When I was sixteen, I attended my first writing workshop, bringing with me my first attempt at a short story. It was a first draft, all rough, no editing, no outline beforehand. It was everything you would expect from a sixteen-year-old’s first short story. In a word, it was crap. Read more…
In writing workshops, sometimes you find yourself with nothing to say about a particular story. It’s either so not your thing you don’t know how to improve it, or it’s just plain good already. The dangerous temptation is to come up with something to say, anyway, something minor or weird, Read more…
This is really aimed at Clarion attendees, but feel free to extrapolate out to any intense writing workshop you have to apply to get into and re-arrange your life to attend. You got in. Congratulations. Now you’re arranging your work time off, or you’re picking clothes to pack, and everything Read more…
Vera asked me to show how I change a story from one draft to another, so she could see clearly what happens. The concrete, bones-and-sinew workings! Bad news: I do not save drafts. I edit in the same file, deleting willy-nilly until the story sells. Good news: I belong to Read more…
My friend Patrick, who went to Clarion with me in 2013, is the president of the Alpha Young Writer’s Workshop, which is a ten-day intensive workshop for teens to learn the craft of speculative fiction. Every year I listen to him talk about the stress and joy of the workshop, Read more…