Yesterday was the last official day of the workshop portion of the event. We critiqued three stories, including mine. I’m pretty relieved by my feedback and also realized that I have a pattern in the way I write stories.

I tend to trust the reader and don’t like hitting people over the head with things, so I don’t put down every plot detail or world building element that I think of. And then the first time I hand it to readers, I get to see which things I need to clarify and which things I can leave alone. In this particular story, I needed to clarify that my character’s allergy is a contact allergy and then almost all everything else makes sense.

As much as I want to sit down and go through the notes on my story and rewrite it RIGHT NOW, I’m not going to. I’m finishing the revisions on my novel.

Last night, Mom made dinner. Oh, yes people. We are living the high life here.

That’s right. Join Codex and you get to attend workshops where, not only is your story critiqued by a multiple-award winning editor, you also get my mother’s cobbler. Need I say more?

Today we critiqued four stories. By now, I’m getting a sense of whose critiques resonate with me most, which is good because– well, if I’m hearing advice that I think is spot-on to fix someone else’s story, if that same person tells me to fix something in mine, then chances are that they are right. Or at least that we have similar taste.

Garrett Winn did a workshop on time management focused on writing. One of the things I thought was interesting came up as a tangent. The old question of whether one should set wordcount goals or time goals. As James Maxey put it, you’re paid by the word, not the time in the chair.

Personally, I work with wordcount goals BUT I’ve also timed myself writing so I know that I write about a thousand words an hour. Which means that if I want to write 2000 words a day that I need to block out a minimum of two hours a day to do that.

Then there was a group discussion about what makes a story stand out as exceptional. I think about the only thing we all agreed on was “specificity.” Lots of other things were bandied about, but no golden key appeared. Granted, I left early to finish cooking dinner, which was….

Polenta and Black Bean Casserole
Wax Beans from Mom’s Garden
Green salad with optional tomatoes, onion and mushrooms.

Afterwards, Mom made blueberry cobbler, served with ice cream.

Oh, Dad, Luc and Danielle played music for us. We’ve discovered that the Star Trek theme is perfectly suited to the musical saw. I’ll try to get a recording before the week is out.

In between all this, I started in on the novel revisions. I was pleased to discover that they really weren’t all that bad. Most of the things people brought up can be fixed in one or two sentences. Whew.

We’re starting the mornings with breakfast foods laid out, but people on their own. Some crazy fools went jogging this morning. My feeling is that running is appropriate if something large is chasing you, otherwise not so much.

We had three presentations today: One on brainstorming story ideas by Luc Reid ¹ one on reading aloud (by me), and one on Medieval Studies, by Michael Livingston. I learned that people in the Middle Ages did bathe, that the Bubonic Plague was the first germ warfare and went horribly wrong, and that knights in armor actually could stand up if they fell down.

For lunch we had sandwiches. I know. You’re thrilled.

Then two novel critiques, which was interesting. It’s the first time I’ve done a novel critique session and find it the same as and also quite different from a short story critique. Mostly we dealt with Big Issues and not so much on line notes.

For dinner, now, that’s a beautiful thing. We went to Couch’s barbeque. This place has been there since my Dad was a child. It is one of the things for which I will gleefully break my pose as vegetarian. We were having really lively conversations until the food hit the table and then everyone became silent. Mmmm… A couch’s bbq sandwich with hot slaw on it, sides of baked beans and cole slaw. It just doesn’t get any better.

Tomorrow we have the first of our sessions with Ellen Datlow. Should be fun.

1. I skipped this one because I still had some reading to do for critique sessions tomorrow,. Other people report favorably on it. [↩]

The workshop officially starts tomorrow. Today, a friend of mine came in and helped me set up — wait. Let me back up. When I got in last night, I discovered that my parents had already done everything. Beds were made, conference tables were set up in the workshop room. I mean… really.

So my friend and I headed out to the store to pick up groceries. She made walnut cake and bakclava. I made dinner.

