Workshop change-up

When I first started providing these workshops back on October 4, 2011, I never thought I'd still be going strong a year and eight months later. My initial plan was to post a pre-written set of workshops that had been honed over years of teaching them in real time as well as giving them in Second Life with an eye toward collecting them into a single volume that I'd offer for sale.

Then the publishing world imploded - or exploded, depending on where you're sitting - and I just kept offering new ideas, different ways of looking at the world and providing the occasional prompt (or two, or three) to help both beginning writers and those with more experience. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to put these in a book, but that's no longer my focus.

Over the past year and a half (plus some), my focus has become more on the reflective writer, on the whys and wherefores (a redundant phrase if ever there was one!) rather than on the how to's. Although I've done workshops on grammar, you really can learn that better from a site dedicated to the structure of language. There have been workshops on the business side of writing, the editing process, lots of workshops on characters and plot and theme. You can find the entire list of them here.

You might not comment, but I know you're attending to these workshops because my website hits double every Tuesday. I like to imagine you eagerly coming to the workshop, reading through it and then taking time to do the activity and finding out something new about your own writing. If'n you wanted to drop me a line (email or in the comments), and let me know what's worked for you, I'd love it. My ego is small, but it does need a sop now and again. :)

So what's the change-up the title of this post refers to? I think it's time to get some other writers in here to share their expertise, don't you? Guest lecturers, as it were. No one wants to listen to the same person over and over and over.

The first guest blogger will be Cynthia Sax. She'll be here Tuesday, June 25th to talk about "Billionaires, Vampires, and Reader Expectations." She has some great tips!

Next on the schedule is Shelly Munro on the naming of characters. Shelly is a long-time Ellora's Cave author who writes very hot love scenes! Her post is coming July 16th and I'm looking forward to learning a lot from her.

More guests will be coming on board in the next few weeks. If you are a writer and would like to see a particular topic covered or if you have a topic you'd like to write about, email me at diana@dianahunter.net and put BLOG PROPOSAL in the subject line. Include a brief outline of your post and we'll go from there!

Activity

I know I missed last week's workshop entirely and this week's is really an announcement, so I hope you're spending this time writing on your current work in progress! How many words per week are you getting done? See if you can up that by 10% this week. Write fast, write hard, write lots! I'll post my word count at the end of the week - see if you can beat me!

Play safe everyone, and welcome aboard Cynthia and Shelley!

Diana