Post novel workshop

[catherineldf]

Just got back from a fun day at the Donald Maas Writing the Breakout Novel workshop. This was so very worthwhile! He did a nice job of presenting his material and moving it along so I'd say it would be worth it to attend just to see how to run a writing workshop. But what I found really useful was that he asked us to work with a series of questions, beginning with protagonist development and ending up with plot and setting that really helped me get a much, much clearer idea of where to take several of my novels in progress. I have a tendency to write very complicated beginnings to novels, then get stuck on where I want them to go next, sometimes 50,000 words in. I'm now feeling officially 'unstuck.' :-)
The question outline got me thinking and the exercises got me developing some things I hadn't thought through as thoroughly as I should have so...the upshot is that I came home with a workable outline for the menopausal werewolves novel! And some ideas on fixing 2 of the others. V. pleased.
As an added bonus, I got to meet and hang out with the amiable queenofillusion. :-)
Best workshop bucks I've spent all year.

In other news, I got the new improved Night's Kiss: Lesbian Erotica turned into Lethe. It will be in print this time and will include some different stories than the original version of the book. I may have some additional cool news about it later on the week.:-)

Comments

[jean-roberta.livejournal.com]

Glad to see some good news from you! Keep us posted on the day-job front, too.

[catherineldf.livejournal.com]

Will do. Hope you're having a great weekend! :-)

[gavinatlas.livejournal.com]

My friend Kimberly (KC that I'm always talking about) is close friends with Lorin, Brenda and Roman that work at the Breakout Novel workshop. I used Lorin's editorial service for a story of mine, and while I can't afford it to use on my writing in general, I did think it helped a fair amount for that one story.

[catherineldf.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that I'd find his all week workshops to be overkill but then the last multi week epic workshop I went to was with Samuel Delany. :-)
Useful in general, I suspect.

[queenofillusion.livejournal.com]

It was very nice meeting you, too. :)

My mind was officially blown by the middle of the afternoon with an info overload. However, since then it has been distilling nicely and has given me many ideas over how to make my writing better. I've yet to figure out how to apply any of it to the nonfic, though...but no matter.

Still think the menopausal werewolf idea is perfection!!!

See yah soon,

Veronica