(Week. Year? Metaphorical day, anyway.)

If you weren't being laid off you'd have the money, but if you had the money you'd be working and couldn't go?

I want to attend this workshop. BUT

I've been out of work for two years now, as of 12/26. I have a good prospect for work with the government but that doesn't start until Feb. 1.

And our furnace has rolled craps big time, we're hoping they don't have to replace the whole thing (it is circulated hot water....). And I don't want to talk about our roof...)

And I've hit a writing wall because first we had someone break in, steal our change bowl and my Mac laptop (June 26) AND someone kindly loaned me an older laptop whose hard drive shot craps two weeks ago. My handwriting sux now, and while I've outlined the novel I'm thinking about. I am not sure I have the nerve to try to start it writing in longhand.

I've had enough now. I want to get on with life but it really sucks right now.

girding my scattered loins (eww) and crossing ganglia (ouch) to attend. will have to start saving now. will have to write more on either of the 2 stories I've been mired in for some years now - or use this momentum to start something entirely new.

but I'm heading into my 52nd year determined to make writing fantasy one of my answers to the question: why am I here?

so, thanks for the heads up. hopefully P will be V for me this year.

TSA Goon. "Purpose of visit?"

Me: "Taking part in a course on writing Science Fiction."

TSA Goon: "A science fiction writer, eh?"

Somehow, I doubt I'd take the chance. Lesser breeds without the law, and all that.

Someday, I swear. Maybe next year - I have a new job now after more than a year of unemployment, and by then I'll actually have vacation time.

I'm about to give you a piece of generic advice that's proven helpful for a lot of students, especially those who've gotten stuck doing multiple rewrites without moving the narrative forward. I haven't seen your writing yet and I can't guarantee that what follows is the right advice for you, but you may find it useful.

Start by carefully putting aside the stories you've been working on. Later, if you want to go back and look at them with new eyes, they'll be waiting for you.

Now start in on your next story and get it moving, writing loosely and sloppily if that's what it takes to get up to speed. Don't try to make the component parts perfect before you know the shape of the whole. That's a trap. A perfect scene is one that's perfect in the context of that book or story. But if you don't yet know how the story works, how it gets where it's going, you can't tell what constitutes perfection in one of its component scenes.

Later, when you've got a working 1.0 version of the story, it will be easier to see that no one needs to know where the Maltese Falcon was between 1539 and 1941, and that you only need to mention in passing what Bridget O'Shaughnessy and Floyd Thursby were doing in Hong Kong. You take the interim history of the Maltese Falcon, which was formerly the preface of the book, cut it down to a fraction of its previous length, and relocate it to the latter part of the midbook, where it functions partly as ornamentation -- the midbook being a good place for ornamental expository set pieces -- and partly to establish the character who narrates that history in the course of a conversation.

Just the tuition is 880 dollars. That doesn't cover transportation to get there and back, hotel or food. To give you a general view of my finances, my monthly disability check is $968, from which I must pay all my bills.

*sigh* I'd love to go to a writing workshop. I just wish that I could find a good one that I could afford.

Any workshop is a serious financial as well as time commitment. VP isn't unusual in that respect. Since it's only one week long, I suspect that VP is actually one of the cheaper workshops (and more than worth every penny). But if you can't make the finances work, then that doesn't matter.

Do you live near a con that has a writing workshop as part of the program? That would drastically cut down the travel and hotel expenses. Since you'd be living at home, your food expenses would be approximately what they usually are. Moreover, most con memberships are cheaper than writing workshops. (However, they also don't last as long and are not nearly as immersive.)

Learn Writing with Uncle Jim

Critters.org

(shakes head and puts aside the old stories...gently)...

More fuel for Terrintokyo's fire. ;-)

#14 The tuition is *only* $900. Clarion's tuition is $5k and it lasts six weeks. That's what the "Viable" is for.