Everyone knows, or should know, that to succeed as a writer, you must know, respect, and obey the rules of grammar in your writing. If editors consistently find grammatical errors in your writing, they aren’t going to buy your work. Readers will point their fingers and laugh at you.
The purpose of grammar is to produce writing that is easy for the reader to understand. But sometimes there are writing situations in which inferior grammar makes for superior writing. A sentence that is tagged by grammar checking software may actually end up being the exact statement that makes your writing more compelling.
There's no way I could list all the rules of good grammar in a single blog post, so instead I decided to focus on half a dozen of the rules you can bend, if not break:
1. Never end a sentence with a preposition.
Many people start twisting their sentences around so as not to end them with prepositions. Unfortunately, more often than not, the new wording is terribly awkward and painful to read. In the interest of clarity and readability, it’s all right to end a sentence with a preposition.
2. Never begin a sentence with a conjunction, such as “and” or “but.”
This rule even got screen time in the movie Finding Forrester, when Sean Connery and Rob Brown have an entire conversation about it. However, you don’t have to stick with it. It’s perfectly all right to start your sentences with “and” or “but.” It’s a great way to emphasize a point or give your writing a conversational tone.
3. Never split infinitives.
Go ahead and split your infinitives when doing so makes your meaning more clear or allows you to be more concise. “To go boldly where no man has gone before” just doesn’t have the same ring to it as “to boldly go.”
4. Never use sentence fragments.
Nonsense! As long as most of your sentences have a subject and a predicate, feel free to use the occasional fragment for effect. No worries.
5. Avoid run on sentences.
Run on sentences can be used to convey great excitement or anxiety. It’s a wonderful rhetorical device in the right hands; however, in the wrong hands it looks like you should have paid a copy editor their well-deserved fee.
6. Never use slang or colloquialisms such as “y’all” or “ain’t.”
A bit of the vernacular can add color and flair to your story. It can also indicate class or region. The trick is in knowing when it will enhance and when it will distract.
Just remember, there’s a big difference between breaking the rules to make writing more successful and breaking the rules because you don’t know what the rules are. When a writer doesn’t know the rules of grammar, failure is almost guaranteed. But when a writer is well aware of the rules and breaks them consciously and strategically, the writing can become clearer and more compelling.
As the Dalai Lama once said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."
Friday, April 8, 2016
Thursday, April 7, 2016
F is for Flash Fiction
So, what is flash fiction anyway? To put it simply, flash fiction is just very short fiction. Any story up to 1500 words is considered flash fiction.
For sale: baby shoes. Never worn
Although this poignant little piece was rumoured to be the result of a bet Ernest Hemingway made with John Robert Colombo and Arthur C. Clarke, as they were having lunch together, that he could write a complete story in six words, it was never substantiated. Still, it remains probably the most famous example of flash fiction written to date.
The challenge of flash fiction is to tell a complete story in as few words as possible. It must begin immediately and move quickly toward the end--no long descriptions, no unessential words. It is not a prose poem, nor an extended paragraph used to set up a punch line, nor an anecdotal slice-of-life.
Flash fiction forces the writer to compact the story. Strip away those wordy descriptions and character developments. Define your character by having him do something instead of creating lengthy histories and motivations.
It can be any form, style, or genre. It can be whimsical and entertaining or literary and sublime. It can be controversial or unconventional. It can be troubling, unsettling, or unpredictable. The best stories are often about the human condition, showing it in an insightful way that isn’t always obvious.
The easiest way to write flash fiction is to just tell the story. Throw yourself into your writing and write a story, regardless of the length. Then grab a red pen and have at it. Get rid of every adjective and adverb you can find. Trust me, you’ll be surprised by how much emotion and description can be conveyed without using descriptive words.
Ask yourself these questions:
Is there a clear beginning, a strong middle, a definitive ending?
Is the character compelling?
Does the story make its point and drive it home?
Is every word absolutely essential to the story, the language precise and clear?
Does the story have action, not activity?
Does every sentence move the story forward?
Is the ending understandable, whether it’s unexpected or inevitable?
Keep in mind that good flash fiction, like all good writing, should have some point to it, a reason for being. The best flash fiction lingers in the mind long after the story has been read--the way of all great literary works of art.
