Hi everyone!  This is Jamie Kitts, managing editor for the ACPA.  You might be thinking, Who the hell is Jamie Kitts?  Are they a new editor?  Aren't they starting pretty late to be ACPA editor?  Nope, and nope!  I've been managing editor since May 2018, I'm just using a new name.  Don't even worry about it.  And I've actually been working on this website again since mid-June -- I've just been doing a lot of behind the scenes work.

I've got four new entries in the pipeline, all of which are in different states of readiness.  One of them is ready to go pending final approval, so you'll get to see that very soon.  Two more are in near-ready states and need just a bit more work, plus author permissions.  Yet one more is in a precarious state, still needing much attention, and will hopefully be ready by the end of my time here in mid-August.  Of course I am also updating all current entries on this website.

But I'm also working on a little something for the blog again.  It's not quite as ambitious as interviewing so many impressive student-poets from our region, but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless.  As you might know, my boss Kathy Mac did a virtual seminar series on prose writing through our Facebook page.  During lesson 2.1, Kathy tasked our followers to find their own writing resource book in the genre they're interested in, using The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones and Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes as examples.  I went looking for my own guide and I've found a book I'm very eager to explore.  So, in the coming weeks, I'll be posting chapter-by-chapter reflections of the book I chose, Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo.

As much as you can in our current circumstances, I hope you're having a relaxing summer.

Hello again, my pretties. Class 2.2 of Working Around with Prose is now posted. In it, I use the topic of "pre-writing" as an excuse to dispense all sorts of advice about your project. Pre-writing is like research; a lot of it never makes it into the first draft, but you have to do it all in order to find that one piece-of-gold idea or detail that DOES make it in.

After that, I laid down some ways of thinking about the opening paragraphs of your project. It's important. It should introduce readers to your protagonist, and give a sense of how the protagonist's flaw(s) is (are) totally their life.

All this and more awaits you at:
https://www.facebook.com/WordingAround/videos/674134070064502/

(note that you have to copy & paste that link into your browser; it's not live. Weebly, while wonderful, wants money for the privilege of including a live link.

Gentle reader, in the most recent installment of "Wording Around with Prose" (Week 2, Class 1) our hero talks about, well, heroes -- specifically, the need for them to have a want, a need, and a flaw. And that the hero is the character who transforms the most by the end of the story. But before that, I offer some tips on doing research -- into the genre that you are writing (Hint: look at some how-to books specific to that genre, and read widely in the genre), and also into the stuff going on within the story itself.

https://www.facebook.com/WordingAround/videos/903911380079506/

Week 1, Class 2 of Wording Around with Prose is available at Wording Around on Facebook.

In this talk, I hold forth on the importance of holding your writing time precious; if you don't, others won't either.  It's a decision you need to come to. Then there's a bit of talk about alternatives to a chronological narration. The resource I recommend is Jack Hodgson's book "A Passion for Narrative" -- a bit dated, but fantastic advice on writing craft, and the assignment is can be summed up in ten words: gather all the material for your project in one place.

https://www.facebook.com/WordingAround/videos/

I started teaching the free online course on writing prose on Monday. To see the video, go to Wording Around's Facebook page, and click on "Videos".  The most recent video is the first one on the left.

In this one, I introduce the course a bit, then talk about what stops people from writing, and what gets us writing in the first point. Then some nitty-gritty on point of view. Give a good resource for people starting a big project (NaNoWriMo's "NaNo 101" guide -- it's free online), and a Freefall writing exercise.

Next class, Thursday night. Gonna talk a bit more about starting projects, and dive deeper into storytelling techniques that work well in prose.

Join author and teacher Kathy Mac online for seven weeks of advice and inspiration on writing effective creative prose
               Some of what she says may be familiar, some of it may be new to you, and if you hang around long enough, probably some will scald your ears as you race to your keyboard to comment on just how wrongheaded it is.
               The focus is on any sort of prose: fiction, short or long, creative nonfiction (memoir, travel-writing, long-form journalism).  But much of what she covers are concerns and skills that transfer to other genres if, for example, you are more focused on scripts or poetry, especially narrative poetry.
 
When and How and Where
Duration: From  Monday April 6 until Thursday May 21
Frequency: 2 twenty-minute lectorials* every week
               (*Lectorial: less formal than a lecture, less interactive than a tutorial)
When:  Live: Monday and Thursday evenings, 7:30pm Atlantic time
Canned: If you can’t make the live feed, video of the lectorials will be available any time on the Facebook page
Where: The Wording Around page on Facebook; these will be live videos. Look on the left margin for the word “Video”. A red “Live” box beside it means the lectorial is started. Click on the word, or the video feed in your Facebook page.

To see a video on what the course will entail, go to: