Writers of the Future vol 34 – The Workshop

Yikes, where are the days going? I was supposed to write more about this earlier!

The real heart of the Writers of the Future thing is the workshop. The trophy and award ceremony are nice, but it’s the workshop that makes this the amazing event it is. So I’m gonna dive into that for a bit.

Dave on the left, Tim on the right (as one looks at the picture)

On day one we met our instructors, Dave Farland and Tim Powers, both big names in the SF world, in very different ways. I’ve never read Dave before, whereas I’m a fan of Tim Powers, and their different styles came through in their teaching. Dave would talk about putting out 2-3 books a year, Tim talked about working on each of his for 2-3 years. Dave spoke of the joy of writing, how whenever he’s not writing he’d be writing anyway because it’s what he does for fun. Tim spoke about how stressful it is to write and how freaking hard it is, and that the only thing worse than writing is NOT writing, and so he’s forced to do it out of self-preservation. I loved it, they had very complimentary methods, and played well off each other. And of course I came down firmly on Tim’s side. :)

They had me pose for this shot

Throughout the week we were constantly being filmed and photographed, both for publicity purposes and for a future documentary. Some of my fellow author winners weren’t that happy with this, most of them are fairly private. I loved it. I was finally getting the constant adoration I always crave. :) Also I was raised believing God was watching everything I was doing, and I lost that when I realized he’s a fairy tale. It was nice to have it back for a week.

The workshop was basically like a 5-day boot camp, but for writing. The most intense day was the second one, where we were all given a random object, told to interview a random person on the street, and incorporate both things into a new story that we haven’t thought about before. And write it in the next 24 hours. Jesus that was rough. I did nothing but write for 24 hours straight, aside for 7 hours of sleep and 5 minutes to shower. I wrote something that is… vaguely story-like. It has at least one cool thing I can salvage for the future, I guess. Overall, it's not good at all. But it did teach me that I really can sit down and just do this shit, and put out something new on demand. And now I have a skeleton of a story that I can fill in and polish up over time. I could actually envision being a professional and doing this every day as my career.  Which I believe was the purpose of the exercise. It was the 2nd most important thing I got from this week.

This was not posed, we were just talking. Their photographers are really good.

The 1st most important thing was the relationships, of course. You bond a lot with the other people you’re in boot camp with. We’re all newish writers, with some work under our belts, but just getting started. And now we all know each other for life. We can trust each other and confide in each other. I was absolutely sincere when I said in my acceptance speech that this week was made by my fellow winners. This was an amazing experience. There are similar experience to be had, at workshops like Odyssey and Clarion. But those workshops cost thousands of dollars, and last so long that most people with regular jobs can’t attend them. It's not just that the WotF workshop is free… they also paid for my flight out, and my stay at a nice hotel, AND gave me a very nice check on top of all that. Plus an awards ceremony and trophy.

Seriously, this is one of the best things out there for new writers. As long as you make sure to actually take advantage of the opportunities to bond with people. I suppose every year has at least one person who is chronically absent and won’t talk with others. That is tragic for them, and I don’t know why you’d do that, when the group bonds are really the whole point. But hey, it’s not for me to judge.

On day 3 we got to see our illustrations. There are 12 writer winners and 12 illustrator winners every year, and each of the illustrators is given a winning story and told to create a new illustration inspired by it. On the third day, they usher all the writers into a room with the 12 illustrations arrayed around it (without titles or identification) and we have to find the illustration based on our story. Hot damn is that a cool moment!! To have something you wrote illustrated is just an amazing feeling. It’s beautiful and you feel like there’s a reason you do this sort of thing. Then we got to meet our illustrators and talk with them, and I’m not sure how to say just how great it all is. And I get a framed print of the art to take home! Ridiculous. :)

The next day we had rapid-fire classes by quite a number of guest instructors. I think that overall this was the least useful day, but there was still quite a bit of good information here. We got to learn a lot about how the industry works, including what happens once a publisher gets their hands on your book (and why it takes 12+ damn months to print/publish!). Rob Sawyer spoke very passionately about how ruthless publishers will try to screw you, what rights they'll try to grab, and what things you should never, ever accept in a contract. That was very valuable, and the whole day was worth it for that part alone.

Of course the best part of most days was the informal session afterwards, where all the writers, several illustrators, and occasionally a big author or two, would get together at the bar and socialize. There was drinking and jokes and gossip and shoptalk, and it was great. :) That's where a fair bit of the bond-forging mentioned above was done. The epic fucking party we had on the last night before we all flew out the next day was just... amazing. I went and bought three 5ths of vodka for everyone that we could enjoy in our private cove without paying the exorbitant hotel bar prices, and it was the best money I've spent all year.

I miss all my peeps already.

More later!