workshops

Dear World,

I haven’t written a word of fiction since the beginning of September. Lots of thinking about fiction, planning of fiction, research and note-taking, but the butt has not been in the chair. In my ideal world, I would be writing every day. But I don’t live in my ideal world, unfortunately, and I must recognize that the demands of the various things I do will ebb and flow. This has been a very busy time for my main job – you know, the one that pays the mortgage – and I’ve been reorganizing some of the weaving stuff. That leaves precious little time, and more importantly braincycles, for fiction.

But at the same time, I have to recognize that I will never have any more time than I do now, and that if I’m not writing now, then I’ll never be writing. If I want to do it, I will find the time. Just not every day, or even every week. Sometimes day-job work will eat my brain, sometimes I’ll be able to take vacation time to devote to other things

It will all work out, as long as I’m mindful of how I spend my time, and work to maintain the balance between my various obligations. Mindfulness is very important to me right now. What am I doing at this moment? Is it what I should be doing? If so, then do that thing, without worrying about any of the other myriad things begging for my attention. If it isn’t, then stop doing it. I can only do one major thing at a time, and so it must be the right one.

I think I’m not going to do NaNoWriMo this year. If you’ve missed it, it’s the communal attempt to write an entire novel in the month of November. It’s fun, but I think for me it’s counterproductive. NaNoing puts the focus entirely on wordcount and pushing for more and more, where I need to work on improving the balancing act that allows me to meet all my goals and obligations. The NaNo-push forces me to ignore other obligations, so when December 1 rolls around, I quit writing to tend to them. Not good. I will write more fiction in November, but will not push for the 50k wordcount.

Viable Paradise was last week. I didn’t get to go this year, though I plan to apply again, but I thought it would be a good time to do something else writerly. Elizabeth Bear had mentioned the Online Writing Workshop, a SF/F/H critique group, and it sounded potentially very useful. A writing group of some sort would help me to not push fiction all the way to the bottom of the pile – external motivation can be very helpful – and help me refine some of the areas I’m having trouble with.

OWW has a free month trial period, and after that is a small annual fee. The setup is simple: after your first submission, you need to provide substantive critiques of others’ works to earn enough points to submit more of your own work. Like any such group, there’s a wide range of experience and aptitude, both for writing and for critiquing. I was thrilled to discover that my technical editing skills can work for fiction as well, with only a slight shift in perspective. At least, I think so – I haven’t discussed them with the recipients of those critiques. I’ve only submitted one piece for review so far, but have gotten some useful feedback. I don’t have a regular writing group, so this could be very helpful.

Anyone following me on Twitter will have noticed a lot of agony about Big Scary Deadline during the past couple of months. BSD, as it became less-than-fondly known, was an application to Viable Paradise, a SFF writing workshop with an exceptional list of instructors. The entry packet: three chapters and a novel synopsis, much like any other professional novel submission.

The whole process was very useful: I learned how to write a synopsis, and this was a strong incentive to pull the beginning of my somewhat-disorganized almost-done novel into a coherent, readable form. I also solved an annoying plot problem while writing the synopsis, though who knows if clever solution will survive the actual writing of that section.

The final edits were done on my mother’s cute little balcony, bees buzzing in the flowering tree overhead, and beer close to hand. She read the ms, marking bits as needed, then passed me the pages so I could scribble on them at greater length. Mom finished the last page and handed it over. She paused, looked at me.

“You can’t stop there!” Moms are notoriously biased, but what an excellent compliment.

I got the packet in only two weeks before the deadline. I’d been told that earlier applications have a higher probability of success, but having a good application was the main requirement, and my 8000 words weren’t ready before that.

I heard back today: waitlist, with the key addendum: “In fact, the instructors made it a point that you be strongly encouraged to apply to VP 14 next year.” I have no idea how long the waitlist is; I will just wait and see what happens.

I’m actually very happy about this outcome. I imagine there were hundreds of applicants for the 24 positions, so waitlist is doing very well, especially as late as I applied. And best of all, the instructors, who as you recall are all authors I admire greatly, read my packet and thought it didn’t suck.

I had the perfect title, but forgot it

Viable Paradise