focus more time on writing. (I'm at about as much little kid time as I think I can handle.) That will give me more time for better quality posts, and make my offerings of fiction a much more frequent possibility. After that, I'll look into hiring someone to give my posts a professional editing sweep.

So without further ado, allow me to thank my wonderful and generous patrons. If you've given to Writing About Writing in the last year, and you don't see your name, please let me know, and I will gladly make an edit. I've spent the last four days digging through my e-mail archives and going crosseyed. Gmail has a tendency to "bundle" emails from the same recipient together if they come in within a certain amount of time, so I certainly may have missed a name.

Many have donated money, some have donated time and energy to help improve blog. (Editing help, art, guest blogging, and in a couple of "meatspace" friends cases, helping me out with a few hours of housework so that I could get back upstairs and keep writing.)

Rachel
Nichole
Matt
Mary
Simone
Melissa
Sarah
Riley
Joe
Kent
Sarah
Donald
Katherine
Cathy
Nancy
Zepher
Michael
Nickayla
Jennifer
Anna


Special Thanks
For much larger donations, setting up ongoing automatic payments (of any size), large donations of time and energy, or the donation of highly specialized skills. Also the guest bloggers who have joined the crew and decided to defer their pay back to the blog.

Sarah
LeeAnn
Amanda
Janet
Anonymous
Claire Youmans
Bethany Brengan


Patron Muses
The Patron Muses are the most generous, the most supportive, the most unbelievable. Their generosity actually shocks me in a palpable way. Some have dug deep and donated very large amounts, set up auto-pay donations that make my eyes pop...every month, they have donated hundreds of hours of time and energy helping me to edit, have supported me since the very first days of W.A.W., have helped me proliferate to perhaps tens of thousands on social media by sharing and liking posts, have used Google analytics credit to help W.A.W. place some ads, and have even shown up to conventions wearing homemade Writing About Writing T-shirts. In many cases, they've done more than one thing on this list and maybe a thing or two I'm leaving out because I'm a classy dude who doesn't talk about my sexploits, and every single one of them has, without the slightest hyperbole or poetic license, kept me going when all I wanted to do was put the blog on hiatus and take a fortnight off.

Laura
MaryAnn Stark
Kelly
Terra
Gillian
Tracesea
Amy
Ginger
Anna
Plymoth
Lydia

You are all–ALL of you–breathtaking, amazing, and wonderful. And there might be invisible ninjas cutting onions all around me whenever I think of any of you for too long. There is no way I can thank you enough. I shall keep writing and hopefully keep entertaining you.

We will be making a donation to Oakland Reads from this year's donations shortly. I won't tell you exactly how much it is (because then you'd just be able to multiply by ten and figure out our finances), but suffice to day that we will probably be able to cover at least one class or top off a couple.

Again, if your name is missing from this list, please contact me and I'll fix it right away. G-mail sometimes "stacks" multiple donations into a single e-mail notification when Paypal sends me two notifications in a short period of time, and I don't always notice the e-mail "underneath."

Giving to Writing About Writing

Our week of money stuff continues. Thank you for your patience in this. Normally I'd spread this stuff out over a few weeks, but we're already over half way through month two here and it needs to happen.

Tomorrow I will be posting a list of all the donors for 2015 (as well as the last six weeks) to Writing About Writing, and then we'll finally be done with everything and ready to roll into 2016.

But each year I also update the information about where your donations go and what you can expect in return. Also, having had a couple of conversations with high level patrons, I have decided to be a bit more conservative about the hand written thank-you emails and save my creative time and energy for MOAR WRITING!!!

Writing About Writing will never be behind a paywall site (or have the "best" content only available to Patreon donors or anything like that), and we also will never again host random ads. We may one day post ads for products we truly believe in, but the random ones for butt hair eliminators and robot crawl editing are a thing of the past. I have also opted out of traditional publishing completely, so unless some day there is an unbelievable million-dollar book deal that contractually requires me to remove my online version, everything I ever write will be free online. There might be a small charge for a e-reader version or a cost-covering charge for a print on demand physical copy, but mostly everything will be free.

