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The Hundred and Four Philosophy
Writing professionally is hard.
There are scores of programs at the collegiate and graduate level, as well as a number of private courses, which work on teaching people about writing. Discussing poetic forms, talking about manuscript lengths, outlining the histories of the fourth estate. Which is all well and good, and The Hundred and Four has no intention of disparaging any of those organizations.
However, what most of them do not do is help the aspiring writer understand the overwhelming grind of actually working words for money. The disparate assignments you can end up taking, the alternate disciplines you can digress into for the purposes of convenience, the endless cycle of submission and rejection that marks the beginning and much of the middle of any successful writing career. All while trying to maintain a pattern of improving the writing itself and dreaming up new ideas while revising old ones.
Is this a universal experience? Of course not -- short of the cold grasp of death, there are very few things that everyone shares. Some people have been blessed enough to stumble directly into fortune, fame and endless acclaim. However, the alternative is considerably more common, and to that end, The Hundred and Four works on helping writers with two central areas of their lives ...
THE CRAFT: Understood as the technical side of writing, from syntax to sentences to synopsis, in a multiplicity of disciplines. To whit, "how to write."
THE BUSINESS: The oft-neglected side of the writer's life, involving the sale, marketing, promotion and dissemination of the work. To whit, "what to do with the writing."
Seems simple enough, right? That's the theory, while admitting the practice is considerably more challenging. The Hundred and Four seeks to be a literary furnace through which finer writers will be forged.
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