On Saturday, I went to a Writers Workshop hosted by my local guild, and it was fabulous. The main speaker was Denise Vitola: author, speaker, teacher, creator of worlds. The morning session was about writing flash fiction, which was great since I’ve been writing flash fiction but flying completely blind. Who knew there were rules and methods?! Did you know that the shortest flash fiction is just six words long? Seriously. What we focused on was something more around 250 words, and the structure, the twist ending, the methods for writing tight. I can’t wait to start on my next flash piece with so much new knowledge!
The second session was about world creation – way cool. I think a majority of the writers in attendance were more interested in poetry, but for the few like me who love fantasy and the like, it was extremely helpful. She started by asking us simple questions, from big to small: how big is the world, what is the source of light, what is the length of a day, etc., to questions about flora and fauna, the inhabitants, the terrain. Obviously this all works great for creating a sci-fi world, but you would ask the same set of questions (tons more questions than I’m including here), no matter what genre. I so enjoyed the older people at my table and the next who knitted their brows together and muttered, “I just don’t think that way.” Denise had us respond to her questions by calling out answers, and so we created a rather silly world during the workshop. Someone had said the inhabitants should be cannibals, and later I suggested that one way to show how trustworthy the hero was would be to give him an opportunity to eat someone’s children and refuse. A couple at my table (married 61 years, they said!) shook their heads and the wife asked me if I’d really said “eat the children.” You can see how having these conversations with multiple generations of writers, most of them well beyond retirement, was as entertaining as the material itself.
Now that I’m an expert (with one workshop behind me), I highly recommend attending workshops on writing.
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I wish I could say, “now back to the manuscript!”, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ll get to it at all this week: remember the whole thing about going to India in nine months? And having work to do between now and then? The first major hurdle is a fund raising dinner in April, for which I’ve been designing posters and tickets to be printed, making phone calls, reserving rooms. And I’m not even in charge! The most awesome part is that we have an Indian musician – this guy is REALLY good – coming to perform. But again, lots of work. Good, solid, high payoff work, so I’m not complaining. Just wishing for more hours in a day.