As of now I’ve reached my Clarion West Write-a-thon fundraising goal of $1500 pledged dollars. Yes, in just 5 days. I am consistently floored by the generosity of people in this community and the willingness to support new writers (as well as established ones, as evidenced by the awesomeness going on in the community to help Cat Valente). Thank you all for your generosity.

I will still accept new sponsors if you’re willing to pledge, but I hope you’ll consider supporting one of the other writers participating. The more money you pledge to their goals the more motivated they’ll be to complete them. Hell, with $1500 riding on this, you bet I’ll not be slacking any time duing those 6 weeks.

And now I’ll stop talking about it until the actual writing begins. But again, thank you.

Yesterday I began my big push for Write-a-thon sponsors. The goal was $1000 in pledged donations. Last year it took me about 2 weeks to collect enough sponsors to reach that goal. This time? Less than 24 hours. OMG.

Big thanks to all the people who posted about this on their blogs or on FaceBook or Twitter or in email. You made a huge difference! Also thanks to all the people who’ve pledged so far. You’re my heroes.

I said that I would raise my goal marker if I got $1000 in pledges before the Write-a-thon began. So now the thermometer is at $1500. It doesn’t reflect it quite yet, but I currently have over $1200 in pledged dollars. I have three weeks to get about $300 more and I’m pretty sure I can do it. Please keep linking and tweeting and posting!

If I reach my secondary goal, I’m going to turn my attention to helping other participating writers meet their pledge goals. There are currently over 30 other writers and I suspect there will be many more in the next week or so.

Anyway, again, thank you all for your support. I’m excited to write!

As soon as my page on the Clarion West site is ready I will start my sponsor begging in earnest. But I know that once I do, some of you out there will say, “I really wish I could, but I don’t feel I can afford it,” which is completely understandable. But there is something that you can do: be in the Write-A-Thon yourselves!

You don’t have to be a Clarion West alum to participate. You don’t have to have been to any Clarion at all. You just have to want to reach a writing goal (big or small) nand be willing to ask friends and family to sponsor you. Even if you only get one sponsor, you’re helping out!

Plus, it’s always way more fun to do things like this with other writers. We can form a little support group (there’s always a lot of fun to be had on the Clarion West forums around this time) and egg each other on to higher goals and better writing.

Check out Kate’s post here about signing up — the goal is 75 writers total. You should sign up soon. And again, you don’t have to set really high goals nor do you have to commit to raising a ton of money. Just what you can.

If you decide to sign up, let me know! We can do this thing together. :)

Last year when I set my goal of getting $1000 in pledges I at first thought: “Maybe that’s too high. It would mean either getting a few people to pledge a LOT or far too many to pledge a little.” However, once I actually broke down the numbers, I found that to be untrue.

$1000 breaks down to about $170/week. So if I get 17 people to pledge $10/week, I can reach my goal. If 9 people pledge $20/week, I’ll make my goal and a bit more. Or, one could think of it in a flat rate kind of way. If 20 people pledge $50, I’ll make my goal. Or 40 people pledging $25. I know at least 40 people who can spare $25, and I’ll bet you each know 10 people who’d be willing to donate $25.

So really, this goal is not at all tough to reach. It just requires spreading the word and finding people who have a little money to spare.

If I were to raise my stakes to a goal of $1500, how many people would it take to make that happen?

$250/week. 25 people pledging $10/week. 13 people pledging $20/week. 40 people pledging $40.

It can be done.

Here’s a picture of some books.

Here’s another picture of some books.

I have quite a few books that I am ready to part with. (Many of them sent for the Tiptree.) I’ve been building up the fortitude to drag them downtown to The Strand to see if I can sell them, but now I have a better idea! I will give them away as pledge-incentives for the Write-A-Thon.

Details will come soon. But take a close look at those books there (click for the hi-res versions). Start coveting one (or more) of them right now!

As I mentioned a little while ago, I’ve been brainstorming on ways to entice people to sponsor me. I came up with several different “prizes” for different levels, but the one I’m most excited about is my jewelry idea. Every week, after I’m done editing my story, I’ll make a small piece of jewelry based on that story. Earrings or a bracelet or a pendant. Something I can finish in a day. It will provide a nice, relaxing coda to my creative efforts and, I hope, will be pretty.

If you’ve not seen my jewelry before, check it out in The Raven’s Nest.

To make it fair, everyone who pledges at a certain level will be entered in a drawing for that week’s piece of jewelry. Once you win, you can’t be in the drawings anymore. I hope I will get more than 6 people pledging at the appropriate level. If not, we’ll put everyone’s name back in the pool and start over again once everyone has won.

I’m getting mroe and more excited about the Write-A-Thon this year! I am ready to get these 6 stories out the door and off to markets so they can be published! If I raise some money and make shiny things and bring happiness to people in the form of shiny things and books along the way, more’s the better.