Divide and Conquer
The month of November is over and so is another NaNoWriMo. Our experiment with a group project to write the required 50,000 words was a mixed success. We originally had fourteen people sign up, of whom ten completed the required story. One dropped out due to family issues, one didn’t make the deadline (although we hope he’ll still finish), and two fell into a portal and were never heard from again.
In all the combined 10½ stories added up to a little more than 35,000 words, short of the goal, but still an impressive feat. After all, the aim of NaNoWriMo is to get more people writing, so in that respect we’re going to put this one in the win column. The group will spend the next few weeks editing, but we hope to publish the stories early in the new year.
Writers Workshop and Static Magic
As previously mentioned, these workshops are coming to a close. Please make any final comments and revisions before Wednesday, December 11, 2013 as the pages will be taken down after that time. The collaboration piece will be serialized on the site shortly before we close down for the Christmas break.
Coming Up in 2014
I recently came across a site where authors collaborate on interactive stories in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure™ books, and I thought that might be fun to try. This would be open to everyone and would require a minimum commitment of time. Because of its nature, however, it will need a considerable amount of planning and preparation, but hopefully we can get that started early next year. We’re not singing people up yet, but of you’re interested let us know in the comments. Also, should it be space opera or dungeons & dragons (or both)?
Other possibilities include another collection similar to the Divide and Conquer workshop and a flash fiction contest. If there is something you’d like to see on the site, please let us know in the comments or you can email us at foilandphaser(at)gmail(dot)com.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the workshops this year. Here’s hoping that 2014 will bring even better things.
This is the home of the Foil & Phaser writers workshop, a spin-off community website for fans of the Sword & Laser book club and podcast who want to develop their writing skills.
Foil & Phaser 
I think the whole Choose your own Adventure thing could be fun, Would you separate it by foil and phaser and have two groups working at once or do it differently?
I’d like to see another collection like we did with Divide and Conquer. Lost my dog right when we began the whole thing this November and really didn’t get to participate how I wanted too. I’m still going to finish, doing the revisions now, but I’d like to get the whole experience if it happens again. Maybe we’d do one for charity if this goes well? Download wise of course.
We would probably only do one CYOA at a time due to the work involved. I will probably put it up for a vote. I like the idea of doing another collection, but we need to get this one finished first! We could do the next one for charity, if everyone agrees to it.
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