Everything is starting to come to a close already, which I don’t want to think about, because this has been an awfully swell ride.

I ended up retyping two of the pieces up for workshop, because I had a mental block versus reading narrative without the help of the keyboard (I get that way, sometimes, which is when I read non-narrative non-fiction). As a result, I got into a lot more detail with my critiques. I’m not sure it was a good method, but I did learn to read text more carefully, as, all in all, I ended up retyping some 20,000 words over three days (two pieces for Cat’s workshop, three pieces in the Online Writing Workshop, a tiny piece of my own work, and MOAR Pride and Prejudice).

Hm, yes, that’s what I spent this weekend on, instead of blogging. Retyping. Peering into the souls of other people’s works, and doing my best to critique. If I really do choose this method, I’m going to end up being the slowest critiquer ever.

Anyways, the class: ’twas about revising and rewriting. I actually revise in chunks as I write, but when it comes to revising the whole thing—or even just large parts of the whole thing—I’m at a loss. Cat told us her method of approaching the drafts, the developmental edit, and successive levels of editing/revision, going from the big picture and applying finer and finer grades of sandpaper.

I see in my notes that I’ve basically circled the secret to endings.

I have a lot of notes.

I certainly would have liked to have these notes and then try the revision homework, rather than the other way around. But now I really will get to try them out for realisies.

Next week is the last week. The workshopping of each other’s work might continue, which would be interesting—we have a good mix of folks. At some point we’ll stop thinking of it as our work being put upon the sacrificial stone.

I really wish I’d been able to put together a second, real story for workshop.

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