#ALSO!!!!!!!!!!!!! these complaints do not include like. reasonable constraints of adult life.

[lathrine]

thinking VERY hard about the exhousemate and how he never engaged with anything i made. he would sometimes like fanart i posted to twitter but only if it was his hyperfixation blorbo (or smut). during one of our failed campaigns i did a lot of speculative writing about my character because he asked me to, and never once did he acknowledge any of it. i sent him the first chapter of Eyeing an Uncomfortable Question and the only reason i ever knew he actually read it was because he verbally asked "did you see the trailer?" (in reference to the house having a basement)

its one thing to share to the void of the internet and be greeted by radio silence. its another to share a piece of art directly with someone and be greeted with a response that is somehow less than nothing.

[cindysmakeupfactory]

Leading ECommerce Store Builders June 2018.

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( 1) The European Union is looking for to build ever before closer links between the States and also individuals of Europe, to ensure social and financial progression; in accordance with Article 14( 2) of the Treaty, the inner market comprises a location without interior frontiers in which the totally free movements of goods, solutions as well as the freedom of facility are made certain; the development of details culture services within the location without interior frontiers is important to removing the obstacles which divide the European individuals. Walmart made hundreds of countless things easy to order by voice on the Google Express eCommerce Platform, soon adding the ability to area orders for in-store pickup through Google Home. This Personal privacy Policy secures consumers and also job prospects supplying details via our web sites, stores or various other interaction networks and is not designed to safeguard company data. Not surprisingly, electronic platforms that deal with aspiring ecommerce titans like her are hustling to fine-tune their items for iPhone-only usage. Choose an extra-large T-shirts with a rounded neck or a fitted tee in your much-loved colour. When it come to personal information transferred under the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield, Permanently 21 will accept the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Details Commissioner for the resolution of such unsolved complaints. 5. Member States will motivate the interaction to the Payment of any kind of substantial management or judicial choices absorbed their area concerning conflicts relating to information society services and practices, personalizeds as well as usages relating to digital business.

[caveartfair]

Sculptor Augusta Savage’s Towering Impact on the Harlem Renaissance

Augusta Savage, Portrait Head of John Henry, c. 1940. Photograph © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

Augusta Savage with her sculpture Realization, 1938. Photo by Andrew Herman. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

When I was in elementary school in the early 1990s, I would occasionally beg my mother for money to buy a book from the Scholastic Books circular. One year, I asked for a title called Great Women In the Struggle, the second volume in the “Book of Black Heroes” series. Its purple cover featured black-and-white pictures of iconic black women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, Judith Jamison, and many others from all sorts of disciplines and walks of life. Only a short passage was devoted to each figure, and while that wasn’t enough to dig into the meat of their lives, it was a start—a spark of inspiration—especially given the dearth of black children’s books at the time. (According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin��Madison, books created by black authors and illustrators comprised between 1 and 4 percent of all children’s books published between 1990 and 1995.)

Among the women included in that book was the sculptor, educator, and community organizer Augusta Savage. Although the text on the page was brief, the picture of the beautiful black woman standing next to her larger-than-life sculpture made an impression on my eight-year-old self.

Augusta Savage, Gamin, c. 1930. Courtesy of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida.

Today, as a curator, I seek to increase equity and visibility for marginalized cultural producers. But back then, I had no inkling of the advocacy and curatorial work that lay ahead of me as an adult or the full breadth of Savage’s contributions to the black art and artists in the 20th century. Her impact on the social and cultural milieu of the arts communities of her era and her pursuit of equity along gender and racial lines have had long-lasting implications on American art history.

Throughout her life, Savage championed black artists, making space for their work in America and on the world stage, and fighting for it to be valued just as much as that of white peers. Recently, I have relished seeing her name and work celebrated. The most significant project championing the artist’s legacy is the traveling exhibition “Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman,” curated by art historian Jeffreen Hayes at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, Florida, through April 7th. (A version of the show will open at the New-York Historical Society on May 3rd, and will subsequently appear at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University in Philadelphia and the Dixon Gallery & Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee.)

