{"id":712,"date":"2019-01-31T12:57:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T11:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=712"},"modified":"2019-01-31T12:57:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T11:57:36","slug":"alphaday-7-season-xv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/alphaday-7-season-xv\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphaday 7 &#8211; Season XV"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hi Alphas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome to Alphaday 7, Season XV. We\u2019re already\nhalfway through this season. This is not a culmination to be followed by a\ndownward slope, though, far from it. We\u2019ve reached the top, true, and we\u2019ll\nstay up here for a while yet, within our tried and tested Alpha framework, and\nlet our writing burst out from there into striking new dimensions. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This Alphaday agenda will nudge you in the right\ndirection. There\u2019s bound to be something that\u2019ll appeal to every one of you \u2013\nmainly because it\u2019s been put together by our combined efforts and with Alphas\nin mind. Thank you for your cooperation; without it we wouldn\u2019t be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s agenda is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This bulletin from me<\/li><li>The results of the Christmas Haiku challenge\n     from Jackie<\/li><li>The collated entries for the Frankenstein\n     epistolary challenge from Morgen<\/li><li>A call for entries for the 2<sup>nd<\/sup>\n     edition of this season\u2019s Open Page from Ros<\/li><li>A Writers\u2019 Reads prompt from Morgen<\/li><li>A call for Log contributions from Sally<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>That should keep you occupied for a while, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s no special Alpha news. I expect we\u2019re all\ntrying to settle into 2019 and keep up the good intentions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for general news I won\u2019t bother you with my\nopinion of the Brexit mess or whatever. Instead I\u2019d like to mention that I\u2019m\nnow enthusiastically embracing \u2018they\u2019 as a singular pronoun. Nothing new in\nthat, I know, but in this gender obsessed era it really is worth accepting and\napplying singular \u2018they\u2019 and abandon other awkward methods to come up with a\ngender neutral \/ bigender \/ agender (looks like a misspelling of what I did\nabove!) pronoun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Long ago there was an outcry when \u2018you\u2019 was used\nas both a singular and a plural pronoun. Nobody even notices that now. \u2018You\u2019 is\nalso the only pronoun to have split its reflexive pronoun seamlessly into singular\nand plural: \u2018yourself\u2019 and \u2018yourselves\u2019. There\u2019s no reason why we shouldn\u2019t do\nthat for \u2018they\u2019 as well. What\u2019s wrong with \u2018themself\u2019? \u201cSomeone has locked\nthemself in the bathroom.\u201d I want to see that accepted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 1<sup>st<\/sup> person pronoun \u2018we\u2019 can also be\nused as a singular pronoun. Sometimes that\u2019s called \u2018the editorial we\u2019. I plead\nguilty to using that when I mention Alpha business. It is of course also called\n\u2018the royal we\u2019 and we all know the one about Queen Victoria: \u201cWe are not\namused.\u201d You may not know that she actually said: \u201cWe\u2019re not enjoying ourself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, that\u2019s how we amuse ourself here while\nwriting bulletins. If someone finds that daft they\u2019re welcome to express\nthemself via email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS: The spell-checker automatically \u2018corrected\u2019\nmy \u2018themself\u2019 word every time. I\u2019ve now added it to my dictionary. What a bigoted\nlot they are!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 7, Season XV. We\u2019re already halfway through this season. This is not a culmination to be followed by a downward slope, though, far from it. We\u2019ve reached&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins","tag-alphaday-bulletins-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}