The Menu
Quinoa Mushroom Risotto
Sauteed Mizuna greens with olive oil and lemon
Green salad with shitake vinaigrette.

Our first guests arrived around 5:00 and the rest of the gang showed up around 11:00. We’ve got another bunch of folks arriving tomorrow. I was relieved to see that I wasn’t the only one that was still frantically reading manuscripts.

Which I need to go back to doing now.

I somehow forgot to tell you about this, I think. Codex Writer’s Group is an online group for neo-pro writers. To be a member, you have to have made a pro-sale or attended one of the big audition only workshops¹ which means that it’s chock-full of some very talented writers.

This year we wanted to do a retreat and we’re doing it at my parents’ house. I have good folks, you know? My grandmother, her sister’s and cousins all inherited adjoining property. To condense the story, Mom and Dad live in the house that he grew up in, Woodthrush Woods, and they’ve moved Robin’s Roost, a log house,² from another part of the property to theirs.

See! Pictures.

Woodthrush Woods

I’ve been saying for years that it would make the perfect retreat center. Thirteen wooded acres, a creek, wi-fi and — at least this time — everyone gets their own bedroom.

We’re starting with a four day workshop with Ellen Datlow on short stories plus a novel track. Then there’s another six days of retreat.

It should be fun.

1. Clarion, Odyssey, OSC’s BootCamp, etc. [↩]
2. not a cabin [↩]

The planners of Denvention are really on their game. I’m not sure when I’ve known about my programming so far in advance. Granted, these are preliminary schedules, but here’s the list.

Schmoozing 101 - Wed 13:00

Survival Tips for the Beginning Writer - Wed 16:00

How to Give an Effective Reading - Workshop - Fri 10:00

I’ll also be doing the Strolling with the Stars one morning, but I don’t know which one yet.

No, really. I mean it this time.

I’m extremely pleased to get in because some part of my brain was sure that the April Fool’s Prank was totally going to jinx me out of going. I’m relieved my superstitions didn’t play out. And super excited to be going to space camp. I mean, big telescopes! Real astronomers!

When I was in… (Mom? What grade was I in when I did Dr. Danby’s astronomy class?) Anyway, one summer my mom got me into an astronomy camp taught at the local college. I was definitely one of the younger students, but it wasn’t a college level course. I remember that she would drive me out to Meredith College so that we could stand in a field and look at the stars and planets through the telescopes. I loved it, and not just because I got to stay up past my bedtime.

My dad helped me make a planetarium out of a refrigerator box for my science fair project. We kept it for ages after that and it was one of my favorite things.

So getting to got to a NASA-funded workshop is really a childhood dream come true. I can’t wait.

PRX now has “The Confessions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” by the Willamette Radio Workshop. I perform in this as various cast members and at about the 2:30 mark, you get to hear my b-movie scream. (Now, you do have to register for PRX to listen to this, but it’s a pretty painless registration.)
This production won the Gold Ogle Award for the Best Horror or Fantasy Audio Production of 2004.

The recording is of a live show — all the sound effects, all the dialogue, everything happen live in front of an audience with no stopping for mistakes. I hope you’ll understand that I’m quite proud of working with WRW.

Incidentally, this is the show I was working on when I got the idea for “Death Comes but Twice.”

Can you guess which other characters I’m playing?

Finally, we got our futon. Whew. We also picked up a gorgeous bookcase from the early 1900s. The folks that sold us the futon said, “Need anything else?” And we said, “Bookcases?”

Behold, for reasons that are unclear to me, they wanted to get rid of this glassfront bookcase which had belonged to the husband’s grandparents. It’s beautiful! I am baffled but was very, very happy to buy it from them. Naturally, it was not a dimension that we had planned on having in the apartment, but so pretty that we went into make-it-fit mode. Actually, I think this will be better all around. So, what we are doing is using it as a divider in the living room and giving Rob a micro-office there.

Clearly, painting is still happening, but I hated the color I put up on the wall behind the lamp. It’s a purple that does not play well with anything else in the room. It is not at all the color that the photo makes it appear.