“Renaissance Woman” is the first exhibition focused on the full weight of Savage’s venerable career. Born in 1892 in Green Cove Springs, Florida, as a child, the artist fashioned figures from the region’s distinctive red clay dirt. Savage’s family did not support her artmaking, but she persisted. After graduating from the State Normal College for Colored Students (now Florida A&M University) in Tallahassee, in 1921, she made her way to New York City. Savage had come to New York to study at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, but there is no doubt that the city’s emergence as a bustling hub of black culture had its draw.

Augusta Savage, Portrait of a Baby, 1942. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

Augusta Savage, Laborer, 1934. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

While it would later be codified as the Harlem Renaissance, at the time, the black luminaries living and working uptown called themselves the New Negro Movement, a term coined by philosopher and educator Dr. Alain Leroy Locke. Underscoring the vital cultural movement was the desire to represent African-American life through the fine arts, literature, music, and whatever other creative means were available. Against this backdrop, Savage excelled in her coursework at the Cooper Union, completing the four-year art program in just three.

Savage was awarded a prestigious scholarship to the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1923. This accomplishment should have meant a summer studying sculpture in France—however, upon discovering that she was the sole black woman of the 100 selected students, the all-white, all-male American selection committee rescinded her offer. The incident became a major scandal, reported in New York Amsterdam News, the New York Times, the Negro World, and many other notable newspapers.

Savage did not allow the racist slight to go unanswered; she responded with a searing open letter published in the New York World:

“I hear so many complaints to the effect that Negroes do not take advantage of the educational opportunities offered them. Well, one of the reasons why more of my race do not go in for higher education is that as soon as one of us gets his head above the crowd there are millions of feet ready to crush it back again to that dead level of commonplace thus creating a racial deadline of culture in our Republic. For how am I to compete with other American artists if I am not to be given the same opportunity?”

Augusta Savage with Ernestine Rose, Roberta Bosley Hubert, and her sculpture James Weldon Johnson, 1939. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

The Fontainebleau incident showed that Savage was formidable and eloquent. For a woman of color to stand up and speak at that time was more than unusual, it was revolutionary. This was a formative moment for Savage, one that moved her toward arts-based activism for the black community.

Thrust into a new kind of renown, the artist was commissioned to create busts for the likes of sociologist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, Jamaican-born Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey, and NAACP leader and orator William Pickens Sr., among others. Although her artistic status was on the rise, to make ends meet, Savage labored as a domestic worker and a steam laundress while continuing to cultivate her studio practice.

In 1929, Savage was awarded a Rosenwald fellowship to study in Paris for her sculpture Gamin, well-known today for its expressiveness. In Paris, she studied at the feet of masters, exhibited at the Grand Palais and other prestigious venues, and worked with the countless talented people from across the black world who had also made their way to the City of Lights, then the center of the art world. During her time abroad, Savage received another Rosenwald fellowship, as well as funds from the Carnegie Foundation and community members in New York and elsewhere. With this support, Savage was able to travel to Belgium, France, and Germany, where she studied sculpture in the region’s cathedrals and museums.

Augusta Savage, Gwendolyn Savage, 1934–35. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

Savage returned to New York in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. Determined to share what she had learned in Europe, the artist opened the Savage Studio of Arts and Craft, where she offered free or pay-as-you-go drafting, painting, printmaking, and sculpture courses to Harlemites. In 1937, in partnership with the federally funded Works Projects Administration, Savage formed and directed the Harlem Community Art Center, using the Savage Studio as a model for its programming. Under Savage’s leadership, some 1,500 members of the community were able to receive free art instruction in the institution’s first 16 months alone. Among Savage’s students and colleagues are figures now canonized in the annals of African-American art history: William Artis, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Gwendolyn Knight, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and many others.

William Artis, A Mother’s Love, 1963. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

Romare Bearden, Reclining Nude, 1979. Art © Romare Bearden Foundation/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Jacob Lawrence, The Card Game, 1953. © 2017 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

In 1939, the World’s Fair commissioned Savage to create what is now one of her most famous works. The Harp, also known as Lift Every Voice And Sing, was inspired by the Negro National Anthem written by brothers James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson. Though now lost, The Harp featured black singers rendered as the strings of the instrument, the sound board and the arm of the harp formed by the hand of God.

