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1st Annual SW Halloween Challenge
October 2023: The Subatomic Writing Halloween Challenge is a devilishly fun chance for you, the writer, to 1) seriously level up your writing acumen, 2) identify and develop your own writing voice—an increasingly important skill given the "blandly perfect grammar" of ChatGPT—and 3) "go subatomic" on a final draft by revising/tweaking all the little things of writing the week before Halloween.
THE CHALLENGE, in a nutshell: First, get to the final draft of a work in progress during the first part of October. You may already have a final draft somewhere! This is your chance to polish it and get it out the door, an issue I frequently saw with my Johns Hopkins students. Then, from Sunday to Sunday before Halloween (paralleling the week-long story in the book), you'll inhale the whole of Subatomic Writing: Six Fundamental Lessons to Make Language Matter and fine-tune the details of your draft, lesson by lesson, from the word level to the paragraph level. At the end of the challenge, you'll have a polished, professional work to submit to a publisher.
And it will stand out, gloriously, above the ChatGPT crowd.
Here are the specifics of the game to mark on your calendar:
October 1 to October 21
During the first three weeks of October, you valiantly wrestle your work in progress, if you don't already have one (a manuscript, essay, article, or series of poems) into a decent final draft. Prompt ChatGPT, if you like, to "List any mistakes and potential issues, including logical inconsistencies, that you find in this draft." ChatGPT, whom I've renamed "Melba" after my very patient grandma, acts as a fairly decent editor, particularly if you spring for the $20/month version.
Most people will stop there and submit their lukewarm work. The SW Halloween Challenge, however, will now make your draft pop, burn, sizzle, and sear. It is rigorous, it is work—but it yields a far superior product. It also gives you confidence as you submit your work to publication outlets, which itself can cause a chain reaction of success.
Second, secure your copy of Subatomic Writing well before October 22. Here is the Amazon link, and other options are on the home page of the Subatomic Writing website. Now you're ready.
Sunday, October 22: Read the first section, "Unhallowed Origins," (pp. 1–28) of Subatomic Writing. Establish when you'll have your SW time during this week. Reward yourself with Halloween treats, healthy or unhealthy, before or after (or both!) your dedicated SW time. If you're really enterprising and have the time, take the Particle Challenge (p. 28) this week too, creating a new work of just 700 words (100 words per day). Bonus: Light a candle when you start your SW time: blow it out when you're finished. Let the demons come: let the demons leave.
SOME REASSURANCE: You don't need to know or even like physics to successfully level up using this book. The reigning analogy, "Particles of language are like particles of matter," is just an analogy. Passive learning. A mnemonic aid. But, spoiler alert, by reading SW you also learn the basics of particle physics in a much more entertaining way than most people learn about the Standard Model. Consider this a chance to overcome high school trauma if the word "physics" gives you the heebie-jeebies. Quite a few of my JHU students were very worried about the "subatomic" aspect. They were also very pleasantly surprised, and I have five years of anonymous student evaluations to prove it. Give yourself and your beautiful brain a little more credit.
Monday, October 23: Read Lesson I, "Good Vibrations: Word Level" (pp. 29–59). Search your final draft for issues mentioned in this lesson. Replace, destroy, brighten, tighten. Level up your word game. Bonus: Complete at least one exercise at the end of the lesson. Double-bonus: Post your exercise on social media with the hashtag #SubatomicWriting. Only if you feel like it. But I will probably see it and love it if you do!
Tuesday, October 24: Read Lesson II, "Nested Classes: Phrase Level" (pp. 60–102). Level up, get the Bonus and Double-Bonus if you can, today and the other Lesson days. Most problems in punctuation and grammar happen because writers have not mastered phrases.
Wednesday, October 25: Read Lesson III, "Visual Syntax: Clause Level" (pp. 103–142). Learn an old skill in a new way! Once you can "see" valency patterns in writing, you'll see them everywhere, like Sixth Sense dead people. Award-winning science writer Dava Sobel once told me she took a college course where they diagrammed every sentence in The Hobbit during the semester. Chatbot models often rely too heavily on one particular valency pattern (Subject-Verb-Object) at the expense of the others. You'll learn all eight!
Thursday, October 26: Read Lesson IV, "Mind's Breath: Sentence Level" (pp. 143–165). Don't asphyxiate your reader's brain with too few punctuation marks. But don't make them hyperventilate with too many. ChatGPT doesn't get creative with its punctuation, and sometimes it gives to British-English punctuation when you need American-English punctuation. Sometimes it uses a semicolon when a colon would be better. And on and on.
Friday, October 27: Read Lesson V, "Repetition, Variation: Super-Sentence Level" (pp. 166–185). Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme (Cool Runnings is still cool, according to ratings, and it's now on Disney+). How your writing sounds is way more important for your reader than you might realize. Unlock this level and its bonuses!
