#10: Announcements

Welcome to our 10th edition of Show Word Count! So far, we’ve explored how much of yourself you might share in your art, how long you should look at it, and how you might balance it with your working life. We’ve begun the process of exploring the ways in which we consume news, poetry and comedy. And we’ve touched on the importance of supporting your scene.

But things are changing around here.

I’m switching to a bi-weekly newsletter

I started Show Word Count as a weekly newsletter and have loved the process of writing not-for-work as a habit every week. It’s helped me maintain the flow of writing for longer, so I can work on other projects as well.

But I’ve had to postpone two editions so far for literary events. Thinking about that, I’ve decided my various projects are now competing with each other. By making this newsletter bi-weekly starting from now, I may be able to keep it a bit more consistent.

I’m emceeing a spooky storytelling night

It’s spooky season, and while it may already be too muggy and mosquito-ridden to enjoy a campfire tale, it’s the perfect time to suffer four horrific chronicles around a (fake) fireplace.

Let our expert storytellers Killian MacDonald, Nora Banerjee, Avery Garrick and Henry Gimpel regale you with cautionary tales of a mother’s love, a child’s curiosity, and more.

Grab an excellent drink at the bar and consider, this happened 20 years ago in this very forest…

We’re preparing for NaNoWriMo

At the Braddyton, we’re hosting a near-daily online writing session on our Discord server so you can block out the time to write, post your word-count-accountability and get feedback on your work from fellow writers! We will also be hosting an open mic where you can share the fruits of your labour at the end of November, but more on that later.

We will be posting the full Braddyton NaNoWriMo schedule soon.

We are not affiliated with the NaNoWriMo organisation, especially in light of their comments on AI and bot usage. We would just like to celebrate a month of locking in together.

My academic work is being published in the British Fantasy Society Journal

Last year, I wrote a dissertation titled A New Definition For Literary Fantasy where I explored the genre of – you guessed it – literary fantasy as a hybrid genre. I argued that while some publishers and academics use the term ‘literary fantasy’ as a synonym for ‘good fantasy’, a more impactful way to use the term might be to identify the genre tropes of literary fiction and fantasy fiction and how those might be hybridised. I performed a literature review and textual analysis to propose a definition and point to examples of works that fit it. The literature review is being published by the British Fantasy Society in early December. We’ll see if we can find a home for the textual analysis.

Word Count: 486