Why Podcast? Reasons For Writers

A student wrote in to let me know they’d made it into Odyssey, huzzah, and asked if I had any advice about attending a workshop. As a matter of fact I do. Like many things in life, you get more out of a workshop if you’re willing to invest a little effort beforehand, during, and afterward.

I went through a number of workshops in college at both the undergraduate and graduate level, but the place where I learned the most was Clarion West, a six week workshop in Seattle. My instructors were Octavia Butler, Andy Duncan, L. Timmel Duchamp, Connie Willis, Gordon van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick; my classmates included Ann Leckie, E.C.Myers, Rashida Smith, and Rachel Swirsky, among others. If you read a lot of F&SF, you may recognize many of those names and realize how incredibly privileged I was to be part of that year.

How I Prepared

• Read work by your instructors. At least a few stories or a novel. Get a sense for what they will be able to give; there will be things you won’t expect, but you will learn what you like and dislike about their writing and what you want them to teach you.
• Come with story ideas. Not stories, but prompts and scenes. A list of potential titles. A page where you took fifteen minutes to generate ideas.
• Put other shit on hold. Clear the decks so unrelated work and deadlines is not distracting you. You want to give it your all. The spouse of one of my fellows had their children writing letters saying how much they missed the parent and wanted them to come home, and it was one of the clearest examples of someone sabotaging their partner that I have ever witnessed. Don’t let anyone do this to you. Make the most of the workshop while you can.

Useful Things I Did

• Go first. One of the things that has stood me well in life is a habit of volunteering to go first, mainly due to a let’s-just-get-this-over-with-already impatience. I’ve done it every time I’ve been in a workshop and it helps you not feel that you have to live up to earlier examples. Do a nice job and you can actually be that intimidating classmate whose work people worry about living up to.
• Talk to people. Your fellow students are a peer group you’ll be interacting with for years to come. Be a good citizen and avoid being a jackass, even if it’s your natural tendency. Ask people questions more than you tell them about yourself. Listen.
• Take good notes. I like to write stuff down, at the time in Moleskinnes. If there was ever a time for learning to write good notes, this is it. If you have difficulty, you might ask your classmates about recording.
• Take care of your body. Six weeks is a long time and one in which health issues can develop if you’re not careful. Stretch. Walk daily; work out a few times each week if you can. You will emerge more energetic and creative as a result of investing that time and effort.

What I Would Have Done Differently

• You can’t go home again. I did go home two weekends in order to hang with my spouse and cats. In retrospect, while that did recharge me, I should have spent that time hanging out with my classmates since that time was pretty finite.
• Take some board games. I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this, perhaps because we weren’t gaming as much then as we used to. I would take games that were easy to teach, had a timespan of never more than an hour or hour, and which stressed creativity. Examples: Codenames, Dixit, Fiasco, Microscope.

Life Post-Workshop

• Grieve that idyllic life a bit. It’s okay to mourn. You will miss some of your classmates fiercely. Some will become lifelong friends; others will fade back into the world and never be heard from again.
• Go back over your notes. I still go back over my notes periodically, sometimes making notes in a different color; I’m about due to review these again.
• Write and write and write some more. Apply what you’ve learned. Experiment. Reply to other people’s stories with your own. And send stuff out. And welcome to you. Once you have made the first sale of six cents or more a word, join SFWA, but even before then use its resources like the SFWA Blog, Writer Beware, and the SFWA reading series across the country.

Can’t make it to a live workshop? There’s also plenty of online ones. My own Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers features two this weekend: How to Write Better Food with Cassandra Khaw and Ideas Are Everywhere with Rachel Swirsky.

Here’s a full list of live classes and details about how to take one for free. Or consult the excellent list of speculative fiction workshops Kelly Robson has compiled.

My mason bees are all hatching and it’s quite entertaining to sit out on the porch and watch the tiny perfect new bees encountering the world for the first time. When they reach the sunlight they stop and preen themselves like cats. Grocery deliveries have become a source of great excitement, and I am currently on Fall of year 2 in Stardew Valley. The move to Portland is on hold for at least a couple of weeks while we figure out where the world is going.

While existence has become more circumscribed for many, my life has, weirdly enough, become a bit more social as a result of recent events. I’ve been doing daily co-working sessions, at least one, sometimes two, each day, for a group that includes a bunch of friends and family, current and former students, mentees, and Patreon supporters as well as trying out some different things like videocalls where we all log on and clean our workspaces at the same time while chatting or Netflix Party.

I wrote a piece for Medium on how to run a successful and productive co-working session, and I cannot recommend them highly enough, although I know that mileage will wildly vary, according to people’s process. If you miss coffeeshop writing or working in an office, though, this may be a reasonable substitute. Remember there are scholarships for the Discord server.

I’ve also been doing some consulting for people turning their material into online versions. If you’re undergoing this process, here’s Things to Consider When Converting Your Live Class Into an Online Version. I also turned in book three of the Tabat series, hurray hurray!

Coming up this weekend:

• Get Weird! How to Make Your Fiction Original, Compelling, and Deeply Weird with Evan J. Peterson Saturday, April 11, 2020, 9:30-11:30 am Pacific Time. Taking cues from classic stories as well as contemporary literature, film, and pop culture, workshop leader Evan J. Peterson teaches you the ways to make your writing original, compelling, and deeply Weird. From witchcraft to spirits to unnameable entities, you’ll learn what makes a story unsettle audiences and stick with them for years.
• Writing Interactive Fiction with Kate Heartfield, Saturday, April 11, 2020, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific time. If you’ve ever found yourself choosing between possible endings or plot twists, why not try a storytelling format that lets you explore them all? Games and interactive fiction invite the reader to join in the storytelling process, and invite the writer to consider multiple facets of agency, characterization, pacing and plot. Learn some fundamental principles and techniques for interactive formats, or just gain a new perspective on ways to develop your non-interactive prose.



• The Writer’s Guide to Handselling Books (Social Isolation Edition) with Michael R. Underwood, Sunday, April 12, 2020, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific time. Author and publishing professional Michael R. Underwood shares lessons from a decade of hand-selling books to readers, booksellers, and sales reps. Learn how to put your work into a market context, showcase what makes it special, and connect with readers when selling at conventions. There’s no one way to sell any book, so this class will help you learn to find several different ways to pitch each project for greater success. In this edition, we’ll talk about how to sell books while practicing social isolation via virtual events and social media.
• Fearless Writing: Learning Not to Hold Back with Evan J. Peterson, Sunday, April 12, 2020, 1:00-3:00 pm Pacific Time. What are you afraid to write about? In this class, we create the supportive space to write the things we haven’t yet. We will discover what fears hold us back from writing about the topics and experiences we want to, in the forms and styles we want to. We will move past these fears and write fresh, honest, compelling work. We will practice sharing our writing with one another to dispel the fears of judgment and replace them with encouragement and strength. This class welcomes those writing in all genres and levels of experience and confidence.

Remember that there are Plunkett scholarships for classes; even if you’re strapped for cash, these classes are available. If you’ve enjoyed Rambo Academy classes in the past, please spread word of the school!