WANA Join Me?

There are few people who are as good at developing community online for writers as Kristen Lamb, a gun-slinging, quad-riding, social media Texan Jedi.

Now she and her business partner Ingrid Schaffenburg (think Obi-Wan with ballet training) have taken a giant leap forward and are developing a virtual cafe for creative people, be they artists, writers, photographers, or choreographer-animators.

It’s called WANA Tribe. WANA stands for We Artists Need Alcohol We Are Not Alone. The Tribe is a ning, a social network of like-minded people. It’s growing and anyone can join. There are all kind of cool sub-tribes, from Non-Fiction Fans/Writers and Canucks Unite to SciFi/Fantasy/Steampunk and Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. The ones I’m part of serve virtual wine.

I predict WANA Tribe will be huge in a few months. I am part of an English Teacher Ning (along with 34,000 others), and it is the best professional development I’ve ever been a part of in my seventeen years of teaching. WANA Tribe will do the same for artists as that education ning has done for teachers: give people a network of diverse people who are willing to share what they do.

WANA Tribe is actually one part of WANA International. The latter offers online courses for creative types, and I am honoured to be one of the Artist-Instructors, even though I can’t draw to save my Pictionary butt.

I will be teaching a different one-hour class every month, starting in August with How To Write Funny (Er): Humor Techniques for Writers.

There is a huge array of courses being offered by more than forty artist-instructors. Kristen Lamb is even offering a free course on Tuesday, June 12.

If you’re interested, I’ll see you over at WANA Tribe. Or maybe I’ll see you in class. I’ll be the one in the back plotting spitball trajectory. Unless I’m teaching. Then I’ll be the one ducking.

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There’s a #WANAParty happening today (Friday) on Twitter, starting at 3 p.m. EST. Join the celebration of the launch. There are prizes to be won, such as a date with Colin Firth consultations with literary agents and free webinars.

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If you want to have fun in the comments, feel free to offer suggestions (silly is welcome) of what courses I should teach or what courses you should take. For example, I could offer “How To Be Moderately Productive When You Have 5000 Emails in your Inbox.” Five thousand is not an exaggeration. Sigh.