Social Distancing Readathon

In my links (Places to Find Me) you'll notice one called My Book Pledge.
MyBookPledge.com is a site where you can track your reading - based on the premise that you are pledging to read a certain number of books per year. I always pledge the standard 50, no matter how many books I plan to read on Goodreads because the site used to be called the 50 Book Pledge.

Anyway, TheSavvyReader.com is the site where this Book Pledge originated. I believe it's the Social Media interactive for Harper Collins publishing. Savvy Reader is hosting a week-long Social Distancing Readathon this upcoming week from May 4th to May 10th.

It doesn't require any serious commitment.  Read what you can - because reading is stress relieving, depending of course, on what you're reading.  But you do have to sign up, and there are prizes to be won. And if you're already signed up on mybookpledge.com you get a badge for participating in the readathon. And really, who can't be motivated by an internet badge?

Anyway, visit the Social Distancing Readathon and check out the FAQ and maybe decide to read a little bit next week.

I write: Creativity for Writers

Today starts a new online course for me toward the Creative Writing certificate. Creativity for Writing is an entirely online course (and was always intended to be online) and features writing, and blogging for 8 weeks. I'm not sure how this one is going to go, as sharing my work has always been the hardest part and this is actually a graded course, which means I have to share and participate in order to earn my grades.

Sharing may actually be easier when you don't have to be face-to-face with anyone. The only contributor is a faceless name on the screen rather than having to see anyone's face as I publicly share. I will also share items here as I've done previously. I have a couple of things from the Science Fiction and Fantasy class that I haven't shared as of yet because I was waiting to see if there was going to be any feedback - which there wasn't.  But that's okay - I missed the last class anyway.

Waiting currently for the Wikispaces blog space that I need for the class in order to do the first piece of my first assignment. Looking forward to the new writing challenges to come.

New challenges part 2

This week I start a Science Fiction and Fantasy class. I don't really write Science Fiction or Fantasy, but I do have ideas that could be classified as Fantasy-lite, and I think that I will find this class very interesting. It could also very possibly ignite a significant amount of creativity because it's just that little bit out of my normal comfort zone.

I will share things here as I write them, just as I did in the fiction class. I don't expect that I will ever become a published writer, so the only way I can share is to do it here.  If anyone reads them and happens to enjoy what I've written then yippee for me. But I write for myself, not for an audience.

In the next 6 months, I'll be taking 3 different writing classes, including this Science Fiction & Fantasy one. I will hopefully be able to keep up with the work involved, and will not find myself bogged down between real life and the writing life. But I so enjoyed the previous fiction class that I find myself compelled to continue the courses. By July, I will be only one course away from my certificate in Creative Writing. And in the meantime, I've also signed up for a certificate in Business Writing so that I can continue taking classes and learning when I'm done the creative version.

It's really all about a quest for knowledge and exposure to ideas and words. If I can find new and different ways to do that, I'm all for it. For now, this is my outlet.  It's all about my mental well-being really. I like to take the stories out of my head, and this is a good place and way to do that.

Just gonna leave this here