Here are a few places to submit your flash fiction:
Flash Fiction Online
The Pedestal Magazine
Abyss and Apex
The Vestal Review
Every Day Fiction
Shimmer
For sale: baby shoes. Never worn
Although this poignant little piece was rumoured to be the result of a bet Ernest Hemingway made with John Robert Colombo and Arthur C. Clarke, as they were having lunch together, that he could write a complete story in six words, it was never substantiated. Still, it remains probably the most famous example of flash fiction written to date.
The challenge of flash fiction is to tell a complete story in as few words as possible. It must begin immediately and move quickly toward the end--no long descriptions, no unessential words. It is not a prose poem, nor an extended paragraph used to set up a punch line, nor an anecdotal slice-of-life.
Flash fiction forces the writer to compact the story. Strip away those wordy descriptions and character developments. Define your character by having him do something instead of creating lengthy histories and motivations.
It can be any form, style, or genre. It can be whimsical and entertaining or literary and sublime. It can be controversial or unconventional. It can be troubling, unsettling, or unpredictable. The best stories are often about the human condition, showing it in an insightful way that isn’t always obvious.
The easiest way to write flash fiction is to just tell the story. Throw yourself into your writing and write a story, regardless of the length. Then grab a red pen and have at it. Get rid of every adjective and adverb you can find. Trust me, you’ll be surprised by how much emotion and description can be conveyed without using descriptive words.
Ask yourself these questions:
Is there a clear beginning, a strong middle, a definitive ending?
Is the character compelling?
Does the story make its point and drive it home?
Is every word absolutely essential to the story, the language precise and clear?
Does the story have action, not activity?
Does every sentence move the story forward?
Is the ending understandable, whether it’s unexpected or inevitable?
Keep in mind that good flash fiction, like all good writing, should have some point to it, a reason for being. The best flash fiction lingers in the mind long after the story has been read--the way of all great literary works of art.
Here are a few places to submit your flash fiction:
Flash Fiction Online
The Pedestal Magazine
Abyss and Apex
The Vestal Review
Every Day Fiction
Shimmer
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
E is for Endings
This was a hard decision. As an editor, my first thought for the letter E was something editing related, and I have an editing checklist I could have used but it's rather long. Then I thought about something a lot of people have trouble with, the ellipsis, but again, that was a rather long post.
So then I thought of something I'm not seeing a lot of these days - a good ending to a story/novel. I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a rash of serials this days. Now when the author is up front and lets you know the story/book ends on a cliff hanger and you have to buy the next one in the series for the story to continue, that's fine. But when I read a book that ends abruptly and without warning - well, that gets my dander up.
Before I segue into rant mode over cliffhangers, let's talk a bit about proper endings.
Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.
~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
While it’s true that a strong opening can pull a reader into the story, a strong ending is just as important. A good ending is the reader’s reward for sticking with the story. It not only leaves the reader satisfied, but it will also send them in search of more stories by the same author.
The beginning is all about providing the main character with an overall goal and making him decide to act on it. The middle shows him taking action, or a whole series of actions. The ending deals with the consequences of these actions.
You cannot promise apples in the beginning of your story and deliver oranges at the end. A satisfying conclusion to a novel happens when the ending is fitting, when the characters get what they deserve, and when the questions asked at the start of the novel are answered.
How do you create an ending that delivers?
~ make sure the ending is logical
~ the hero should find a way to solve his own problem
~ resolve any subplot
~ tie up all loose ends
~ leave the reader with a strong sentence, thought or emotion
There are, of course, degrees of being fitting or definitive. The hero should win, but that doesn’t mean his experience won’t leave him without scars. And although the ending should be clear, that isn’t to say you have to spell out everything for your readers. Sometimes leaving something to their imaginations or curiosity isn’t a bad thing.
Everything has to come to an end, sometime.
~ L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
So then I thought of something I'm not seeing a lot of these days - a good ending to a story/novel. I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a rash of serials this days. Now when the author is up front and lets you know the story/book ends on a cliff hanger and you have to buy the next one in the series for the story to continue, that's fine. But when I read a book that ends abruptly and without warning - well, that gets my dander up.
Before I segue into rant mode over cliffhangers, let's talk a bit about proper endings.
Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.
