Taos Toolbox: Could this Be Your Year?

Okay, writers. Let's talk for a moment.

Maybe you're at a point where you've had a couple of stories accepted in pro venues, but you can't seem to pull off that last pro sale. Maybe you're caught in the mushy middle of a novel, and you're not certain how to make the novel work. Maybe your writing has improved, but you're getting a lot of frustrating middle of the road rejections. (The kind that sound like this: It was great, but I didn't quite fall in love with it enough.)

Well, if this sounds like you, and you'd like to ramp up your game a bit, please consider Taos Toolbox this year. Why this year? This year, Taos needs applicants. There have been several writers who have applied, but not enough to make the workshop happen. Walter has asked us alums to reach out to the writers that we know, and this is the easiest way for me to do that.

Let me be honest with you: Taos was a very hard experience for me. It was physically hard. Altitude dried me out fiercely for the first week. The days were long, the nights were long, the work was immense. There were issues among certain people in our group that made the workshop sometimes unpleasant. (DISCLAIMER: I understand that our year was a very unlucky year, and usually there is the kind of bonding that one hopes for from an affair like this.)

On the other hand, I met some awesome people. My roommate was fantastic. Many of the attendees knew a great deal about pop culture and comics. Many attendees were just plain fun. I'm convinced that we had the best volunteer social director ever, and I wouldn't exchange my breakfast conversations with Rebecca and Pat for anything. Walter and I discovered that we shared a love for Utena. There were good moments with many folks.

But most important, and this is why you should go, whether your group is cranky or wonderful, whether you can hike miles or barely crawl up a mountain, whether you like bears and hot tubs or not, and hear me out, for this is the salient point: YOUR WRITING WILL IMPROVE. If you are more at the beginning edge of the workshop, you will receive faith in your abilities. And if you've already opened that gift, you will receive insight into the process of writing that will change the way you compose permanently.

I wasn't sure after I left Taos whether I could recommend it or not. And about two months after I got home, I realized that yes, what I was doing had changed, and what I was doing now was better. And that's totally what I hoped to gain from the workshop. My epiphany as a writer happened not while at Taos, as I had heard it would, but after Taos, when my brain had a chance to cool down a bit. I am a much better writer now than I was at this time last year, especially in behind the scenes kinds of ways.

So, consider it. It's a bit of a roller coaster ride, because it's an intensive workshop where you're locked with about 15 people on a mountain for two weeks talking smack at each other. It's also a chance to bond with some fellow writers who have passed a certain bar of ability, and are ready to push themselves a little farther.

Walter gives you all the information you need to apply right here.
And if you want more impressions from the folks who attended last year, here's my page about the workshop. If you've got questions, just send them along.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

Chain Reaction of…EVIL!

And of course, I had some acid reflux stuff on Monday. Still following the diet. Still not drinking. Still watching portion size. What could be different? What? What?

Oh. My job. Right. Spring break was over.

When I was a kid, I'm talking in my 20s, I set up some impossible expectations for myself, and I often met them. I graduated undergrad in 3 years, and had my MA by the time I was 23. I won't go on. My achievement record sounds like I'm boasting, and while I am proud of my accomplishments, in many ways it is a sad litany of doing all sorts of whacky, hard-to-do things to validate my existence in the universe. I am SO over that part of my life.

The point? In the past, I could run myself ragged, stay up late, overcaffienate, and abuse myself in some sort of homage to stubbornness and workaholic-ism, and the stress and anxiety, while it would bubble up, would bubble back down.

Flash forward to age 47, and my current life, and ta-da! my body attacks me because of stress. Read more if you like. I promise you it's not a litany of woe. It's sort of an understanding of the phenomena. And again, what seems to be happening is that I'm not getting any younger.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.