mmerriam: (Type)
[personal profile] mmerriam
So I had this car.

No wait, that's Larry Dixon's opening line.

So I belong to this workshop.

The Online Writer's Workshop is a damned fine organization. I've always felt it well worth the money. What the workshop has done for me is exactly what [livejournal.com profile] matociquala has told people it will do for you. It turned me into a solid, competent semi-pro in a short period of time. For that, I will be eternally grateful. But try as I might, hard as I work, I haven't been able to make the next level.

Now, I'm not saying that's the workshops fault. Skill level jumps are pretty much up to the writer and how hard he works. But I also feel that, at this point, I need something the workshop can't always give me. Consistency of critique. It is both the OWW's greatest strength and weakness that anyone can leave a crit and you can leave a crit for anyone. That means sometimes I'm left with crits from people who I have no idea who they are and (and this is the important part) if I can trust them. For a time I was in a circle of people exchanging crits, and I developed a great amount of trust in them, but that seems to have slowly fallen by the wayside, and that's as much my fault as anything.

Recently I've taken part in the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Network writing workshop, organized by the wonderful and highly capable [livejournal.com profile] wordswoman. I observed a round and I took part in a second round. It works fine, and there was some excellent advice given. The group is smaller than the OWW, of course, and full of working pro's and semi-pro's. We also have several graduates (or survivors) of the major workshops, such as Clarion and Odyssey.

But I still felt like something was missing. Again, this is likely more me than anything, and I plan to keep taking part in this group. I worry about that whole consistency thing, and if I will mesh with these folks over a long period of time.

The one nice thing about an online workshop is that you can't see your executor's face. That gives you time to lick your wounds and be objective about what they said.

However, the TCSFWN group seems like my best option for a face-to-face group, at the moment. I like the idea of getting critiques from other writers who have reached where I am trying to go. It could be that, since I've only been to two sessions, I haven't yet developed a feel for it. I know I felt like I gave some of the worst crits ever during the last meeting, and that was my fault. I was under-prepared because I did not decide if I was going until the last possible minute.

I suppose what I really want is a smallish group of the exact same people. I want to build relationships and trust with them as a writer and critiquer. I want a group of consistent individuals who I can meet with once or twice a month for tea and bloodshed.

Want, want , want.

1200+ new words on the novel.

The writing is on the wall, literally, as eight-year old Fay tells us her tale in interludes between the main chapters, scratching her story with a stolen pencil on the walls of her room.

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