Which means I am 100% dependent on the generosity of donors.

And while we love all the other ways in which fans show their support–by liking and sharing articles, with engaging and robust comments, by becoming members of or following the blog, recommending us to friends, and a host of other ways–monetary support works a lot better than "likes" when it comes to paying rent or getting a professional web designer to look under W.A.W.'s hood (for example at the shitshow I call top level menus).

No seriously.

I can't ever fully thank the few who donate so that the rest might get more and better content or express just how much that few dollars means. Right now, my efforts average out to somewhere between one and two dollars an hour on a really good day, so even the smallest donations are like mana from heaven. However, as insufficient as any such gesture is, and however "gauche" a rewards tier might seem without keychains, tote bags, and weekends in Napa, I still want to try to let everyone know in some feeble way how much you mean to me.

What your donation supports:

Though your donation may be to Writing About Writing, what you're really supporting is an entire range of my creative efforts. Of course there's Writing About Writing, but there's also Social Justice Bard (which had a rocky launch because of surprise cancer but is getting back on its feet as of this writing). There are other blogs I write for less frequently like Ace of Geeks. I also maintain a Facebook Page for Writing About Writing filled with goofy memes and puns in addition to the daily posts and cross posts. And a lot of my proto-thoughts, social justice bard test balloons and daily shenanigans happen on my public Facebook Wall–strictly speaking I don't expect anyone to donate to me Facebooking but there is a measure of my creative energy that goes in that direction. I will also make sure that W.A.W. is a "home base" with links that go to any other public writing I do.

Also please don't forget that 10% of every donation goes to a local children's literacy charity. (We're doing Oakland Reads right now.) 

Another ten percent also goes into blog improvements, which will mean editing and website construction when there's enough income to do so, but for now gives W.A.W. a very modest promotional budget to advertise some of our "greatest hits" on Facebook, gain followers, and expand our modest audience.

Unfortunately I've really had to ratchet up the thresholds for various rewards this year. This is no reflection on any sort of shifting awesomeness threshold, but simply one of my time and energy away from blogging and fiction. Especially being on the front line with supporting someone through cancer. We have a very large number of smaller donations, and while each of you is absolutely wonderful and awesome, if I stopped and wrote a thank you note to everyone, it wouldn't be long before that was all I really had time to do.

The Agape Love of Ongoing donations- Of course we love any donation we ever get from anyone...ever. It's always a treat that I don't feel like I deserve and a pleasure and an honor. That can't be underscored enough. One-time donations make up over a half of our entire revenue here.

However, ongoing donations help us in a very particular way. They help us budget for things since it is an income we know we can (at least tentatively) count on month after month. For example, ongoing donations were what helped us drop a teaching class each week (down to one), hire a housekeeper, and get a sitter to tag in for a few hours each morning, all of which have made more writing possible. The only reason I was able to keep anything going while we dealt with the cancer diagnosis is because of the help we paid for from ongoing donations. I'm going to need to crunch some numbers to see if I can afford to take off summer school this year (which if you've followed the blog, you know has been my nemesis for three years running), but if it is possible, it will be because of ongoing donations.  It's less like a surprise or a gift and a tiny bit more like reliable income. It may seem counter-intuitive, but a smaller recurring amount will help us out more than a large periodic donation that we never knew was coming and don't know if will ever come again.

It's very easy to make an ongoing donation. Just click on the Paypal link the same as you would to make a one-time donation, but instead, click the ticky box to make it recurring.

Right there in the middle....
Yessssssssssss.

Rewards....kinda:  I honestly wish I had some Writing About Writing coffee mugs and gym bags to make this part a little less ridiculous.

$1.99 or less - While I will never turn down any donation here (because I'm a starving, debased artist with no integrity or something), I will just let you know that Paypal will be taking 30 cents per transaction, so denominations this low lose 15%+ of their value. I will make significantly less if you donated a dollar a month than if you just saved up and donated ten dollars a year.

