2AM Traffic

I'm tired this morning. As fulfilling as the days are, they're pretty long. I find myself having to edit a couple of stories each night while also working on stuff of my own. Last night I had to write a pitch for my novel and came up just shy of 300 words, which is probably too short, but I've never really had to write anything of the sort before.

Yesterday was the first workshop class, and it went pretty much as expected. One of the writers handed out maple syrup. Joe talked about writing and made some great points. We got into the pieces and kicked some ideas around. I thought I might have offended one of the writers by making a general point about the importance of grammar and punctuation. After I said it she went on the defensive a bit, saying she's been an editor for 15 years and that it's just a first draft. But really. Come on. If you're an editor, write like one. Put the periods and commas in the right place. It's important. I get that people make typos, and I know that a few will pop up in mine, but the mistakes were pretty damned rampant, and if you're bringing a piece to a writer's workshop it should probably look a hell of a lot better. Rant over.

I had lunch with this woman named Susan from our group, who is in her early 70's and is a child survivor of the Holocaust. Really interesting lady. She gave me some sage advice about life, stuff I don't usually get a lot of. After lunch I saw talks given by Canadian agent Anne McDermid, and writers Janice Kulyk Keefer and Wayson Choy. Wayson told a story about how a girl in his class one year wrote a story about a young girl who was a victim of sexual abuse from the victim's perspective. He suggested she try writing it from the perpetrator's viewpoint, and once she did, she was no longer that interested in writing because the act had cleansed the baggage she was carrying with her. Kim confirmed later that a lot of people who enter the workshop are people looking for therapy rather than to be published. I think that's one of the most important things I've heard about writing so far. To be published is one thing, but some people really have a strong NEED to do it, even if it means they won't be doing it forever. Another piece of advice: writer's block occurs when the same old tool isn't able to handle the job of moving forward - if you use only a hammer for the rest of your life, you'll treat every problem like a nail.

Matt came home with Thai food and we watched Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. My leg has been bothering me a bit more than my back lately. No time to worry about that now.