Taos Toolbox: You Will Always Love Your First, But Later You Love in Different Ways

Still up here. Waaayyyy up here.

So. I've been at Taos Toolbox for a week. Let me talk to you a little bit about it.

Caveat: You will always love your first. I don't necessarily mean your first workshop, because I know a lot of folks have found Clarion or Viable Paradise or any other number of writer's workshop less than appropriate for their expectations. BUT what you will always love is that space where you first felt like a real writer, like you had a chance, like it wasn't all some sort of system designed to keep you out, that you were going to be responsible for self-publishing everything you wrote, ad nauseum.

That space for me was Viable Paradise, and no matter how good another experience is, I will never be able to recreate that halcyon experience. It's a little like a good undergraduate stretch in college. It probably wasn't as good as you remember it, but it's okay that you remember it as good as you do. And the people at VP XIII were exceptional people at that time during that week pulling together in that way. That will never come again.

There are people who are experiencing that here RIGHT NOW. Taos Toolbox is, for a few of us, that epiphany. There are a few writers here who have never been in an SF Workshop, so they are sort of bouncing off the walls in a "Really? It's okay if I write spec fic?" kind of way.

I know that you want to know what I think, however. Because, by God, why the hell else would you be reading Writer Tamago? Indeed. Some of you have been to this workshop, and recommended it to me, so I imagine you especially are curious.

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.