NanoWriMo's Grant Faulkner asks, could your creative mojo use a boost?

Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month); co-founder of the literary journal 100 Word Story; a writer whose writings on writing have appeared in Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, The New York Times, among others; and author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo.

I don’t know about you, but right now my creative mojo could use some boosting. So I’m excited to announce that at 5pm on June 18th, I’ll be talking to Grant about exactly how to get this boosting done. You are invited to join me.

In addition to gleaning some actionable tips on improving my writing practice (i.e. what mental glue will attach my butt to my seat), I’m hoping to find out why Grant calls himself “alchemist, contortionist, numbskull, preacher.”

I also want to talk to Grant about his flash fiction writing. His book Fissures is a collection of 100 stories told in less than 100 words. Short-form writers among you will be happy to hear from a master. Two of Grant’s stories were chose for Best Short Fictions 2016. But the novelists among us will also benefit from the craft discussion. There may be no better way to evoke than with tools honed by short fiction.

"I've always thought life is more about what is unsaid than what is said," Grant has said. "We live in odd gaps of silence, irremediable interstices that sometimes last forever. A lingering glance averted. The lover who slams the door and runs away. Unsent letters…What if instead of relying on the words of a story, I relied on the spectral spaces around those words? What if I privileged excision over any notion of comprehensiveness, and formed narratives around caesuras and crevices?"

This is a rare opportunity to inject energy into your writing life by spending an hour with someone who has made inspiring and motivating writers his mission. You can listen to the start of our interview, below, but it’s been broken into chunks. You can play the entire playlist sequentially here.

As most of you know, the one-hour, recorded conversation will be followed by an optional happy hour afterwards with the camera off. If you missed my chat with Cameron Lund last week, it was full of generous, candid, actionable advice on the entire submissions and post-acceptance process. Here’s the link to the video.

Finally, I have another rare opportunity for you. I have a couple of spaces open in a writing retreat over Labor Day Weekend. We’ll be taking the entire guesthouse at Green Gulch, a serene Buddhist monastery on Muir Beach. More information on this specific retreat is available here. If you’re interested, please raise your hand quickly. Also note that if there is a stay in place order at the time, all monies will be fully refunded.

I hope you’ll join me for any or all of the above experiences.

In the meantime, happy writing!

Shirin