Teaching: The Seven-Day Novel

     The Writing Workshop, a club I advise at Nashua High South, will be writing a novel(ish) in seven days next week. Here's the outline we came up with. The novel will come together (in a publicly accessible Google Doc) on Friday, April 27 (noon to four) if you care to tune into the creative process. I'll send the document link out closer to the day. On Friday, I’ll randomly assign each of my young protagonists a chapter. 

     When all is said and done – cover designed, text “edited,” and blurbs written (likely by Saturday, April 28) – we’ll release the thing under a Creative Commons license and throw it up on Amazon Kindle and various other places. 

     Thanks to John Herman for sparking the idea. Here's the plan ...

Books for Writers: Doubting "The Diezmo"

 Rick Bass is an award-winning writer, an avid outdoorsman and a dedicated environmental activist. My kind of guy.

Bass' 2005 novel The Diezmo is a mostly fictional account of the Mier Expedition, a 1842 military incursion into Mexico by soldiers from the then-independent nation of Texas. In the story, two young yokels answer the call of duty and glory and join the militia to teach the Mexicans what happens when they mess with San Antonio. More than 500 riders went south; less than 70 stumbled back. (This we learn in the first chapter: no spoilers.)