~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
While it’s true that a strong opening can pull a reader into the story, a strong ending is just as important. A good ending is the reader’s reward for sticking with the story. It not only leaves the reader satisfied, but it will also send them in search of more stories by the same author.
The beginning is all about providing the main character with an overall goal and making him decide to act on it. The middle shows him taking action, or a whole series of actions. The ending deals with the consequences of these actions.
You cannot promise apples in the beginning of your story and deliver oranges at the end. A satisfying conclusion to a novel happens when the ending is fitting, when the characters get what they deserve, and when the questions asked at the start of the novel are answered.
How do you create an ending that delivers?
~ make sure the ending is logical
~ the hero should find a way to solve his own problem
~ resolve any subplot
~ tie up all loose ends
~ leave the reader with a strong sentence, thought or emotion
There are, of course, degrees of being fitting or definitive. The hero should win, but that doesn’t mean his experience won’t leave him without scars. And although the ending should be clear, that isn’t to say you have to spell out everything for your readers. Sometimes leaving something to their imaginations or curiosity isn’t a bad thing.
Everything has to come to an end, sometime.
~ L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
D is for Dialogue
Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.
~Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction, 1991
As writers, we don't want to write the way people really talk. Real speech is full of ums and ers, backtracking and repetition, and telling people things they already know. Trust me, I know this, having spent the last year transcribing audio interviews into text format. But on the other hand, unless your character is a British school boy, he's not going to speak with perfect English either.
What you want to do is give the impression of how people really talk. This is the one time you can get away with sentence fragments and comma splices, idiomatic and clichéd phrases, as well as intentional misspellings that indicate region, ethnicity, or class.
Keep in mind the age of your character when they're talking. A six-year-old will sound much different from a sixteen-year-old, who will sound quite different from a sixty-year-old. And a mid-west farmer is not going to talk the same way as Wall Street investment broker.
Avoid drowning your dialogue in character tags - phrases such as exclaimed, murmured, shouted, whimpered, asserted, inquired, demanded, queried, thundered, whispered, and muttered. In most cases, the word "said" works just fine, and using colourful tags detracts from the dialogue. I once read a novel that had no character tags whatsoever in it, and I never missed them.
If you're a romance writer, one dialogue tag to avoid, "He ejaculated." At the very least, don't use it during a sex scene – unless you want a laugh. And don’t let your hero say something ‘cockily’ either. Laughter is the surest way to ruin the ambiance of a passionate love scene.
Watch the adverbs in your dialogue tags as well. If a character’s words are already angry, you don’t need to insert the word angrily after she said. It's far better to show the character's mood with his or her actions.
Instead of:
"This is unacceptable," she said angrily.
Try:
She slammed the book down. "This is unacceptable!"
I once wrote a short story that was almost entirely dialogue. The two characters were talking on the phone the entire time with a non-speaking paragraph at the beginning and another one at the end. To be perfectly honest, while it was an interesting concept, the story fell flat because all the characters did was talk.
Don’t have your characters just standing, or sitting, across from one another rambling on and on. Have them emphasize what they’re saying with their hands. Have them move around – sit down, stand up, pace. Be aware of their facial expression, especially the eyes. Have your character pick up a book, crumple a paper, put their fist through a wall. The items in a room can be fiddled with, gestured with, tapped – they put a static character in motion. Characters should never sit still unless the stillness important to the plot.
Dialogue should always have a purpose. Most often that purpose is to relay important information, but it can also increase suspense, clarify what a character wants, strengthen (or weaken) their resolve, or even change their situation for better or worse.
Above all, dialogue should move the story forward.
~Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction, 1991
As writers, we don't want to write the way people really talk. Real speech is full of ums and ers, backtracking and repetition, and telling people things they already know. Trust me, I know this, having spent the last year transcribing audio interviews into text format. But on the other hand, unless your character is a British school boy, he's not going to speak with perfect English either.
What you want to do is give the impression of how people really talk. This is the one time you can get away with sentence fragments and comma splices, idiomatic and clichéd phrases, as well as intentional misspellings that indicate region, ethnicity, or class.
Keep in mind the age of your character when they're talking. A six-year-old will sound much different from a sixteen-year-old, who will sound quite different from a sixty-year-old. And a mid-west farmer is not going to talk the same way as Wall Street investment broker.