Due to financial constraints, Savage primarily worked in plaster; she simply could not afford to cast her works in bronze, as was the standard for serious sculptors of the day. Accordingly, the majority of her works, including The Harp, have been lost to history. This presented a considerable challenge to the curators of “Renaissance Woman.”

Augusta Savage viewing two of her sculptures, Susie Q and Truckin, 1939. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.

Augusta Savage, The Diving Boy, c. 1939. Courtesy of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida.

As Hayes explained, to supplement the exhibition, she “filled it out with works by some of [Savage’s] well-known students.” Yet another challenge was to keep Savage central to the presentation. “It would be very easy to fill the gallery with Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden,” she said. So in addition to Savage’s work and that of her students and peers, Hayes included archival materials, such as Savage’s letters around the Fountainbleu incident.

Contextualizing Savage’s sculpture practice within her community-organizing and education work creates a fuller picture of her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance and black arts communities as a whole. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, which features essays by scholars including Kirsten Pai Buick and Bridget R. Cooks, illuminates Savage’s life and work in a contemporary moment when black women—and non-white artists generally—continue to struggle against discriminatory practices in the art world and beyond. (A study released this past March shows that even today, 85 percent of artists in American museum collections are white, and 87 percent are men.) The work of balancing the histories of gender and race-based discrimination is yet to be behind us. We can look back on Augusta Savage’s work as an example of how we might forge a path toward true equality.

from Artsy News

[ftkrotec]

Millennial Entitlement

Preface:  I apologize that it has been so long since my last post.  However, I want to make sure that my posts are well thought out and are important, at least to me.  I could easily pump out one post per month or probably even post biweekly.  However, I know that those posts will either consist of irrelevant nonsense or be rushed and underdeveloped, which would just add to the ignorant noise with which we are already overly saturated and contributing to the ignorance problem I highlighted in my first post.  Assuming somebody actually reads these posts.  For those who actually do (if you exist), thank you for your patience.

Given the buzz around the term "Millennial" and noise circulating about their hypersensitivity and entitlement, I wanted to provide some thoughts that would hopefully cut through the noise and help illuminate the realities of Millennials.  Before I start, I will provide a disclaimer.  Being born in the late 1980s, I am a Millennial.  I do not take any particular pride or shame in claiming that title.  It is a title that has been ascribed to my generation, and I accept that.  Although being a member of this group certainly presents the potential for bias, it also provides me with a particular insight to provide my thoughts below.

As a scientist, I know that defining terms and base assumptions is vital to understanding analysis.  So, I am starting with some definitions.  Before talking of Millennials, one must, first, know what a Millennial is.  When it comes to labeling generations, there is always a bit of fluidity when it comes to declaring specific start and end dates.  However, the most common model of generational cohorts divides all currently living peoples into six generations, stemming back to the turn of the 20th century.  These generations are typically characterized by the combined experiences common to the formative years of that generation.  The oldest generation, often called the Greatest Generation, is those who came to age during the Great Depression.  Then, there is the silent generation, who spent their formative years in the context of WWII.  Growing up in the aftermath of WWII, we, then have the Baby Boomers, aptly named to the spike in birth rates following the War.  The next three generations were assigned letter designations.  Generation X's childhood was defined by the end of the traditional family dynamic, as divorce rates increased and the number of women in the workplace also increased.  Next, there is Generation Y.  Generation Y, aptly named the Millennial generation, had their childhood defined by the start of the new millennium, and the technological revolution that coincided with it.  Finally, Generation Z are those born in the new millennium having their childhood defined by a post-9-11 America and the vast interconnectivity afforded to us by the prevalence if the internet and social media. With these definitions in mind, let me clarify something.  This means that in 2019, contrary to some indications, Millennials are schoolchildren or teenagers.  Rather, Millennials are, for the most part, adults in their 20's and early 30's.

Now that I have defined what a Millennial is, I can now focus on the "buzz."  Over the past few years, the term "Millennial" has become synonymous with entitlement and hypersensitivity.  Terms like “snowflake” and “the Me Me Me Generation,” complaints about their lack of work ethic, and other similar disparagements of Millennials are now commonplace among the conversations.  So much so, that many people, my generation included, assume it to be true.  

