"I joke about sex because it's funny when you're frightened."

[greygirlbeast]

Yesterday, I did 1,024 words on "The Melusine (1898)" for Sirenia Digest #31, but did not find The End. Because this is one those pieces. I meant it to be a vignette I could write in two days. It has, become, instead, a full-fledged short story that has, so far, required twice that number of days. If I'm lucky, I'll finish it today. Truth be told,

Comments

[greygirlbeast]

Gotta' wonder, too, as the Writing Workshop Industry takes wing, how much spending money to achieve popularity is tied up in THAT particular game ...

Okay. Here is my very unconventional advice. Avoid ALL writing workshops, unless you just like doing that sort of thing for fun. There is really no connection between being a successful working author and attending workshops. And the workshops are really more about teaching writers how to please editors than about teaching writers how to be better writers, which, I think, is all but unteachable.

Can't afford admission? Solace in something Rod Serling once said: "Sooner or later, good writing gets noticed." (Perhaps, like Hemingway's words, a lie ... but a pretty one.)

Yep. That's a lie. One I would not perpetuate. Or I would ar least add the proviso that getting noticed does not equal any sort of actual success. Look at the brilliant but obscure Mitch Cullin, for example.

[greygirlbeast]

It's rare to have someone you admire confirm something you already believe. Thank you.

You are welcome.

Yours did. :-) (Gotcha'!)

Luck...

[greygirlbeast]

Tag, you're "it").

I do not deny the talent, only that it necessarily played any role in my being noticed.

For at least a year, back about '96, there was a persistant rumour that my "success" was due to a relationship with Clive Barker.

[greygirlbeast]

Spooky's *way* cuter. :)

Well, I am inclined to agree.

[loki1978de]

Okay. Here is my very unconventional advice. Avoid ALL writing workshops

wich happens to be almost to the word the advice that Stephen King says in (the unabridged audiobook version of) "On writing:..."

Compared to Atlanta you are now nearly his neighbour..roughly speaking....VERY
Can't help thinking that a cooperation for you would be worth reading.

Nah just you do your thing wich only you can do your way.

[greygirlbeast]

wich happens to be almost to the word the advice that Stephen King says in (the unabridged audiobook version of) "On writing:..."

I did know that, as I've not read On Writing...., as I can think of nothing duller than listening to another writer talk about writing. But I am glad to hear he said that.

[loki1978de]

There is a quite interesting autobiographical half and he does have a nice voice

[sclerotic_rings]

I'm actually very fond of writing workshops: it's the one way to guarantee that the wannabes are too busy attending workshops to do anything else.

[greygirlbeast]

I'm actually very fond of writing workshops: it's the one way to guarantee that the wannabes are too busy attending workshops to do anything else.

That's fucking brilliant.

[txtriffidranch]

I live only to serve.

[sclerotic_rings]

Those are the ones that at least come to the realization that they won't get published any other way. The real wannabes are the ones who constantly, incessantly, go on and on about markets and venues and who's getting what advance, but who amazingly can't get anything done. (I speak from experience, as my ex-wife fancied herself a writer but couldn't be bothered to get off the couch and do any. When we first started dating, she made all sorts of noises about writing, but she deliberately kept an obsolete electric typewriter with a word processor function that required special data cards that were no longer available. I gave her a computer and offered full instructions, and she always found an excuse as to why she couldn't use it, including leaving one of the bootup discs in the sun. She claimed that she couldn't write in Dallas, ever since the incompetently run indie bookstore in which she worked went out of business, so I jumped at a job opportunity in Portland. She couldn't write in Portland, and hated Portland, so I was very