Avoid drowning your dialogue in character tags - phrases such as exclaimed, murmured, shouted, whimpered, asserted, inquired, demanded, queried, thundered, whispered, and muttered. In most cases, the word "said" works just fine, and using colourful tags detracts from the dialogue. I once read a novel that had no character tags whatsoever in it, and I never missed them.
If you're a romance writer, one dialogue tag to avoid, "He ejaculated." At the very least, don't use it during a sex scene – unless you want a laugh. And don’t let your hero say something ‘cockily’ either. Laughter is the surest way to ruin the ambiance of a passionate love scene.
Watch the adverbs in your dialogue tags as well. If a character’s words are already angry, you don’t need to insert the word angrily after she said. It's far better to show the character's mood with his or her actions.
Instead of:
"This is unacceptable," she said angrily.
Try:
She slammed the book down. "This is unacceptable!"
I once wrote a short story that was almost entirely dialogue. The two characters were talking on the phone the entire time with a non-speaking paragraph at the beginning and another one at the end. To be perfectly honest, while it was an interesting concept, the story fell flat because all the characters did was talk.
Don’t have your characters just standing, or sitting, across from one another rambling on and on. Have them emphasize what they’re saying with their hands. Have them move around – sit down, stand up, pace. Be aware of their facial expression, especially the eyes. Have your character pick up a book, crumple a paper, put their fist through a wall. The items in a room can be fiddled with, gestured with, tapped – they put a static character in motion. Characters should never sit still unless the stillness important to the plot.
Dialogue should always have a purpose. Most often that purpose is to relay important information, but it can also increase suspense, clarify what a character wants, strengthen (or weaken) their resolve, or even change their situation for better or worse.
Above all, dialogue should move the story forward.
Monday, April 4, 2016
C is for ... Computers
Seeing as my theme for the month is writing related, I suppose I could have chosen something like Commas, or Characters, or Colons and Semi-colons for today's post, but instead I chose to talk about something near and dear to my (and so many other writers) heart. Namely, my computer.
Do you remember your first computer? I remember mine. It had a monochrome monitor (amber on black, unlike the more common green on black), two floppy drives (and we're talking the 5 1/4 inch floppies here), 250K of RAM and a 40 meg hard drive. That's right people, 40 megabytes.
You notice the lack of a mouse. There were no mice for computers back then. Nor were there any windows. You typed commands in using something called DOS - Disk Operating System. It was kind of fun actually, like a secret language. You'd turn on your computer and you'd get a DOS prompt: C:\ blinking at you. Say you wanted a list of files that were on your computer. You'd type in: C:\>dir and a list of all the files on your computer would appear. Then you'd just select the file you wanted to work on and away you'd go.
It sounds like a lot of work, but prior to this I'd hand write my stories and then type them up on a typewriter like this:
Okay, so maybe my typewriter was electric and had one of those little buttons you could hit that would backspace over a mistake and leave a smudge of while correction tape in its place, but I do actually have one of those old Underwood typewriters, although mine is a bit dustier. And I may even have a page or two in my files somewhere that was typed on that typewriter, but I digress.
It did take me a couple of years to be comfortable enough with the computer that I would actually compose on it. It was just too easy somehow - if you made a mistake you just had to backspace over it. Or highlight it and click delete. With a typewriter, even a self-correcting one, you still could fix only so many errors before you'd have to re-type the whole page.
I did not learn to type in high school, thank God. No f f f f j j j j for me, thanyouverymuch. I learned to touch type in business college. There were no letters on the typewriter, just blank keys. We sat in a dark room and watched a lighted screen on the wall at the front of the classroom. I learned to type in two weeks and to this day I can still type in the dark. My typing speed on an electric typewriter was about 40 words a minute. On that first computer? I pretty much doubled it.
I had no connection to the internet. I'm not even sure there was an internet back then. ;-) Okay, I may be exaggerating just a tad, but the internet was definitely beyond my means at that time. It would be several years and at least two computer upgrades before I was on-line, and in those days it was via dial-up access, which meant that when you were online you were tying up the phone line.
My printer, at that time, was a dot matrix printer. Anyone out there remember them? You fed fanfold paper into them and they'd spit out pages of text that had to be separated along their perforated edges, and the text was made up of little dots which publishers found incredibly annoying.