Saturday, October 28: Read Lesson VI, "Dot-to-Dot Game: Paragraph Level" (pp. 186–203). Like Lesson II on phrases, the ability to paragraph well is wildly underappreciated in writing classes and rarely gets enough attention . . . which is why ChatGPT doesn't do it well either. A machine, after all, is only as good as its model.
Sunday, October 29: Read "The Theory of Everything," "Epilogue," and any other back matter that interests you, including "Ideas for Using Subatomic Writing in the Classroom" for teachers and a couple of hidden gems in the index (pp. 204–241). Will Jamie get her cat back? Will your manuscript ever be good enough? Put it all together and find out, as you finish the book, just how real the narrator's demons actually are.
Many writers don't ever submit their work to agents/editors/publishers because of a chronic lack of confidence, so the final wrestle of the SW Halloween Challenge is this: acknowledge that after you go subatomic, let a friend read it, and even perhaps meet with me if you'd like more help, you've done all you can do. In the end, you have to let your writing loose upon the world, even if it's not perfect. Or keep it in your underground vault and burn it, that's cool too, if you're the secretive type.
Finally, give your now-polished piece one last glance for any lingering issues. It's done! Send it out! You've WON!
TRIPLE MEGA BONUS: Submit your manuscript on Halloween!
WARNING: At no point in this challenge should you feel the need to understand/apply everything perfectly. SW is meant to be a firehose of information, in part to inure you to it—to show you that once you can face your fear of jargon (jargon of grammar, jargon of science, whatever gatekeeper language is holding you back), you can play the game just as well as your writing heroes can—perhaps better. But you have to get past the fear. That is ultimately what this Halloween challenge is about. So while it may take a while to master the jargon in Subatomic Writing, you can still actively apply these grad-level tips to your writing. You can always return to the sections you want to conquer later. This is an annual challenge for a reason.
If you're a humanities OR a science teacher, know that your students often feel great fear about their writing, and this is often why they "cheat." You can use Subatomic Writing to help them face the temptation to outsource all cognitive thought to AI. Check out this "AI Renaissance" article I wrote about how to use (and rejoice in, and hugely benefit by) new technology in schools without giving up our souls.
So grab the book, grab your friends, seize the season! If you've been sitting on a writing project, this is a great chance to finalize and send it out—just in time for National Novel Writing Month in November!
Happy Halloween!
Jamie & Dyna
💥😈🙀🎃
Click the cat in the hat to level with your writing demons.
THE CHALLENGE, in a nutshell: First, get to the final draft of a work in progress during the first part of October. You may already have a final draft somewhere! This is your chance to polish it and get it out the door, an issue I frequently saw with my Johns Hopkins students. Then, from Sunday to Sunday before Halloween (paralleling the week-long story in the book), you'll inhale the whole of Subatomic Writing: Six Fundamental Lessons to Make Language Matter and fine-tune the details of your draft, lesson by lesson, from the word level to the paragraph level. At the end of the challenge, you'll have a polished, professional work to submit to a publisher.
And it will stand out, gloriously, above the ChatGPT crowd.
Here are the specifics of the game to mark on your calendar:
October 1 to October 21
During the first three weeks of October, you valiantly wrestle your work in progress, if you don't already have one (a manuscript, essay, article, or series of poems) into a decent final draft. Prompt ChatGPT, if you like, to "List any mistakes and potential issues, including logical inconsistencies, that you find in this draft." ChatGPT, whom I've renamed "Melba" after my very patient grandma, acts as a fairly decent editor, particularly if you spring for the $20/month version.
Most people will stop there and submit their lukewarm work. The SW Halloween Challenge, however, will now make your draft pop, burn, sizzle, and sear. It is rigorous, it is work—but it yields a far superior product. It also gives you confidence as you submit your work to publication outlets, which itself can cause a chain reaction of success.
Second, secure your copy of Subatomic Writing well before October 22. Here is the Amazon link, and other options are on the home page of the Subatomic Writing website. Now you're ready.
Sunday, October 22: Read the first section, "Unhallowed Origins," (pp. 1–28) of Subatomic Writing. Establish when you'll have your SW time during this week. Reward yourself with Halloween treats, healthy or unhealthy, before or after (or both!) your dedicated SW time. If you're really enterprising and have the time, take the Particle Challenge (p. 28) this week too, creating a new work of just 700 words (100 words per day). Bonus: Light a candle when you start your SW time: blow it out when you're finished. Let the demons come: let the demons leave.
