Dean and I just finished outlining the entire Mystery Novella class that we’re co-teaching. It’s based on the writers workshops that I have always wanted to do in person, but I think it would take at least two weeks, several hours per day, to teach one novella class.
Right now, that’s cost prohibitive here in Las Vegas. We’re working on making it affordable, and maybe within two years, we can do that.
But right now, we’re doing the novella classes online.
Novellas are my favorite form, and for me, novellas just happen. Twenty years ago, I used to cringe when my crime stories veered into novella territory. Back then, no publication took mystery novellas and the novels had to be at least 90,000 words. I managed to place a few of the shorter novellas in the digest magazines, but it was always tricky. Thank heavens for anthologies, because that was my only shot at the time.
Now, though, with indie publishing, there are many many many uses for novellas, mystery and otherwise.
I had a mystery novella in this past year’s Holiday Spectacular. “Catherine The Great,” which is about a very gifted defense attorney, won the Derringer Award for Novelette (in a tie with David Dean). You’ll be able to get a copy of that when we release the Holiday Spectacular Omnibus in a week or two. (We redid it, with a new cover and a properly edited interior.) I’ll let you know the moment the new version of the omnibus is available.)
I usually don’t sing my own praises, but I’m good at novellas.
The mystery novella class begins tomorrow, and you still have time to sign up. We’re taking signups through the week.
One other workshop starts tomorrow, and it is the one that I had to convince Dean to do. You see, Dean hates the phrase “writer’s block” because he believes it’s an excuse.
If you actually look at the term, though, it’s one of those umbrella phrases. Writer’s block means something different to each writer at different phases of their lives.
- Early-phase writers have trouble getting words on the page. They haven’t learned how to write yet, so they feel “blocked.”
- Long-time professional writers claim they’re never blocked, but they will acknowledge project-block, something I’ve been dealing with on an sf novella. I realized (while Dean’s channel-surfing led him to the end of Oceans Twelve) that I had one character who needed a team around her. And suddenly everything snapped into place. I’ve been struggling with that story for two years. But, unlike early-stage writers, I wrote something (many somethings) else in between.
- All writers go through phases in which life intervenes. People who have taken part in my most recent writing challenge are seeing that. I had a blockbuster August (despite the workshop) and then I hit September, and found myself dealing with all kinds of things that had to take precedence. The day I was going to start back up at full speed was the day that a cold/whatever hit.
- Exhaustion, by the way, feels like writer’s block. It feels like your brain can’t muster up the story or the words. And, really, it can’t. Nike has a great series of ads called “Winning Isn’t Comfortable,” showing the struggle it takes to achieve physically at a high level.Look at this one. Like it or not, writers, you’re using a muscle when you work. Your brain. And it can be pushed for a long time, but in the end, you’re like the runners at the end of the commercial. You think those folks could get up and run a few more miles? Heck, no. Accept it. Rest. And then move forward. (She writes, talking to herself.)
After I convinced Dean we needed to do this class, he asked me if there were enough forms of “writer’s block” to make a week-long workshop. So I had him ask folks on his blog, and the writers we know here in Vegas, and others as well. Within about two hours, we came up with fifty different things that writers had termed “writer’s block.” Each thing has a different solution. Some of those solutions are like the exhaustion one, above: Give it time. Others have easier solutions, like project block: assign it to your subconscious, then go work on something else.
We have the list, and we have the solutions, and wow, are we looking forward to this class. We’re calling it Writers Block Freedom because it provides solutions to the wide variety of symptoms for the problem we all call Writers Block.
And let me be clear here. Some of these so-called symptoms are more challenging than others. The solution isn’t go work on something else. It might be a restructuring of your viewpoint or a way of taking care of your health.
This class also starts tomorrow, and there’s a weekly webinar with the class, one we hope will bring writers together for solutions and pep talks.
Do long-term writers need this? Of course, I was glad we were planning this class, because I felt blocked this month, even though I’m not. I just had real-life priorities that got in the way of the writing, some things that would have forced me to take family leave from my day job if I had one. We all struggle with starting and stopping. That’s part of who we writers are.
Anyway, the link to this class is here. And again, you can sign up all week. In fact, you can sign up at any point, but you will miss several in-person webinars if you do that. So take a look.
By the way, the links I posted above take you directly to the classes, but you might want to poke around the WMG Writer Store all by itself. We’re adding things all the time. And if you went to the Anthology Workshop, you might recognize some of the t-shirt sayings.
I hope to keep you all posted on the various goings on these days, as the fall progresses. Not that it feels like fall here in Vegas. It feels like July. I hope that changes soon…
