I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I’m going to Taos Toolbox this year! (I’ve been meaning to blog this, but it just got lost in the shuffle.) It’s a two-week science fiction and fantasy writing masterclass taking place in Taos, New Mexico, taught by two of my favorite genre writers, Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams. This will be my first intensive writing workshop getaway since I went to Clarion eighteen years ago. (Holy shit!) It’s coming up in June and I can’t wait!
Meanwhile I’m still working to get my writing chops back after my extended stretch of overbusy appointment stress-funk, and finally managed some reasonable word-count last week, finishing a first draft on a 4,500-word short story. I used an upcoming writer’s group meeting as a deadline and forced myself to meet it; turned out to be a productive strategy.
Writing short stories still feels masochistic; my relationship with the form is a long, bloody, argumentative one and I still can’t quite figure out what the hell I’m doing. But even if this is another misfire, it did briefly give me that satisfying I Finished Something! moment, which doesn’t come around all that often when you’re mostly in novel mode. Take the small victories, I say.
Next up: back to Rogue Souls. Still want to finish a draft of this novel before 2012 is up. “Cooler, Hilts!”
