I had high hopes that I’d be back to a regular blogging schedule, but to be honest, in my list of priorities, blogging is WAAAAAAY towards the bottom of the list. I’ve been taking a few writing workshops that have taken up valuable time I used to allocate toward blogging.
If you are looking to improve your writing, there are a plentitude of workshops out there. A fellow writing friend of mine turned me onto workshops offered through chapters of the Romance Writers of America. In most cases, you don’t have to be a member of the chapter, you’ll just have to pay a little bit more for the workshop.
So the first thing to do is find a workshop. I did a search on “RWA Workshops” and found links to various RWA chapters offering online classes. I found mine through The Low Country and the FF&P chapters. After you find a class that appeals to you, sign up and pay, usually via PayPal. About a week before the class, you’ll get an email inviting you to the virtual classroom on Yahoo Groups. You have a couple options for receiving the posts made to the classroom. I found that the digest form works best for my inbox. I only get one or two emails a day with a list of all the messages in the classroom, instead of an email every time someone posts a message. When you are taking three workshops, that’s A LOT of emails.
The instructors of my workshops are published authors. They provide a lot of experience, great advice and above all, information. I found that instructors usually post a new lesson or two every other day. They usually ask a question of the students to prompt discussion and some give a writing assignment so we can apply what we’ve learned. You can post the assignment and sometimes get feedback, which is AWESOME!!!
This is the last week for the three I am juggling: Plotting for Pantsters – I wanted to take this because I am a MAJOR plotter and wanted to see how to be a little more efficient. I have a really cool storyboard now. Writing Between the Sexes – I thought since I am writing in both female and male POV, this would be helpful. It’s been great and the discussion between the students has been lively. Infusing the Novel with Emotional and Sexual Tension – This has probably been the best class in terms of learning different ways to convey characters emotions within the story.
I am obviously a glutton for punishment because I signed up for another bunch which begin in May.
In other news… Lost is on tonight!!! Only a handful of episodes to go…