Don’t cross the streams! Don’t cross the streams!
Well, guess what?
[waiting]
I’m crossing the streams!
What are these streams? First: the fabulous contest we’re running on the best opening sentences ever. You can still enter that one if you want.
And second: our full-throated support for National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. We renewed our support on Sunday.
Why do we care so much?
Take a look at the post Is Literature Dying? for a hint. Literature matters to me, or it did at one time. Now, I’m not so sure. Part of me thinks it’s on life support. We’re replacing it with other forms of communication, other forms of expression, other forms of art. Literature as we knew it 20 years ago is headed for the dumpster. A nice dumpster, maybe. The most museumlike dumpster you can imagine. But still: a dumpster.
So if we’re checking the vital signs of our patient Literature, and if we’re gearing ourselves up for the really hard questions of whether it can and will and should survive, what signs can we look for? Readership, certainly. Assessing great contemporary authors, maybe.
And… we can look at writers. Authors. Novelists. Successful ones and yet-to-be-successful ones. Like those writing a novel for this year’s National Novel Writing Month.
Maybe you’re among them! I hope you are!
So now that you’re in the middle of your slog, wrestling with your own words in the loneliest endeavor imaginable, take a few seconds to celebrate your achievement. Give yourselves some inspiration. Let us be your jolt of energy, your strong positive feedback, your tiny triumph on the way to (hopefully) a successful month of writing.
Send us your first sentence.
That’s it. That’s all. Just the first line or two. Give us some news from the front.
Leave it in the comments or, even better, read it to me out loud. I’ll choose my favorite entries, give you a little free publicity here on the Jacke blog, and send you a free book, no strings attached. A book of your choice. Hopefully a great novel that will help to fuel your own creative energies and spur you to greater novelistic heights.
How does that work? Simple. Either call my special dedicated voicemail line, 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766), and leave a message. That’s it, it’s just a call. Just tell me the name of your book, maybe your own first name if you want, and read away. No strings attached. If I like your first line I may run it on my podcast. And if I like it the best, I’ll send you a free book via Amazon or some other way.
If phone calls aren’t your thing, just jump over to my Speakpipe page, click the link, and read away. (Make sure your computer’s microphone is on.) I’ll get the message and again – we’ll celebrate your effort, maybe share it with others on the podcast, discuss its energy and where we think the book is heading, give you some fellow-writer love, and maybe send you a free book! Here’s the Speakpipe link:
It’s easy, people. It’s not rigged like the McDonald’s Monopoly game lottery. (Well, that’s not rigged either. I just sort of rigged myself on that one.)
Don’t rig yourself! Write your heart out, and when you come up for air, share your progress with me and my readers/listeners. Then go back to writing and prove all those naysayers wrong.
Writing a novel is a good thing, people. DO write that novel. (And share the first line with us!)
Onward and upward!
Jacke Wilson 
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