Ray Bradbury gave this advice to new writers:
Don’t start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out “a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.
I am writing a novel, but I thought I'd take some time out from novels this summer and work on some short stories. A story a week, to be precise, and to make all that hard work count for something I've joined the Clarion West Write-a-Thon. You can follow it just like you do a telethon and it does pretty much the same thing: we commit to meeting certain writing goals and our sponsors donate money to Clarion West in return.
Any donation is welcome, but here's my perk for you: if you donate $50 or more I'll name a character in a story after you.
Here is my Clarion West Writing page. Donate! It's a great cause. You can make your donations via Paypal in addition to all the usual ways.
If you are a writer and want to join, you still have until June 22 to sign up. There's 174 of us participating now; Clarion West is hoping to raise that number to 300. Don't just think about it, sign up!
Clarion West is a nonprofit educational organization under Section 501©(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (Federal EIN 91-1352168).
Thank you for considering Clarion West in your charitable giving.