As a Millennial, one would assume that I would come to my generation’s defense and explicate on all the reasons those labels are untrue and unfounded.  (Millennials are more inclusive, diverse, and educated).  Perhaps, I would shift the blame on the issues being attributed to my generation to the problems created by previous generations.  (Millennials reached adulthood in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession).  Maybe, I would even explain that every generation had opinions and disparaging remarks about their successors.  (Gen X’ers were lazy, directionless slackers; Baby Boomers were pampered, godless, drugged-out, long-haired hippies; the Silent Generation was rude and undisciplined; and the Greatest Generation was selfish and indulgent).

However, I have decided to not take that approach.  Instead, much like my acceptance of the label of Millennial, I will admit that we, Millennials, are entitled and hypersensitive.  Further, I assert below why my generation’s entitlement and hypersensitivity is both an appropriate and necessary response to our circumstances.  My claim of appropriateness and necessity stems from three bases.

My first basis is based on Human nature.  An often referenced theory in human developmental psychology is the hierarchy of needs.  Without going into a lengthy lecture, this theory can be summarized such that human needs can be divided into 5 categories and are interconnected, in that motivation to pursue the “higher needs” is dependent on the satisfaction of “lower needs.”  Admittedly, there are many criticisms of this theory, including and not limited to the lack of empirical evidence and the variance of how needs are categorized.  This theory and model are still often used and relied upon in various areas of study and training.   Following that lead, I assert that this model can be applied to human society and its development over time.  Specific to the topic at hand, I see many of the generational differences in recent American history relate to the generations’ differing needs.

Unlike the previous generations, Millennials, for the most part, are not plagued with the “lower” need deficiencies, with which the previous generations struggled.  That is, the Greatest Generation was not guaranteed base needs like food and shelter, due to the Great Depression.  World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War, called into question the physical safety and security for the Silent Generation and the Boomers.  With much of the threat of war behind them, the Gen X’ers were able to focus on the social needs, like connectedness and acceptance.  With these lower needs satisfied, Millennials, following the hierarchy theory, should be motivated by the self-esteem needs, the psychological needs for respect, recognition, and the like.  So, this entitlement and emotional neediness are simply the manifestation human needs for recognition and respect.  So, if the hierarchy of needs is to be believed, then Millennials are simply following the natural progression of the satisfaction of needs.

The second basis refers to the fact that our entitlement and hypersensitivity were instilled in us as children.  Please do not construe this as me blaming our parent’s generations for our problems.  In fact, previous generations raising us Millennials with these expectations are precisely what they, as ancestors, are supposed to do.  It is said that each generation works to make the world better for those who come after.  That is precisely what they did.  They grew up in a world with less safety, security, opportunity, etc.  So, they instilled in us a desire for better things.  How did they instill this?  They did so in many ways.  My generation was promised, for lack of a better term, that financial success and security would come to us by simply obtaining higher education.  My generation was counseled to consider personal feelings when interacting with others.  My generation was asked to focus on what makes us similar, instead of what makes us different.  My generation was told to true to ourselves.  My generation was if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth.  Being raised on these tenets, is it really surprising that, now as adults, we expect and are demanding things like a living wage, acceptance of the world's diverse cultures, respect for one's own life decisions and personal identities, and continuing to make the world better?  What many see as hypersensitivity is merely hyperawareness of these cultural and personal issues.  What is seen as entitlement is merely expecting the opportunities and togetherness for which previous generations fought and died.   What some suggest as taking our freedoms for granted is actually the realization that, though things are better than they have been, there is still more to achieve.