Today my printer is a wireless Cannon Pixmar and I use a Samsung notebook with 6 GB of RAM, something like 600 GB of space on the hard drive, and wireless access to the internet. My typing speed is faster than ever and I have no problem whatsoever composing on my laptop.
I've come a long way baby! :-)
Do you remember your first computer? I remember mine. It had a monochrome monitor (amber on black, unlike the more common green on black), two floppy drives (and we're talking the 5 1/4 inch floppies here), 250K of RAM and a 40 meg hard drive. That's right people, 40 megabytes.
You notice the lack of a mouse. There were no mice for computers back then. Nor were there any windows. You typed commands in using something called DOS - Disk Operating System. It was kind of fun actually, like a secret language. You'd turn on your computer and you'd get a DOS prompt: C:\ blinking at you. Say you wanted a list of files that were on your computer. You'd type in: C:\>dir and a list of all the files on your computer would appear. Then you'd just select the file you wanted to work on and away you'd go.
It sounds like a lot of work, but prior to this I'd hand write my stories and then type them up on a typewriter like this:
Okay, so maybe my typewriter was electric and had one of those little buttons you could hit that would backspace over a mistake and leave a smudge of while correction tape in its place, but I do actually have one of those old Underwood typewriters, although mine is a bit dustier. And I may even have a page or two in my files somewhere that was typed on that typewriter, but I digress.
It did take me a couple of years to be comfortable enough with the computer that I would actually compose on it. It was just too easy somehow - if you made a mistake you just had to backspace over it. Or highlight it and click delete. With a typewriter, even a self-correcting one, you still could fix only so many errors before you'd have to re-type the whole page.
I did not learn to type in high school, thank God. No f f f f j j j j for me, thanyouverymuch. I learned to touch type in business college. There were no letters on the typewriter, just blank keys. We sat in a dark room and watched a lighted screen on the wall at the front of the classroom. I learned to type in two weeks and to this day I can still type in the dark. My typing speed on an electric typewriter was about 40 words a minute. On that first computer? I pretty much doubled it.
I had no connection to the internet. I'm not even sure there was an internet back then. ;-) Okay, I may be exaggerating just a tad, but the internet was definitely beyond my means at that time. It would be several years and at least two computer upgrades before I was on-line, and in those days it was via dial-up access, which meant that when you were online you were tying up the phone line.
My printer, at that time, was a dot matrix printer. Anyone out there remember them? You fed fanfold paper into them and they'd spit out pages of text that had to be separated along their perforated edges, and the text was made up of little dots which publishers found incredibly annoying.
Today my printer is a wireless Cannon Pixmar and I use a Samsung notebook with 6 GB of RAM, something like 600 GB of space on the hard drive, and wireless access to the internet. My typing speed is faster than ever and I have no problem whatsoever composing on my laptop.
I've come a long way baby! :-)
Saturday, April 2, 2016
B is for Backstory
The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
—Stephen King
Once upon a time, I spent copious amounts of time creating back stories for the characters in the novel I was working on. I suspect this was more a form of procrastination seeing as the novel never really got past the first six chapters. Every time I created a new character I'd have to stop and do a character sketch with a detailed back story.
When I finally realized I was spending more time creating back stories than creating the actual story, I stopped. And then I kind of abandoned the book because pretty much all I had was back story, most of which wasn't pertinent to the plot.
It's a fine line between too much and too little when it comes to back story. While you, as the author, need to know everything there is to know about your characters, how much does your reader really need to know? Too much and they'll be bored; too little and they'll be confused.
I did, many years later, revisit that early novel and the back stories came in very handy. They let me get inside my characters' heads so I knew how they'd react in a given situation and made them seem more alive.
Back story can be used to strengthen the reader's bond with your character. It can increase suspense if your reader knows about a trauma your character has suffered in the past that can affect what's happening now. Sometimes back story is needed simply to explain why the character feels so strongly about what they're doing.
In my novel, I used a prologue to share a few important details from all those back stories and more were shown through the thoughts and actions of my characters. The rest appeared through reminiscence and flashback but in total it was only the tip of the iceberg as far as my pages of back story went.
By all means create as much back story as you wish, just be careful how much you actually share with your reader. They neither need nor want to know everything about your characters. Share your facts sparingly, and spread them out. No one likes an info dump, but everyone loves a mystery.
