Over the course of six days, we each produced six novel proposals in various mystery subgenres — cozy, PI/detective, police procedural, hardboiled, and noir. We also wrote two noir short stories. And we, of course, read all the work each other produced.

Peppered in among all this for me were good conversations with folks I don’t often spend much time with and walks on the beach — except for Tuesday, with its overlapping deadlines. No walk. I almost started killing people outside my fiction. So, lesson learned and applied on Friday, the other day of overlapping deadlines.

Bonus: On Saturday, Scott William Carter signed his debut novel The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys at North by Northwest. If you haven’t got a copy already, you want to buy one. It’s a riveting read, and often laugh out loud funny.

I learned a ton at the workshop. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have taken the workshop from such an amazing teacher and with so many great writers.

The stories are already out in the wide world. Now to add chapters to all those novel proposals and get those out as well.

On your mark. Get set. Go!

First up, novel workshop. I’ve been to these before, but this time there was a new method, moving from traditional Clarion workshop round-robin critique rules to more targeted comments about the marketability of the novels and spiffing up the proposal packages so that they really shone. It rocked. I found the whole experience eye-opening and very useful. And such a treat to read so many really great books.

I took The Heart of the World to this workshop. So well-received. And then mailed to editors, one of whom requested the full manuscript so far. Good stuff.

Next up, a couple of days off, which I mostly spent reading the first round of stories sent in for the second workshop and walking on the beach. Great reading, strenuous walking on that loop down to the beach and around to the inlet near Mo’s, then back up through the neighborhood via the Hill of Hell. Sunshine even graced us some.

And then the anthology workshop with Dean and Denise Little. This one, too, went as usual above and beyond my expectations as far as learning and networking. I wrote my first ever noir for the overnight short story at this workshop. What a blast! And I got to read and learn from the excellent overnight batch of stories and all of Denise’s and Dean’s comments.

Both my first and second story are out to markets.

Add to all this mix a shopping trip to North by Northwest Books and my first trip to Mo’s (no chowder for me unfortunately because of the glutens, but it smelled heavenly; and Mo’s surprised me with a bang-up bowl of chili) and lots of time with so many other professional writers and editors, and you have a recipe for amazingness.

So. Reading back over what I’ve just written, it strikes me that there is no real way to describe what I get out of these workshops and what it’s like to experience them. Because I’ve written about the logistics and mechanics, and that doesn’t include the way it feels to be among people who write professionally, who love it, who love story, who love learning. Or how it feels to completely immerse myself in writing and writing culture for at least a week. Or how it feels to bump up my craft and business knowledge in a way that fuels my work once I return home. You just have to have been there.

I’m betting you have a similar experience that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. Feel free to substitute words and phrases.

I take “vacation time” from work to do all this, usually a couple of times a year. Everyone, including me, knows that it’s not a real vacation. Not in a million years. I work my butt off. I get very little rest. It doesn’t matter, though. What does matter? Doing what I love. That feeds me in a different way than sunning on the beach or curling up in front a peat fire on a rainy Irish night. Without all those different kinds of nourishment, I feel like a starving woman.

Do what you love. Find a way. That’s my prescription.

January was a whirlwind of travel and writing — the travel to Austin twice for long weekends with friends and the writing mostly running through draft number two of The Heart of the World in preparation for workshopping at this month’s novel workshop on the Oregon coast. First Reader loved it and had such good comments. The book is so much better for them.

There has also been short story writing — the first assignment for the other workshop I’m attending in Lincoln City. The theme was loads of fun and the writing a continuation of the one scene at a time, focus on the emotion experiment. I’m very happy with the story, and happy it’s done and turned in on time.

Now there’s an enormous amount of reading to do — proposal packages from the novel workshop and one full novel, then the anticipation of a slew of short stories next week. And somewhere in there I’ll be on an airplane heading northwest.

In anticipation, I give you the Inn at Spanish Head’s sky cam, which updates every 7 minutes. Live, from the Oregon coast!

I was astounded that the experiment I undertook at the start held all the way through — focusing only on one scene at a time, focusing on the emotion in the scene. 120,000 words is a *lot* of scenes. A lot of emotion. I made a concerted effort to keep my critical brain out of my writing office during all of this, too, giving full reign to my creative brain and allowing my subconscious to be the boss.

The result was as I’d been told it would be but hardly believed. My bossy subconscious planted all the right clues at the right times without my having ever been aware of them.

Those threads of clues shone like gold all the way through without my ever having attempted to engineer them. Until I began to actually write the end sections of the book, I had no conscious idea as to how on earth I’d resolve the story. I mean, I had conscious general ideas, but I wasn’t married to them. The funny thing was, even my general ideas didn’t hold a candle to the ones my subconscious came up with. Twists and turns and where-the-hell-did-that-come-from. Those oh-so-important story points feel much more powerful and meaningful because of all that.

The book is now in my first reader’s hands. Then it’ll be workshopped on the coast in February and out into the world it will fly. The next story is on the horizon, and I plan to continue the experiment until it becomes not just an experiment but as natural as breathing.

Meanwhile, I give you some slam-bang motivation posts from the writer who started me down this particular road. This is number one. Read it and the next. And the next one after that. Great stuff.

Happy New Year!

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . BUT WHAT IF X HAPPENS? . . . Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . THEN Y!?!

and so on.

I’ve had a lovely Yule season, and I hope you have, too. There have been some amazing gifts of the material kind and more valuable ones of the not-so-material kind. I am reminded to be grateful for all the people in my life, and for all the love. And also for movies that knock my socks off. I’m not so enterprising (nor do I have so much time; see above re: *almost* end, and the need to actually write it) as to attempt a 2009 gratitude list at this point. And I’ve occasionally written these sorts of lists at other times of the year. So to prevent a case of supreme redundancy and time eating, here’s today’s top eleven list.

1. The people in my life who I happen to know. I love you. You know who you are.

2. The people in my life who I have yet to meet. Same goes.

3. This morning’s walk in the cold rain with the Doggie Ranger, replete with morning prayers and connectedness.

4. An awesome wiki article on Kabbalah that I actually had time to read.

5. Avatar. Still heavily on my mind since I saw it on Sunday morning. I’m going to have to catch it again, this time preferably at the IMAX which will NOT be sold out the next time I want to go.

6. Tea. Preferably Barry’s Irish, Gold Blend.

7. Blueberries, fresh and huge and bursting with juicy flavor.

8. Surprises.

9. Calvin and Hobbes.

10. Plenty of time to write.

11. That I get to take my lunch hour at 9:15 tomorrow morning to go to Nia. There will be dancing! And Queen Latifah!

Best wishes, everyone.

This stuff is invaluable. Not to be missed.

I will be making a superhuman effort to get to several of them, including a couple of novel workshops and mystery structure, which I am particularly excited about.

Never written a mystery, although I like to read them. What makes me all happy is the opportunity to learn from an award-winning master of the form (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) about how to write them. Because even if I don’t start out angling for a mystery and am instead, say, working on a YA science fiction novel, it’s amazing how a mystery will pop up and thread its way into the story. So much fun.

I can hardly wait.