It’s May 17th, 2015. Week nineteen of writing 1,000 words per day of fiction. It’s time for another update!

Days 130 through 136 have been successes, with a minimum of 1,000 words per day written.

Stats for Days 130 to 136:

Day 130 – 1052 words
Day 131 – 1211 words
Day 132 – 1339 words
Day 133 – 1768 words
Day 134 – 1183 words
Day 135 – 1063 words
Day 136 – 1155 words

Total count for the year thus far is 179,566 words. Average daily word count is 1,320 words. Gridfall is at 154,163 words. Based on my projections for the story, it is 85.6% finished.

I finished the haunted house short story I was working on and am sitting on it for a few days before I go back to edit. The whole thing was a writing prompt to begin with, but half of the prompt turned out to just not be working so I ditched it halfway through. So there’s a fair amount of rewriting to be done for that story. It also doesn’t have a name yet. I’m hoping to post it by the end of this coming week.

Gridfall continues marching along. I was writing one of the pivotal scenes this week and realized the plot outline for one of my main characters made no sense for what he was supposed to do during this event, so he did something completely unexpected instead. It changes the rest of the writing pretty drastically, adding a dimension to the finale that I wasn’t prepared for up to this point. I’m excited for it!

The round robin writing game’s final week has come and gone. My story is complete, but I’m still waiting on the others to write out their final additions to their stories. There’s talk of doing a podcast or something after everyone’s done with their stories, but I don’t know when that would happen quite yet. I’ll keep you posted.

Changing gears just a bit, earlier this year I submitted an application to Viable Paradise, a science fiction and fantasy writer’s workshop that takes place over an entire week in Martha’s Vineyard up in Massachusetts. The submissions period hasn’t closed yet, and I don’t know if I’ve gotten in yet (won’t know until probably July), but I wanted to take a moment to talk about workshops.

I have very little experience with them, though several of my writer friends talk about them fairly often. I’m realizing that perhaps there’s a gap in my experience that I might look into filling. Writer’s workshops can be online, face to face, travel-heavy and week-long (as Viable Paradise is). Some are relatively cheap, some are insanely expensive, and then there’s ones in the middle like Viable Paradise. The cost of lodging and travel is going to be just as expensive as the cost of admission if I get in, but it sounded like a neat opportunity and a reason to visit Massachusetts (which I have not done).

The best case I have for workshops and their validity in building your craft and experience as a writer is that I have attended many lectures and panels at conventions that are essentially similar to what these guided workshops are offering.

Valerie Valdes, one of my writer friends and a very talented Developmental Editor, will attest to the potential worthiness of workshops and how they can be useful in giving you new tools as a writer.

A workshop is often a classroom setting which is teaching you how to think about your writing in ways that you may not already be thinking about it. It is asking you to look at your craft from different angles, different perspectives. It is offering you new tools for your writing toolbox. Maybe they won’t be the right tools for you, but knowing they exist and not needing them is often just as needful as using them.

I know a few of my readers are aspiring authors, and I encourage you to look into local workshops in your area, see if maybe there’s something worth learning from them.

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And remember, writing is a skill. So write the hell on, writers.