Hi friends!
To start with the most exciting news, my speculative fiction poem “The Nameless Woman” was just published in my favorite magazine, Strange Horizons. As you can imagine, I’m dancing around and shrieking in an extremely undignified manner.
I’ve been working overtime during the summer, so have had to put the blog on hold until September. But I did manage to fit in an online flash fiction workshop with Clarion West. Here’s what else I’ve been up to, and upcoming content for blog posts:
I made some wonderful new writing friends and colleagues through Clarion West, and am setting up a Discord server for us to continue sharing critiques and resources (if you’re a beginning/intermediate writer looking for community and willing to commit to a monthly online critique exchange, please reach out for an invite!)
Through the workshop, I produced 6 short stories over the course of 6 weeks. The fast turnaround, 1000 word limit for each story, and above all the group feedback pushed me far past the level I’d been able to get to on my own so far. Perhaps the most important lesson I learned was the necessity of good critique buddies!
Overall, I was blown away how much free and low cost programming and support Clarion West offers new writers, and can’t recommend them enough. I’ll also be sharing notes and reflections from the workshop when I resume blogging.
Finally, I got to attend an in-person lecture and workshop with one of my favorite authors, Carrie Vaughn. They say to never meet your heroes, but in this case I’m so glad I did. Vaughn turned out to be not only a fantastic writer, but a skilled teacher and beyond that a truly lovely person with a kind and generous heart. I’ll soon be sharing the writing exercises we got from this lecture, and her insightful response to the question I’ve held onto for five years since I first read Bannerless and never thought I’d actually get to ask (!)
I’m currently reading On Writing Horror by the Horror Writers Association, The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, and Pale Fire by Nabokov. I’m also re-reading several books on writing technique and want to do a review of the most helpful ones, including a few surprising finds, since when I first started this year’s goal to begin learning to write professionally, I remember the difficulty of putting together a curriculum without clear guidance.
My writing goals for the rest of the year are: apply the critiques I received to my flash fiction pieces and revise 3 for submission, focus on scene in September (write 4 scenes/week), focus on horror in October (write 1 horror short/week), workshop 3 short stories with my new critique group, and write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel for NaNoWriMo.
Hope everyone is having a great summer, remember to enjoy what there is to enjoy!
Austin
AUSTIN DEWAR 