—Stephen King
Once upon a time, I spent copious amounts of time creating back stories for the characters in the novel I was working on. I suspect this was more a form of procrastination seeing as the novel never really got past the first six chapters. Every time I created a new character I'd have to stop and do a character sketch with a detailed back story.
When I finally realized I was spending more time creating back stories than creating the actual story, I stopped. And then I kind of abandoned the book because pretty much all I had was back story, most of which wasn't pertinent to the plot.
It's a fine line between too much and too little when it comes to back story. While you, as the author, need to know everything there is to know about your characters, how much does your reader really need to know? Too much and they'll be bored; too little and they'll be confused.
I did, many years later, revisit that early novel and the back stories came in very handy. They let me get inside my characters' heads so I knew how they'd react in a given situation and made them seem more alive.
Back story can be used to strengthen the reader's bond with your character. It can increase suspense if your reader knows about a trauma your character has suffered in the past that can affect what's happening now. Sometimes back story is needed simply to explain why the character feels so strongly about what they're doing.
In my novel, I used a prologue to share a few important details from all those back stories and more were shown through the thoughts and actions of my characters. The rest appeared through reminiscence and flashback but in total it was only the tip of the iceberg as far as my pages of back story went.
By all means create as much back story as you wish, just be careful how much you actually share with your reader. They neither need nor want to know everything about your characters. Share your facts sparingly, and spread them out. No one likes an info dump, but everyone loves a mystery.
Friday, April 1, 2016
A is For Adventure
So here's the thing. Despite the fact that I've released my fifth book this year (you can check the tab at the top of the page to see the whole collection) I've been in kind of a dry spell with my writing this year. It's not writer's block, per se, I always feel like writer's block is where you can't come up with ideas and I've got ideas galore, it's more like I just got out of the writing habit over the holidays at the end of the year and never got back into it.
Then the other day I was noodling around on the computer, looking at some old bookmarks, and I saw the one for the Blogging From A to Z Challenge. And I thought to myself, why not? Maybe this is just what I need to get off my lazy butt, metaphorically speaking. If nothing else, it'll be a great adventure.
Now most of the people visiting here this month will already be familiar with the challenge but for those who aren't, let me explain. The idea is to write a blog post every day except Sundays during the month of April, which will result in 26 blog posts. And since there are 26 letters in the alphabet, part of the fun is to use a letter of the alphabet, in sequential order, as the theme for each day. Hence the title of this post.
You'll notice the little badge at the top of my widgets on the right hand column. If you click on it, it'll take you to the main page of the challenge where you'll find listings for all the participants. Trust me, you're not going to be able to visit them all in one day. At the writing of this post there were almost 2,000 names on the list. But it might be fun trying. :-D
One of the fun things is that most people find a central theme to their posts: mythological animals, poetry forms, photographs ... one year one of the participants wrote a novel with each letter of the alphabet representing the theme for each chapter. The possibilities are endless.
And the best part is, there's still time to sign up! All you need is a blog and an idea. And then maybe you can have a little adventure of your own.
Then the other day I was noodling around on the computer, looking at some old bookmarks, and I saw the one for the Blogging From A to Z Challenge. And I thought to myself, why not? Maybe this is just what I need to get off my lazy butt, metaphorically speaking. If nothing else, it'll be a great adventure.
Now most of the people visiting here this month will already be familiar with the challenge but for those who aren't, let me explain. The idea is to write a blog post every day except Sundays during the month of April, which will result in 26 blog posts. And since there are 26 letters in the alphabet, part of the fun is to use a letter of the alphabet, in sequential order, as the theme for each day. Hence the title of this post.
You'll notice the little badge at the top of my widgets on the right hand column. If you click on it, it'll take you to the main page of the challenge where you'll find listings for all the participants. Trust me, you're not going to be able to visit them all in one day. At the writing of this post there were almost 2,000 names on the list. But it might be fun trying. :-D
One of the fun things is that most people find a central theme to their posts: mythological animals, poetry forms, photographs ... one year one of the participants wrote a novel with each letter of the alphabet representing the theme for each chapter. The possibilities are endless.
And the best part is, there's still time to sign up! All you need is a blog and an idea. And then maybe you can have a little adventure of your own.
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