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Right, so a few days back I said I was burned out on fiction workshops. And tonight I had one of the best workshop sessions of my life.

I was worried because this story was pretty experimental for me. It doesn’t follow a neat arc, the language is intentionally sexist (it includes an off-camera rape executed by the main character), there’s a fair amount of Spanish dialog, there’s magic, and it’s a mash-up of fantasy, western, and mystery. And apparently most of it is working. I got a surprising amount of comments on the strength of the sentence-level prose (which is always fantastic to hear) but there’s something else going on, I think.

I had also mentioned that I’m getting away from trying to write stories that will sell, and instead I’m trying to write stories that allow me more creative freedom. The result (in this instance) was a story that really seemed to catch people’s attention. Better yet, people made fantastic points I hadn’t considered, and they will actually make this a much better story. There were virtually no stock workshop comments, like “I didn’t feel like I knew the characters” or “the story didn’t start until page 4.”

And perhaps the best part is that this story was really a world building exercise for a novel I’m developing in my head. The fact that a lot of people who don’t usually read genre found it compelling? Well, that’s the best news of all.

Current Mood: Pretty Good |