SOME REASSURANCE: You don't need to know or even like physics to successfully level up using this book. The reigning analogy, "Particles of language are like particles of matter," is just an analogy. Passive learning. A mnemonic aid. But, spoiler alert, by reading SW you also learn the basics of particle physics in a much more entertaining way than most people learn about the Standard Model. Consider this a chance to overcome high school trauma if the word "physics" gives you the heebie-jeebies. Quite a few of my JHU students were very worried about the "subatomic" aspect. They were also very pleasantly surprised, and I have five years of anonymous student evaluations to prove it. Give yourself and your beautiful brain a little more credit.
Monday, October 23: Read Lesson I, "Good Vibrations: Word Level" (pp. 29–59). Search your final draft for issues mentioned in this lesson. Replace, destroy, brighten, tighten. Level up your word game. Bonus: Complete at least one exercise at the end of the lesson. Double-bonus: Post your exercise on social media with the hashtag #SubatomicWriting. Only if you feel like it. But I will probably see it and love it if you do!
Tuesday, October 24: Read Lesson II, "Nested Classes: Phrase Level" (pp. 60–102). Level up, get the Bonus and Double-Bonus if you can, today and the other Lesson days. Most problems in punctuation and grammar happen because writers have not mastered phrases.
Wednesday, October 25: Read Lesson III, "Visual Syntax: Clause Level" (pp. 103–142). Learn an old skill in a new way! Once you can "see" valency patterns in writing, you'll see them everywhere, like Sixth Sense dead people. Award-winning science writer Dava Sobel once told me she took a college course where they diagrammed every sentence in The Hobbit during the semester. Chatbot models often rely too heavily on one particular valency pattern (Subject-Verb-Object) at the expense of the others. You'll learn all eight!
Thursday, October 26: Read Lesson IV, "Mind's Breath: Sentence Level" (pp. 143–165). Don't asphyxiate your reader's brain with too few punctuation marks. But don't make them hyperventilate with too many. ChatGPT doesn't get creative with its punctuation, and sometimes it gives to British-English punctuation when you need American-English punctuation. Sometimes it uses a semicolon when a colon would be better. And on and on.
Friday, October 27: Read Lesson V, "Repetition, Variation: Super-Sentence Level" (pp. 166–185). Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme (Cool Runnings is still cool, according to ratings, and it's now on Disney+). How your writing sounds is way more important for your reader than you might realize. Unlock this level and its bonuses!
Saturday, October 28: Read Lesson VI, "Dot-to-Dot Game: Paragraph Level" (pp. 186–203). Like Lesson II on phrases, the ability to paragraph well is wildly underappreciated in writing classes and rarely gets enough attention . . . which is why ChatGPT doesn't do it well either. A machine, after all, is only as good as its model.
Sunday, October 29: Read "The Theory of Everything," "Epilogue," and any other back matter that interests you, including "Ideas for Using Subatomic Writing in the Classroom" for teachers and a couple of hidden gems in the index (pp. 204–241). Will Jamie get her cat back? Will your manuscript ever be good enough? Put it all together and find out, as you finish the book, just how real the narrator's demons actually are.
Many writers don't ever submit their work to agents/editors/publishers because of a chronic lack of confidence, so the final wrestle of the SW Halloween Challenge is this: acknowledge that after you go subatomic, let a friend read it, and even perhaps meet with me if you'd like more help, you've done all you can do. In the end, you have to let your writing loose upon the world, even if it's not perfect. Or keep it in your underground vault and burn it, that's cool too, if you're the secretive type.
Finally, give your now-polished piece one last glance for any lingering issues. It's done! Send it out! You've WON!
TRIPLE MEGA BONUS: Submit your manuscript on Halloween!
WARNING: At no point in this challenge should you feel the need to understand/apply everything perfectly. SW is meant to be a firehose of information, in part to inure you to it—to show you that once you can face your fear of jargon (jargon of grammar, jargon of science, whatever gatekeeper language is holding you back), you can play the game just as well as your writing heroes can—perhaps better. But you have to get past the fear. That is ultimately what this Halloween challenge is about. So while it may take a while to master the jargon in Subatomic Writing, you can still actively apply these grad-level tips to your writing. You can always return to the sections you want to conquer later. This is an annual challenge for a reason.
If you're a humanities OR a science teacher, know that your students often feel great fear about their writing, and this is often why they "cheat." You can use Subatomic Writing to help them face the temptation to outsource all cognitive thought to AI. Check out this "AI Renaissance" article I wrote about how to use (and rejoice in, and hugely benefit by) new technology in schools without giving up our souls.
So grab the book, grab your friends, seize the season! If you've been sitting on a writing project, this is a great chance to finalize and send it out—just in time for National Novel Writing Month in November!
Happy Halloween!
Jamie & Dyna
💥😈🙀🎃
Click the cat in the hat to level with your writing demons.