Despite all the differences stated above, Millennials are not that different than the generation that came before.  This brings me to my third and final basis.  Since the turn of the 20th century, America has made many strides when it comes to social justice.  In fact the past century and or so, we have seen women and racial minorities given the right to vote.  We have seen affirmative action and desegregation assist in lessening the racial and gender disparities in opportunity.  We have even seen the right to marry extend beyond racial and sexuality constraints.  Whether championed by the Greatest Generation or most recently by Generation X, the past century or so has seen virtually every generation push social norms and expectations to create meaningful and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving change to the sociopolitical landscape of America.  Now, Millennials have taken up the fight, furthered by the generations before them, to demand the correction of certain social injustices and societal norms.  What is being seen as hypersensitivity and entitlement is just the Millennials highlighted and demanding the changes that see are necessary for a better future.  The same desire the led the Greatest Generation to strike and demand safe and fair working conditions.  The same desire that led Baby Boomers to walk on Washington and demand the freedoms and rights of all people regardless of race or gender.  Decades from now, I am certain that some of these causes being championed by Millennials now, will be looked at as the triumphs of social justice just as those successful causes championed by previous generations have been, therefore, justifying much if not all of this entitlement and hypersensitivity for which Millennials have been criticized.

So, Millennials are entitled and hypersensitive.  As you can see, this entitlement and hypersensitivity are both natural and inevitable.  Further, if the entitlement and hypersensitivity leads us to a better world in the future, then is that really a bad thing?  I do not think so. At least, that is the way I see it.

[creativesage]

By Tom Steinberg, Guest Contributor

The "I’ve got a new job!" social media post is one of modern life’s new normals, the sort of thing that washes over all of us every day, now, without much comment. But last month, one such post appeared on Facebook that’s very interesting, indeed. It’s from an experienced software engineer named Brian Acton, and it went like this:

What Acton doesn’t mention in his modest post is that he was a co-founder of WhatsApp, not just a regular staffer. And as such, he’s worth an estimated $6.6 billion, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s historic purchase of WhatsApp in 2014. He’s already donated shares valued at hundreds of millions of dollars to community issues, and this Facebook post marks a more direct step out of the business world and into the nonprofit universe.

If Acton was nothing more than a highly successful businessperson moving on with his life, I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention. But I am myself someone who spent a big chunk of his career founding, growing and then eventually leaving a user-focused, tech-for-good nonprofit. Significant new players in this field are rare and interesting, and there are all sorts of reasons why Acton might be the most interesting new arrival ever. To explain why, I need to step back a couple of paces, and explain the fundamental challenge with the entire tech-for-good sector.

Explosive Complexity

Every successful nonprofit organization or campaign group has to assemble a range of moving parts to have a chance of succeeding. Even the simplest of soup kitchens needs to bring together property, volunteers, food, equipment, energy and more before they can hand out a single plate of food. If even one of those is missing, or badly delivered, the whole thing can fall to bits.

This is where digital technologies bring extra excitement and risk. Modern tech is a bit like a volatile rocket fuel when it comes to new organizations and projects: It can massively increase your impact (think Wikipedia), but not infrequently, it can blow up in your face and leave you with a load of smoking wreckage for your considerable investment. Funding and running nonprofits that are highly digital is like taking a double-or-quits bet about impact—but times a hundred.

To avoid this fate, successful digitally enabled nonprofits (such as Crisis Textline or Frontline) need to get a whole bunch of really difficult things just right, including: product design and product conceptualization skills; user-centered design skills; market analysis skills; engineering and design skills; a realistic theory of change; and money and other scarce resources, like passionate volunteers.

Getting all these lined up is really hard. So hard, in fact, that total project failure is not at all uncommon in the tech-for-good world, and why the whole sector is littered with projects that almost got going but didn’t ever really launch. You might think this is true of all startup fields, but the cycle in tech-for-good is especially vicious, and the money and the tech-savvy talent don’t naturally come from the same places.

A Unique Starting Point

Brian Acton starts in a remarkable and almost unprecedented position for someone starting a tech-driven nonprofit because he can almost certainly tick off all the items on the list above before he even starts. This is what made me sit up and pay attention to his Facebook post.

So obviously, he can tick the "money" item off that list pretty easily. But it’s the other items that are actually more rare amongst traditional donors. For example, you only have to open WhatsApp to understand how much Acton and his circle clearly know about product design, engineering, and responding diligently to user feedback and complaints. But if he only understood the iPhone-buying demographic, that wouldn’t make for a very promising nonprofit—the skills would likely be irrelevant.

