Short post today as I'm working on finishing a short story that I'm going to try to place in a quarterly. One of my readers will recognize it - it's a fictionalized version of a leisurely evening I spent in a park in the West End of Henrico County with a close friend of mine whose name begins with "R."
I've been more productive with my fiction recently as a result of a wonderful class I've been taking from the talented, kind, insightful, brilliant Valley Haggard, who maintains her own blog at http://www.valleyhaggard.com/. If you're interested in writing, especially writing from your own experience, I recommend you check out her Creative Nonfiction class as it's a great sort of splash of ice water for the mind.
For me it's been especially helpful in getting to the really difficult things that I need to be honest about in order to tell my stories in an interesting way, the things that you don't want to write about because you're afraid that it will reveal something about yourself that you'd rather conceal. But I think mostly the point of writing classes is to create a structure in which you know you'll be writing once a week and doing it with other people who can give you fresh ideas and encouragement.
So check out Valley's site, and sign up for one of her classes if you can; it's a great experience and you'll get a lot out of it.
Hopefully I can finish the R story tomorrow and get back to writing more substantive posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment