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What happened to fengi?

In Which the Author Asks His Readers To Do His Work For Him

So, since October I've been helping out with the Monthly Writing Challenges for novelists on the Odyssey email list. (It's a list for alumni, so, you know, if you're not one I can't help you get on it.) There are a couple of guys doing one for short story writers, which overall seems to me more amenable to monthly challenges, but it's not the job I took. Anyway, five months in I'm already having trouble coming up with new ones. I've suggested things like, "Rewrite a crucial scene in your novel without using any sight description" or "Who does your main character spend the holidays with (and if you're writing about a created world, what are those holidays?)" I also proposed that everyone working on a novel put themselves on a deadline and figure out what sort of monthly/weekly progress would be necessary for that.

In the beginning it was easy, but now that it's hard I'm doing the smart thing and asking other people to think up stuff for me. There's a bunch of talented writers on this list, many of whom have written or are writing novels. Have you got any ideas for me? What sorts of things do you wish someone had told you before you started writing novels? What things have you learned in doing so? Help?

Damn Me For Embedding This Video

(Via BoingBoing.)