However, WhatsApp is a famous exception to the "isn’t everyone middle class?" assumption baked into so many Silicon Valley products. Its co-founders were famously interested in the lives and constraints of people whose most valuable possession was a $10 Nokia phone, and for whom 1 cent per SMS was an unaffordable and frustrating expense. They actually beat competitors partly because they understood what it was like to live like this. This perspective will be an amazing asset if Acton plans to run a project that will be of value to people who don’t drive everywhere in the latest Tesla.

Now, that said, whilst I think Acton’s in a fantastic position, there are still some things I’d like to convey to him and the team that I imagine he’s building. Here’s what I’d write to him, if I still actually wrote letters:

Hi Brian, Hi Team!

You don’t know me, I’m just some British guy who reads the internet a lot, and who spent a good chunk of his adult life trying to build public-good digital applications before working in the funding world. Because of your skills and resources, I think you’ve got a fantastic chance of starting something really important, and there’s a whole load of stuff I could tell you that you already know. But I’ve wracked my brains, and here are some things that might be of use to you.

There’s a lot of knowledge from past failures lurking in the tech-for-good scene, so seek them out. A lot of people have already tried to build a lot of digital services to make the world a better place, with a predictably high failure rate. But this sector doesn’t have a TechCrunch that documents every last story, so you can’t just read about it all online in one place. Instead of Googling, you should try asking around among some of the sector’s more connected people, to see if you can fix conversations with people who might already have tried projects like the one you’re working on, to save you some pain that might be avoided.

Work hard to articulate and toughen up your new venture’s "theory of change." Even if they don’t use that strange jargon phrase, most nonprofits have one of these anyway. What it means is that deep within the heads of most non-profit founders is an idea of roughly this form: "If only we can do thing X, then good thing Y will happen (or bad thing Z will stop happening)." It’s really easy to get quite a long way down the road to setting up a nonprofit without ever really articulating or testing your theory of change because, well, nobody demands it of you. But if you don’t have a good one, it almost inevitably bites you badly on the backside later on, when the going gets trickier. So get yourself a few good, disinterested people to kick the tires of your idea a few times, and see if you can spell out your theory of change really clearly.

Don’t fudge the nonprofit/for-profit choice. It is very tempting to try to build an organization that’s a hybrid for-profit and nonprofit so that it has some sustainability, whilst still doing socially valuable nonprofit work. Having witnessed many attempts to do this, I am now of the view that organizations are much more focused and successful if they stick clearly in one camp or the other. If your idea is really more like a for-profit, make it as a for-profit—there are great social-impact businesses out there. If your idea is truly incapable of making a return, don’t mess it up by giving it a distracting secondary business mission. I’ve written on this before, elsewhere.

Be aware if you’re about to compete with someone you might not know already exists. Markets are fundamentally about the virtues of competition, and competition can be quite valuable in the nonprofit world, too. However, please be aware that if you launch a new competitor to an existing organization that the reaction won’t be the same as it would be in a traditional business—observers and future partners might be horrified rather than impressed; they might diss you instead of celebrating you. So take a bit of time to determine whether or not you’re actually competing with anyone else (even a tiny micro-project), and then if you do, be kind and respectful about it, even if you do end up replacing it.

Build systems for honest feedback. People in the nonprofit world are terribly nice. They’re not really like your historical tech customers who love to complain about every tiny feature choice and bug. If your nonprofit project sucks, people are still quite likely to tell you it’s lovely and you’re a good person for running it. So you need to establish special systems to truly listen for signals through the thick curtain of politeness. If everything you hear is that your nonprofit is awesome, you need to invest more time and money to hear the voices that are not content.

O.K., it’s late night here in Olde England, so take care and good luck!

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Tom Steinberg is Digital Transformation Lead at the Big Lottery Fund, the UK’s largest community funder. He was the founder of mySociety, a civic tech organisation. His other writings are available here.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Inside Philanthropy.]

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Please do not hesitate to email us if you would like to discuss your situation and find out more about how we can help your organization move forward to a more innovative and profitable future, strengthening your branding and resonance with customers while helping to do good in the world through appropriate, authentic CSR partnerships with nonprofits, philanthropists, educational institutions and programs, or government agencies and community organizations.

