Do people still read blogs? I don’t know. I’m old, and I don’t really care at this point if I’m shouting into the void. I just spent the last couple of days revamping the ol’ website, and I’m pleased with the way it turned out. It looks pretty good, if I don’t say so myself.
I’m planning on blogging regularly now that things are dying down a bit on the classes front—more on that later—so stay tuned, subscribe, or check back on Sundays for updates. I’ll be talking about my current projects, writing techniques, what I’m reading, conferences I’m attending, classes I’m taking, and whatever else comes to mind.
Since January, I’ve been taking the Advanced Creative Writers Workshop offered through Storyville and run by Richard Thomas. The idea of the workshop is to critique work from the “Best of” anthologies (The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 15, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023, and The Best American Short Stories) that come out every year and hold our peers, as well as ourselves, to the same standard. By doing so, the goal is to get our work to the standard of the top professionals working in the industry today.
I can’t say with certainty that I accomplished that lofty goal—it’s impossible to be objective about the quality of our own work—but I can say with confidence that I am a much better writer now than I was before the workshop started. I’m proud of what I accomplished.
Those of you who know me know that I have two young kids, and I’m a full-time stay-at-home dad. This means I live in a constant state of chaos twenty-four hours a day. Yet somehow, over the course of the last four months, I’ve written four new short stories and written in-depth critical analyses of four short stories a week. Crazy, right?
I went into the workshop thinking I would be outclassed. I worried about what people would think about the weird shit in my head. And instead of being rejected, I found that the stranger my work got, the more people seemed to like what I was doing. For me, this was freeing. It may seem counter-intuitive, but after having my work torn apart, I felt better and better about it. And, for the first time in a long time, I’m having fun writing.
I’m not sure if Richard will run this workshop again because he is busy with House of Gamut, but if he does, I highly recommend you take it if you can. The workshop isn’t a magic bullet that will get your work to the next level, but if you put in the work, it gives you the necessary tools you need to succeed.
So yeah, going forward, I’ll be writing this blog once a week, I’ll be churning out new stories, and I’ll continue to critique professionals’ work along with my regular writers’ group.
Check back soon for new posts as I have some exciting news that I can’t wait to share.
Cheers,
C.J. Goldberg
