10 great days in Iowa and once again very inspired to write and submit. Novel is taking a backseat right now while I focus on a series of Short Stories. I was very inspired by my instructors - Kate Aspengren and Bart Yates - to go deeper and not settle for just skirting the narractive and entertaining the reader.
John Dalton gave an excellent lecture on novel writing and one of the aspects he discussed was that the number one thing modern readers look for in a novel is "truth." Of course my truth may not be everyone else's but a big part of going deeper in my work will be casting a sharp and clinical eye on my own thoughts and behaviors as well as the people (ahem - I mean characters) in my stories.
Kate Aspengrebn's "Coming of Age" class allowed me to look at some of the experiences in my early teens that I haven't examined in a long time. She is an excellent instructor and very supportive. As usual the experience was full of intensely personal and moving stories from some very good writers (and as usual I was the only male in the class).
Bart Yates opened some doors in my writing because I've always been resistent to descriptive passages in my work - but with the input of an excellent workshop of writers, he helped me to realize that detailed description can help me to access aspects of character development. Yes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar - but it helps to know what one looks, tastes, smells and feels like in the hands of the narrator in a work of fiction.
I am being productive and completed a 2500 word story called "Probably Not Real" which is the first in a planned series of 13 stories centering around the theme of Male-Female Relationships in the Internet Age. I am tentatively calling the collection "No Strings Attached." All thirteen stories are set during the first year of my Divorce circa 2007-08.
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