LB&LI 2009 Reminder

Next month I'll be holding my fourth annual Left Behind & Loving It virtual workshops here at PBW, beginning July 13th and continuing daily through July 20th, 2009. Back in May I posted an open invitation for all you writers out there to join in, and many of you responded with suggestions and ideas for workshops. This post is my usual reminder for those of you who are still interested or planning to join; I'm putting it up a bit early to give everyone more time to get ready.

The details:

1. It's open to all -- anyone can hold a workshop; it doesn't matter if you're unpublished, published, agent, editor, employed, unemployed, student, retiree, whatever. If you've got something related to writing or publishing that you want to workshop, you're in.

2. You run the show -- you can do a single workshop or as many as you like, and hold them at any time during that week.

3. Linkage -- if you hold your workshop on your blog during the week of July 13th through July 20th, I will link to it here on PBW for the entire week while I'm running mine.

My suggestions (all optional):

1. Keep your blog comments open so your visitors can discuss the topic of your workshop, ask questions and add their own ideas. The real fun of a virtual workshop is always the visitor participation.

2. If applicable, put together worksheets, outlines, or other helpful materials related to your topic for your visitors' use. You can post these online as part of your workshop or have them available for downloading elsewhere (I recommend Scribd.com if you don't have a website and/or need a place to park them; I've used it for the last two years to publish e-book versions of my workshops.) *Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I have removed my free library from their site, and no longer use or recommend using their service. My free reads may be read online or downloaded for free from Google Docs; go to my freebies and free reads page for the links. See my post about this scam here.

3. Link to articles, web site pages and other sources on the internet that are relevant to the topic of your workshop. I especially like to find links to writers who have a different perspective than mine because they offer second opinions on the topic.

4. Consider having a giveaway(s) for your visitors. Published writers, if you've got some extra author copies sitting around and you can swing the postage, have a drawing for a signed copy or two. Unpublished writers, if there's a how-to book, magazine or other resource that has helped you, consider giving away a copy of it during your workshop. Or think up your own unique giveaway -- whatever you do, it will be appreciated.

Along with my usual goodie bags, this year I'm putting together some surprises. Since these are still in the works I'm going to keep quiet about them for a bit longer, but stay tuned for more details.

I'll be posting my workshop schedule as well as another reminder on July 1st, and a call for participating bloggers to send me their workshop links beginning on July 12th (I'll also accept links whenever you all send them to me, up through July 20th.)

Does anyone have any questions about LB&LI? If you do, please post them in comments.