Oct 23 2009
Back to Reality
Back from the master class. For those of you who don’t know where I went, I suppose it might be the right time for a little description of this so-called “master class.”
It lasted for 15 days and took place about a half mile from here, right here on the Oregon Coast in a wonderful hotel called The Historic Anchor Inn. It’s where we hold all our workshops, including the ones coming next year. The Anchor is a treat that should not be missed if traveling the Oregon Coast.
14 professional level writers attended and there were six of us who taught them, plus John Douglas and Ginjer Buchanan from New York the last four days. It was intense for everyone. And a ton of fun. Talking and thinking and working on fiction writing for 15 straight days with other professionals is just flat fun.
The schedule was simple: Mornings for three or four hours, evenings for three or four hours, with a ton of work due between each class. The writers attending wrote around 30,000 words of new fiction in two weeks, some of that short fiction, a bunch of novel proposals (5 actually, for five different books) and a ton of novel pitches and exercises.
Kris had them doing two exercises per day, working on their craft issues, Loren Coleman had them answering business questions every day, and I had them writing upwards of five or six new novel pitches per day, not counting all the rest. Each writer got to roll play the next eight years of their writing careers as well and watch the others do the same.
For the first 10 days I averaged about 6 hours of sleep, the last five days I was lucky if I got four hours per night. Also, it should be known that I ran the workshop, so for a week ahead and four days afterwards, I was still working. Not at the extreme pace of the workshop itself, but still focused. Yesterday, Kris and I got everything we had used out of the Anchor and back into storage finally, and now there are only a few details left to clean up and that workshop is history. And a great memory. Actually, a ton of memories.
We have no future master classes on the schedule. They are just too hard on the instructors, mostly me. The shorter, more focused workshops are going to have to be it for now. Check the list under the workshop tab if interested. E-mail me with questions.
I will be getting the streak page cleaned up in a few moments as well. Sorry I got behind on that. Just too much to do. If I have your number wrong, let me know and I will change it. If you haven’t reported to me in a while, I will move your streak to retired.
I will have a new Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post up shortly. This next one is balancing the myth of self promotion and self selling of books in this new world. Give me a couple days to finish it.
I also have another installment of last springs “Life After…” posts coming as well.
And starting in November, near the middle of the month, I will be putting up original fiction here for free reading. I will have two new static pages, one with an original short story on it, some of them reprint, some new, and a second static page with chapters of an unpublished novel running every week. I will change both the chapters and the short story every week. More on that as the time gets closer.
Feels good to be back and to never have to think of doing a master class again. Last break we took from doing master classes was four years. It will be that long again, at least. They are just too hard on this old guy. Fun, a ton of fun, that’s for sure. But far too hard.
Cheers, Dean