Up to $100.00- All donors at this level will be included in a post at the end of each year thanking each donor for their patronage and support*. I will use only your first name as it shows up on your Paypal receipt. If you would like your full name to appear, would prefer to be completely anonymous, or be referred to by a pseudonym please either mention so on your Paypal "note" or send me an email at chris.brecheen@gmail.com and let me know that you'd prefer anonymity/psudonymity/fullonymity.

Also, I will shoot you a quick note right away thanking you and letting you know I got your donation.

$100.01-$200.00-  All of the above.  In addition, I will send you a small personal message of thanks, including a few details about what's going on in my world and the projects I'm hoping to get started on next.

$200.01-$300.00-  All of the above. In addition, I will pick your brain about any updates you might like to see coming up in the future, and I will try to expedite that article in my mental queue.(Obviously this is more of a preference favoring than actual creative control, and I can't make any guarantees about time tables.)

$300.01-$499.99- All of the above. In addition I will ask you about anything you generally would like to see more of and try to work that in more frequently.  (Again, I can't make creative or time-table guarantees, but I am likely to at least give it a try for a while.)

$500.00+ All of the above. In addition if you approve (and only if you approve), I will give you a shout out on the blog right away. (This can be as large as your own praise-singing post or as small as a line of thanks slipped in before another article depending on what you are most comfortable with--the point is to thank you vocally, not embarrass the shit out of you.) As with the end of the year post, I will only use your first name unless you inform me you would prefer to be anonymous or have your whole name used. This is in no way intended to put you on the spot or cover you in embarrassing glory if you don't want it; it is simply the only way I have to really thank those who have been so incredibly supportive.

The Great Patron Muses-  There are a few great patron muses (but always room for one more). They have given more to Writing About Writing than I can possibly thank. While blistering hot oral sex or being part of a groupie threesome would certainly qualify one for P.M. status, most of the Great Patron Muses have either donated over and over month after month and/or have donated huge amounts and/or have done something totally amazeballs like show up to a convention wearing homemade Writing About Writing t-shirts. In addition to everything above, I have promised the Patron Muses that should I write a zombie apocalypse story (and there's definitely one rolling around in my melon) characters with their names will be making it to the helipad.


*While I would honestly and sincerely love to get back to every single donor with a personal message, there are just so many small donors, that trying to keep up with them has taken entire days of my writing time and left me with much less time to write.  Please know that I sincerely appreciate every one of you; however, I hope that you'll understand if my thanks in this case is continuing to devote almost all my spare time to bringing you more content.

One Last Generous Donation in 2015

Deep Chris.
Real deep.
Like the ocean trenches where I take my craps.

I write this post with a heavy heart.

Seriously like four hundred pounds of heart.

Whale heart.

I write this post with whale heart.

Each year there are donations to Writing About Writing (or to me as a writer since the gestalt of my writing also involves other blogs and even some occasional deep thoughts on my Facebook wall). Regardless, people do this thing I sort of have trouble wrapping my brain around where they give me money so that I can do things like hire a housekeeper so that I can clean less and write more or hire a babysitter for a few hours so I can watch The Contrarian less and write more.

This isn't money I could go live on, even in Louisiana, but it has totaled up to a non-trivial amount for about the last 18 months or so. Every single one of you is amazing and awesome.

And this is all amazing and incredible to me. I am always touched, often have sudden attacks of onion ninjas to deal with, and have no small number of days where getting out of bed and writing is a matter of remembering the people I feel like I would let down if I didn't. If you think it's easy to call in when your boss doesn't care, try when your boss is 100% empathetic and egging you on.