We can also help you connect with celebrities and other notable people who can help amplify your message of social good, or headline entertainment events and concerts for good causes. You can call us at 1-510-845-5510 in San Francisco / Silicon Valley. We look forward to talking with you!

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[sofipasternack]

Every year around NaNoWriMo time, there are inevitably a few blogs or articles written on why a writer should or should not participate in NaNoWriMo. I’ve done NaNo every year for the last 8, and I’m here to firmly throw my allegiance to the YES DO IT side.

I’ve been writing my tuchus off for the better part of 2017 for various contests, the most prominent being Brenda Drake’s PitchWars since July. That one isn’t over until the first part of November. It involves a ton of writing, rewriting, editing, murdering darlings, rewriting again, and general staring into the void and questioning everything I thought I knew about writing (it’s a hoot, you should do it).

Even so, I’m doing NaNo this year.

I found several blogs and articles titled things like “DON’T DO NANOWRIMO” or “NANO RUINED MY LIFE.” If you want to read some, all you have to do is Google “don’t do nanowrimo.”

Yeah, there are people pretty passionate in their hatred of NaNo, which is completely their right. And just as they have detailed why you shouldn’t do it, I’m going to detail why you should, by discussing their reasons why not.

Reason 1: The finished work is just a bunch of crap.

I have a secret for you. Come here. A little closer. A little… closer…

ALL FIRST DRAFTS ARE A BUNCH OF CRAP.

Even Hemingway knew it.

Every first draft ever written is a pale shadow of dogpoop compared to its revised, edited later manifestation. I write pretty clean first drafts, but they’re just cleaned-up crap. I don’t have typos or anything mechanical like that, but I do have plot holes, characters who need more definition, imagery that needs fleshing out, etc.

Everyone needs to revise. Everyone. If you think your first draft is perfect, oh honey. You’re going to want to sit down for this, because it’s probably going to hurt.

Your first draft…

Writers can be HUGE perfectionists, and we don’t give ourselves room to make mistakes in the first draft. It can be paralyzing. I was like that for years. I didn’t finish anything. I would rewrite the same chapter over and over without pressing on, because it wasn’t perfect. It was painful.

Then, NaNo. The first NaNovel I did was the first one I actually finished. Not during NaNo. Oh heavens no. I finished it months later after some hardcore rewrites and revisions. But the act of having those 30 days to just write with senseless abandon, and not worry about screwing up (after all, the point of NaNo is to just write garbage), cracked open the dam of perfectionism that had kept my creativity bottled up.

I wrote things I never would have thought of, just to keep the words coming. I didn’t write linearly: I took my characters to places they never would have gone, and met people they never would have met. A lot of what I wrote during NaNo never got used, but it didn’t matter. The things I learned about my characters and the world were the foundation for the later 80k+-word novel that developed out of it.

Reason 2: NaNoWriMo is only about quantity, not quality.

Like I mentioned above, the goal of NaNo is just to force you to write something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s not going to be perfect, and it’s not supposed to be.

I read a quote about writing on the Twitters recently, which I love, and I repeat it whenever I can.

Think of NaNo as a month to shovel all the sand you can into a sandbox. Then the 11 months after that are the months you’ll use all that sand to build some pretty bitchin’ castles.

Reason 3: 50,000 words isn’t long enough to be a novel.

True, for adult and YA novels. For Middle Grade, it’s not too bad!

50k is a good goal to hit during NaNo. But you’re not supposed to produce a perfect, publish-ready novel in 30 days. You’re supposed to write 1,667 words every day to develop a writing habit, and get ideas flowing, and get to know your story.

Another writing quote I totally love?

Bruh. On your best day, all of these guys were better writers than you on their worst. And they unanimously agree: you have to rewrite. You can’t just barf up a draft of something and call it good.

NaNo isn’t about revisions and rewriting; it’s about just plain old writing. First draft sand shoveling. Rewriting comes later, but the writing has to happen first. NaNo is the perfect opportunity to just write and get it all out.

Reason 4: NaNoWriMo corrupts the very essence of writing!

