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.

News and More Stuff from Chez Rambo

Happy end of the year to all of you!

UPDATE: This went so well and everyone was so grateful that I went ahead and extended the sale through the end of the year. There are new links below to coupons that should let you access the classes at the $5 price. Let me know if there are any issues!

We are wrapping up the end of the year with a special promotion for THREE DAYS ONLY, December 24-26, by offering all Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers on-demand classes, including the ones from Ann Leckie, Rachel Swirsky, and Juliette Wade, for $5 or less.

Yep, that’s right. For less than $50 you can, in fact, buy access to every class we currently offer. Did I mention it’s only through midnight of the 26th, aka three days (well, a little more since this is going out Sunday evening) only?

This is a let’s-close-out-2018-with-a-bang promotion and won’t be repeated again until next December (if we do). Here insert me talking in a Thunderdome announcer’s voice and repeating that vital phrase, THREE DAYS ONLY.

Seriously, though. If you want to pick up one (or many) of the classes, now’s the time, and you have lifetime (well, Teachable’s lifetime, which may or may not match mine or yours) access.  And pass this offer along to as many people as you like, particularly your writing groups and friends. The more the merrier.

Want a live class? There’s still a few slots open in Stories That Change Our World as well as all the other live January classes, including opportunities with Seanan McGuire, Rachel Swirsky, and Fran Wilde.

And look for plenty of new Rambo Academy material there in the coming year, including on-demand versions of the Flash Fiction workshop, Punk U: How to Write -punk Fiction, Rachel Swirsky’s Speculative Poetry class, James Sutter’s High-Speed Worldbuilding, a class from Diane Morrison on time management and writing in odd moments “” and more.

Click on the links to access the sale coupons:

Character Building Workshop for $5

Description and Delivering Information for Genre Writers for $5

Hex Engines & Spell-Slingers: Write Steampunk/Weird Western for $5

Literary Techniques for Genre Writers for $5

Moving from Idea to Finished Draft for $5

Old Stories Into New with Rachel Swirsky for $5

The Power of Words with Juliette Wade for $5

Reading to an Audience Workshop for $3

Rewriting, Revising, and Fine-Tuning Your Fiction for $5

To Space Opera and Beyond with Ann Leckie for $5

Recent Stuff from the Blog and Patreon

I’m continuing to update the listing of awards posts from F&SF publishing people every few days. Let me know if yours should be on there.I talked about the process behind the development of one of my favorite stories, “Rappacini’s Crow.”

I tried to consolidate a lot of useful resources for F&SF writers into this page, and am working on one for online writing workshops next. Suggestions for items to include on either page are welcome.

J.D. Moyer on Writer’s Workshops with Kim Stanley Robinson

Bitterballen ““ Carleton Chinner Presents The Tastiest Snack You’ve Never Heard Of

Jennifer Lee Rossman talks about her new novel, Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freakshow

Edward M. Erdelac talks about his novel The Knight With Two Swords and The Women of Arthurian Lore 

Interested in doing a guest blog post? The guidelines are newly updated to include more possibilities.

This month I featured a charity for holiday giving each day on my Patreon page. You can find them all here, regardless of whether or not you’re a Patreon supporter. Other things supporters got included a Q&A with Taco, photos of the current craft project, recipes, writing tips and resources, market news, snippets, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord server. Check out the Patreon page to find out how you can join our community!

The December giveaway is a novel critique by Cat. Mail me at cat AT kittywumpus.net by midnight December 31 with the subject line “December 2018 Giveaway.”