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

[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.