Writer Unboxed

From the WU Mailbox

Goodies from the mailbox include a Pitch Party invite for St. Pat’s Day; an opportunity to win a scholarship to a Donald Maass “Weeklong Intensive” seminar; an invite a check out a new, interactive grammar site; and a link to 100 creative writing blog sites. In the first envelope….

Chris Elden from Book Roast wrote:

Hi Everyone,

The Book Roast blog (www.bookroast.blogspot.com) will be hosting a Pitch Party on St. Patrick’s Day– Tuesday, March 17 from 7am through 7pm (NY time)! More info will be posted late Friday evening on the Book Roast blog.

We’re inviting participants to submit a pitch for a book (real or for fun). The theme is “luck,” and the pitches will be limited to 75 words. One pitch per participant. I hope you can drop by and take a look. Or enter!! PLEASE ENTER!! You’ll have fun, and you can use a pen name if you like!!

Five highly esteemed editors will select their favorite three, and say why those pitches stood out. The winning pitches will be announced at 9pm (NY time).

The editors on board are listed below. Ms. Spitfire is technically in marketing, but she has occasion to touch the slush. :-)

Evil Editor
Editorial Anonymous
Edittorrent
Moonrat
Ms. Spitfire

Please help spread the word, if you can. We just want to have some fun amidst this environment of publishing gloom and doom.

Many thanks!!

Chris
www.bookroast.blogspot.com

Lorin Oberweger wrote:

Greetings,

I’m Editorial Director for the Writing the Breakout Novel Intensive workshops with Don Maass. Since you feature his books and have interviewed him in the past, I thought you and your readers might be interested to know that my organization, Free Expressions, is offering its first scholarship to his week-long intensive–to be held in San Antonio, TX.

I’ll paste in the official blurb, below, but if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to be in touch.

Thanks so much,
Lorin Oberweger

FREE EXPRESSIONS SEMINARS GIVES WRITERS A HAND
WITH FIRST BREAKOUT NOVEL INTENSIVE SCHOLARSHIP

For the first time, Free Expressions Seminars is offering a scholarship to its acclaimed Writing the Breakout Novel Weeklong Intensive, with top New York literary agent, Donald Maass.

The scholarship is available for one student who wishes to participate in the September 21-27 Writing the Breakout Novel Intensive, to be held in San Antonio, Texas. It covers complete room, board, tuition and all other workshop expenses, except transportation.

The workshop offers thirty-five writers the opportunity to dig into their novels-in-progress in an intensive workshop in which they’ll take daily classes with Don Maass and receive in-depth feedback on their work from Maass and a roster of experienced industry professionals.

Suitable for published and pre-published writers alike, the workshop’s core focus is on creating a “breakout” work, one that transcends genre to offer a rich, dramatic, and memorable experience to the reader.

“The world still needs storytellers,” says workshop director, Lorin Oberweger. “And this seemed like a perfect year to remind folks that dreams can be pursued in any economy. We wish we could help a thousand writers, but this is one small way for us to lend a hand.”

For more information on the workshop or to download a scholarship application and information, visit: www.free-expressions.com. Or call toll-free: 866-497-4832.

Cormac Barry wrote:

Hi Writer Unboxed,

As big fans of your site, we thought that our recently launched site – www.harmlessfraud.com - may be of interest to you and your readers.

As well as articles and comments, it will feature an interactive Quiz every few days. The aim of the quiz is to test your grammar knowledge – as well as being fun, hopefully you may also learn something – you can click on the ‘Quiz’ button on the menu to be brought straight to the quizzes. I’ve attached a brief intro to the site below.

About a Harmless Fraud

“The rules of grammar are crabbed things to many persons and I cannot see that anything is learned with greater success than what is learned by playing, and this is, in truth, a harmless fraud, to trick a person into his own profit.”

After reading this quote attributed to Desiderius Erasmus, we knew we had found the title for this site. That’s because A Harmless Fraud aims to help people write better, read better, and maybe even think better by offering learning experiences that feel a lot closer to play than work. Even by dipping into the site for a few minutes during the week–to take a short quiz or read a blog post–you should soon find yourself sidestepping writing pitfalls you previously fell into unawares. But the site also aims to broaden horizons with coverage of writing and culture that is sometimes hard to find in events-led media. As well as quizzes delivered through an intuitive and engaging interface, A Harmless Fraud is characterised by a lively blog presence focused on literature, journalism, and the way language is used–in other words, anything that might conceivably interest our audience.

I hope our new blog is of interest to your readers and we would love to hear your feedback.

Many thanks,
Cormac Barry
www.harmlessfraud.com

Kelly Sonora wrote:

We just posted an article, “Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs” (http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/02/05/top-100-creative-writing-blogs/).

I thought I’d bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would
find it interesting.