I am taking over the entire room that we had set aside as an office. Though my workbench was supposed to be temporary, it’s becoming pretty clear that I will always need something like it. I made this floorplan when we were moving out, to figure out what furniture would fit. It’s been very handy so far. Like when we were trying to decide if we could, in fact, make the bookcase fit. So far, we only have one piece that we don’t have a good home for. It’s a Japanese kimono rack, which is normally a lovely piece, but the right spot hasn’t presented itself yet.

I need to reorganize the office, which we are already starting to call the “workshop” but that will probably wait until Coraline is finished.

WRW presents FREE AUDIO DRAMA by Craig Kenworthy, Carole Dane, Sandra DeHelen and Joe Medina by way of H.P. Lovecraft.

WRW is happy to prove the cynics wrong and present four of our original audio experiments free of charge to the listening public. All are from writers who have participated in our Writer’s On the Air Workshop. lt broadcasts on Stage and Studio with Dmae Roberts on our local station, KBOO 90.7 FM in Portland Oregon. I am very proud of all these pieces and I think they show the ever restless range of audio expression that makes “workshop” more than just a slogan or idle phraseology. We continue to experiment and explore the storytelling possibilties of the audio medium and welcome you on our voyage of discovery.

For unknown reasons, all of the electrical outlets in the workshop stopped working. I need my power tools. Argh. I did what hand work I could, but had to wrap up around four o’clock because I just ran out of things I could do.

Round two of fiberglassing the bear went much better. The glass on thmpts in the morning after he left so the fumes would have a chance to dissapate. This is way I was not going to do the fiberglass work at the workshop.

Today I did the last of the fiberglassing for an audience of three. The three boys that live in my building and the next were fascinated by the crazy American crouching on the front porch with a toxic brew. If I hadn’t been racing the set time on the resin, I would have grabbed my camera and asked them to take process shots. This particular resin has a work time of about fifteen minutes. So I have to get as much glass laid as possible before the resin starts kicking.

After it cured, I pulled the clay out. In places like the snout, I had to use a spoon to scrape the pieces out. This is the point where you are desperately hoping that there’s not some mistake in the fiberglass, because you are destroying the sculpture. I was a little nervous as I was pulling the clay out, because the fiberglass made some alarming pop noises. If the fiberglass was brittle, it woud mean that I had put too much of the hardener in the resin. Fortunately, it turned out to be a leaf that had blown under the head (I was working outside, remember) and been fiberglassed to the back of the skull. Whew.

The fiberglass is translucent, but I’ll still have to cut the pupils of the bear out in order for the performer to see. Currently, I’m planning to use either scrim or sunglass lenses to cover the opening. I’ll have to see which looks better with the fur.

And here is a picture of me holding the bear head on. I don’t have the lower jaw installed here, although it’s fiberglassed, but you can see the proportions of the bear. I’ll take it in to the studio tomorrow for the next step in its construction.

I’m teaching a workshop at Orycon on reading aloud. How does this text sound as a blurb?

You may be a good writer, but reading aloud is a separate skill. In this workshop, learn to make your words sound as great out loud as they do on the page. Using both demonstration and audience participation, we will explore voicing, narration and pacing. Come with one paragraph of your own work; sample text will also be provided.

I also need a snappy title. Here are some random candidates, not all of which are from me.

Reading Aloud
How to Give a Reading without Wetting Yourself
The Science of Readings
Remember to Breathe

Tobias S. Buckell Online » Blog Archive » Listen to a story of I read: Waiting for the Zephyr can be heard online for free at the Spoken Alexandria Project.

The story is narrated by the talented Mary Robinette Kowal of the Willamette Radio Workshop.

On Friday, lightning struck the server that hosts my website and email. Their surge protectors failed and my site went up in smoke. It finally came back up, and I’m reloading things, but I don’t know how long it will take. Some things will just be lost.

Unfortunately, Willamette Radio Workshop’s site was on the same server. It will take awhile to get both sites restored.

The older blog entries, I’m afraid, are just gone.