I dislike people who have this attitude. I dislike being told how to do my hobby. And yeah, writing is my hobby. I’m not a professional writer. I don’t have a slew of books available at bookstores and libraries. I’m a nurse in real life, and I spend my free time writing, reading, reading about writing, writing about reading, shipping my own characters who can’t be together for plot reasons, and studying for various nursing certification boards (because if you’re going to get paid for something, you should do it well, right?).

Everyone has a different writing journey. I saw one complaint about NaNo comparing writing a novel to building a house. The point was, how are you supposed to build a house with a bad foundation? Likewise, how are you supposed to write a novel if you haven’t done any plotting?

Well to that I say PHOOEY because not everyone plots. I do, with relish, because if I could marry a spreadsheet I totally would. But it’s not everyone’s jam to plot first. Some people are pantsers, especially during NaNo, and if that works for them, then LET THEM PANTS!

I say PHOOEY AGAIN because for some of us, NaNo IS the foundation. Or at least, NaNo is the concrete mix. We stack those bags up in piles, and then when the time comes to pour the foundation, we have plenty of material to build with.

And for others, NaNo is the hobby wood shop where you almost cut your finger off that one time but you made a birdhouse and no birds live in it but you know what you made something and you like it and that’s what matters.

And perhaps the only reason I can actually get behind: It can make an already anxious creative-type person even more anxious.

My dudes, if the thought of NaNo makes you anxious, don’t do it. It’s supposed to be fun, and if NaNo’s constraints make you feel ill at ease, then there’s no pressure to participate.

Or you can participate, but be a NaNo Rebel. This means you don’t write a novel. You could instead write a series of short stories, or character interviews, or observations about people you meet on the bus.

One year I set out to write a novel, and instead I wrote two short novellas featuring minor characters in my main novel. Because NaNo is for discovery and flow and creativity. NaNo is for making you happy by turning on that word faucet. NaNo is for creating whatever you want to create.

Well, you read all my awesome reasons and you don’t want to do NaNo.

That’s cool, girlfriend. I understand. Go forth and write in whatever way makes you happy. All I ask is that if someone says they are doing NaNo, you please don’t disparage them. Give them knuckles and keep doing your thing.

You have decided to give NaNo a shot.

AWESOME! High five! I love it!

I’m going to ask a similar thing here: if you meet someone who isn’t doing NaNo, give them space to be on their own writing journey. Say good luck and continue on.

I wrote up a short list of ways to succeed during and after NaNo:

Don’t stress. Win or lose, you come away with new words, and that’s what counts.

Revise that NaNo draft. Remember how all first drafts are hot garbage? That includes yours.

Participate in the NaNo forums. They’re fun and you could meet cool people!

Rewrite your revised NaNo draft. Twice. No, three times. As many times as it takes. Stick it in a drawer until February. Don’t even think about it. Write something else.

Join in the NaNo Twitter community.

Is it February? No? Get away from that revised NaNo draft. Don’t make me hit you with a broom.

Find a local or online writers group! Take something other than your NaNo draft. Learn how to graciously accept criticism, and what to do with that criticism once you get it.

Be my friend on the NaNo site! My username is sr-pasternack. Also, you can follow me on Twitter @igotsaturnip!

Okay, remove your NaNo draft from your drawer. Dust it off. (If there’s no dust, put it back. It hasn’t been there long enough.) Revise it again. YOU HEARD ME.

Don’t even think about querying an agent with your 2017 NaNo story until after NaNo 2018. Give it time. Give it appropriate revisionary effort. Give it to beta readers and CPs and sensitivity readers if you need to. Polish it up. Make it shine.

I’ve heard people compare NaNo to a marathon, but it isn’t. NaNo is a sprint. You can accomplish what some people do in a whole year in a single month, and that’s great. Writing can be a sprint, but rewriting is always a Forrest Gump-esque run back and forth across the same land, down the same roads, over and over, back and forth, until one day you come to a stop and say to yourself, “I’m done.”

Marathons are hard, but sprints can help you prepare. So do your NaNo sprint, shovel that sand, make friends who can sprint and shovel with you, and above all else HAVE FUN! I’ll see you over at nanowrimo.org.

An enthusiastic endorsement for NaNoWriMo. Every year around NaNoWriMo time, there are inevitably a few blogs or articles written on why a writer should or should not participate in NaNoWriMo.