It's been fourteen or fifteen months since I had a story critiqued at workshop. Last night, my story was on the table. Good comments all around. The story isn't broken, really, but it needs some added details and events the reader needs to see. This was an older story (originally written maybe five years ago) and there were images and themes in the story I couldn't forget and I wanted to do the story justice. I didn't use many of the old words. Many new words were written for the story in the last couple months.

Now I just have to fix it and get it in the mail.

The workshop has changed in the last year. So many new faces. Always a new face. We're up to thirty people again each Tuesday. At least it seems like it. I tend to shrink into my shell when there's so many new people and I tend to talk with fellow workshoppers I'm used to talking too.

So it was good I got a story on the table for critique and at first I thought that was why I felt more connected with the group last night. That might have been part of it, but the more important thing, I think, was that I read the five other stories that were up for critique. And I didn't pass when came to my verbal critique (many times it's all been said before my turn). I participated by giving my opinion.

Six stories (that's our limit) to read and critique each week can be a load. Especially with my own writing and a forty or fifty hour week job. This year I've been reading and critiquing one or two stories each week. This is acceptable behavior in the workshop and I don't think I'm the only one who does this. After all, the writer or critiquee will get somewhere around twenty critiques anyway.

I'm glad I did the full load. It needed to be done. And I didn't feel like I was tucked in the corner being the same quiet me.

Other workshop notes: Stephen Stanley brought some copies of the new volume of Writers Of The Future, but I arrived too late and all available copies were gone. Ray Vukcevich opened my eyes to the possiblities in the story I'm currently trying to write. And I told Devon Monk and Dianna Rogers that I'd give them my novel pitch next week--this is just prep for the Surrey conference comping up in October.