Hello, writer,
I meant to send you a message earlier this month, but just when my finger came down to click "send," the Great NYC Earthquake of 2024 rattled my desk and caused me to hit "delete" instead.
Mere days later, after I retyped everything from scratch, a solar eclipse got in my eyes and I did it again. So infuriating!
After I dug out from the rubble and restored my eyesight,
I continued going through those old journals I told you about, and came across a passage that might be of (mild) interest to those of you who wonder how WriteByNight
got started.
In late autumn 2009, I was living in a small Florida town and working as fiction editor at Fringe (R.I.P.), for whom I wrote a few blog posts about a new venture: A writing workshop! This, from my journal, is an excerpt of one of those posts:
"The Great Florida Workshop Experiment soldiers on," I wrote, lamely. "Despite some good reader suggestions, we settled on WriteByNight, with a tagline of Dream by day, write by night."
(Discarded names: Composite Monster; Exquisite Corpse.) (Phew.)
Here's more from WriteByNight's early days as a teeny-tiny 12-seater writing workshop and copywriting service:
I duck networking any chance I get, but we've set up tables at local events and scheduled info seminars, my presence at which can only hurt the cause.
I also bucked the Vegas odds and got a job! I do bookkeeping, billing, and more for a maritime lawyer
("You're a crook, Captain Hook"), under the guise of "If you can't pay 'em, join 'em." Because as soon as the workshop starts, it is inevitable a participant will sue me for one or all of these:
- Awkwardness
- Failure to take into account anyone's feelings but my own
- Awkwardness
- Awkwardness
- Driving a dumb, dumb joke into the ground
- Awkwardness
... Discussions about literature are at a premium here. One thing not at a premium is heat. While snow flies in my hometown of Milwaukee and chill wind blows through my adoptive hometown of Boston, it is still 91 in the shade down here. WriteByNight set up a tent at an outdoor event this past Sunday, and the heat index of 104 had me sweating butter. I lost eleven pounds but we gained a couple of workshoppers.
Also, a man who has opened the first all-green building in Stuart wants us to write SEO copy for his website, dense with keywords. Here's my first draft: "Welcome to Stuart's first all-green gas station and cafe, serving Stuart, Florida, and the residents of Stuart, Florida, with gas and cafe food in Stuart's first all-green gas station and cafe in Stuart, Florida, located in
Stuart, Florida, all-green all-green greengreengreen."
Anyway, you get it. My style hasn't evolved much since 2009.
But also, finding
this old post led me to do some math: 2024 - 2009 = 15. Five months from now WriteByNight will turn fifteen! That's kind of bananas.
What should we do to celebrate? Write back to me with some ideas and next week I'll post some creative and fun responses.
I've also, in these journals, found a story idea I'd totally forgotten about but have immediately re-fallen in love with. You know what? I just might dive back into it and see what happens. It's time I start writing again.
That's it for this week. Thank you for reading! Write back and let me know what's new with you and your writing life.
