Greetings, friends and readers!

A few days ago, I posted the following:

As I'm writing this on June 21, I'm 98,364 words into a novel that I'd initially imagined would be about 50,000 words. Obviously, I'm not very good predicting final wordcounts, but I am almost finished with this first draft—within a few thousand words, I think!

So ... this Write-a-thon season, I'll be finishing this draft then doing a first pass for glaring errors in preparation for sending it to a few first readers.

If you're interested—and especially if you also choose to sponsor either me or anybody else in the Write-a-thon—I'd love to share some excerpts.

Yesterday, I finished the novel—first draft, anyway. It came in around 108,000 words. I had thought I'd jump right into revisions, but now I think I'll give it a few weeks, and spend my WAT writing time revising some old short stories (at least one of which I wrote during Clarion West, eleven years ago!). I'll still happilly share excerpts of the novel, though—maybe I'll even do a little virtual reading or something, one of these days. If so, you'll hear about it right here.

Happy writing!

Clarion West 2023 Write-a-thon

Amal El-Mohtar during the 2019 Summer Reading Series

The Write-a-thon supports Clarion West programs year-round. All donations support Clarion West classes, workshops, panels, and other programs for emerging writers, including our Six-Week Workshop. We also hold events, offer scholarships, raise awareness, and promote diverse speculative fiction in Seattle and all over the world. 

Clarion West

Our mission is to support emerging and underrepresented voices by providing writers with world-class instruction to empower their creation of wild and amazing worlds. Through conversation and public engagement, we bring those voices to an ever-expanding community.

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