Thus, I try so, so hard to write everyone thank you notes. I don't like writing the cut and past form letters. "Thank you so much for your generous donation....blah blah blah" That feels so impersonal and cold to me. So for every donation over certain amount, I really tried to actually WRITE a genuine and sincere thank you note.  I tried to include some personal details about what's going on in my life, and some of the projects  I was hoping to undertake next. And since the blog started, this has been getting more difficult, but still feasible. But they're time consuming to write. I spend about half an hour on each one, and while it might seem like I'm complaining that my diamond soled shoes are too tight, that can get to be hours and hours when I have a lot of donors over the threshold. Since the first day of the blog four years ago, it has always been my favorite and least favorite horribly wonderful chore/honor.

2015 was a bear even before the end of the year turned nightmarish. Toddlers toddling and time management failures, a miscarriage in the family I live with, health crises left and right, a dear friend's mental breakdown. Another friend's suicide. I was behind on thank you notes from the first day I went to Denver to help O.G. deal with some of her post op cancer stuff.

Still, I thought I was going to make it.  About 75% of those thank you notes were written by mid-October, and I was doing pretty well. That's about when health stuff started getting very serious. We didn't know at the time what we were dealing with–just that there were a lot of really scary symptoms that the hematologist couldn't figure out. And then of course, the diagnosis hit, and nothing has been quite the same since. I've scraped together some time here and there (a bit more in the last three weeks than in the month or two before, but still not much) to do some writing, but it's been a catch as catch can nightmare.

So what I am asking you is that if you donated in 2015 (or this first six weeks of 2016), and if I haven't already sent you a thank you email, please forgive me.  And I mean please literally forgive me...of the debt of that thank you note. Life has just been too fucking awful these last few months and I really want to head into 2016 with a fresh slate instead of the thank you notes of Damocles hanging over my head.

I'll be doing my annual thank you post on Friday if you want to check to make sure I received a donation, and if you really want to just get a tiny ping from me trying (ineffectually) to express my gratitude, you can send me a quick e-mail and I'll try to write something back.  But I don't have it in me to do the 24 or so remaining thank you notes right now.

I'm still going to write to all the patron muses (and one particular single donor who dropped so much it must have felt like passing a kidney stone) because their help and support goes above and beyond–multiple donations, huge donations, monthly donations, free editing help, constant post promotions, stalwart shows of support, and inspiration– so if you're on that list and you want to forgive me, just shoot me an email (and be prepared to answer the "Are you SURE??" question). Otherwise you should be seeing them this weekend as I try to catch up on at least that much before the next round of chemo.

I am truly sorry that I dropped this ball. You all are absolutely wonderful and my life's business and inability to thank you properly is absolutely no reflection on it.

The Silver Bullet

Folks, I've got to take a few days to take care of year end business from 2015. We're already a month and a half into 2016, and if I don't finish this stuff up, I'm going to end up half way to next year before it gets done. Apologies in advance if the week feels a little boring and money focused.

So even though I'm dealing with the little cold that could (it really thinks it can), I'm going to take this week to do just that. I'll start gathering up the data for the year end donor thank you post, we'll adjust the current 2016 shout out model, and we'll add our new Patron Muses into the mix. Also, in less awesome news, the cancer has just made keeping up with thank you notes (because I send hand written ones, not copy/pasted ones) impossible. While, we had a lot of wonderful donors in 2016, I've got the regrettable task of asking some of them to forgive me for the fact that life is just a little too much to get each a personalized thank you note. That will probably be Friday's post.

However, today, I do want to remind everyone that I give 10% of every cent Writing About Writing makes (more during any kind of a pledge drive) to local children's literacy charities. In this case Oakland Reads matches up donors with teachers in need in order to try to get Oakland's literacy rate to 85% by 2020 (it's in the low 40's now).

This is YOU folks. They write these thank you notes to Writing About Writing, but every one of these is really a thank you note to all of you.

President's Day Blues

A quick reminder to anyone who might be wondering what the hell I've been up to this weekend: Writing About Writing takes off bank holiday weekends. (Mostly because I can't even get Grendel and his mom to come open up the cafeteria on those days.) And it's a good thing too: Uberdude spent the weekend at one of those "Be A Better Superhero" conventions, and I clocked in about 60 hours last week between teaching and househusband. We could all use a bit of a break.