"You Marry a Man for the Same Reason You Divorce Him"

It's the end of the first day of a week long writing workshop in Utah. Many moments of inspirations and learning so far. I already feel like it's been worth it!

In morning critique sessions we discuss our work with 13 other writers and the instructor, Emily Wing-Smith. One woman got consistant feedback that her descriptions were beautiful, captivating, brilliant, etc. etc......but....a few of us felt that we wanted more action/dialogue to break up the description. We got a little lost in the setting. Emily agreed with that assessment and gave the quote I wrote above. Her mother had given her that pearl of wisdom years ago. If you marry a man (or woman) for being fun and social, you'll divorce him for being a flirt. If you marry a man because of his generosity, you'll divorce him because he can't say no to anyone and isn't available to you. Seems true to me.

But back to writing. Basically, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. This writer's brilliant prose became cumbersome and took away from the character's journey. As readers, we need variety.

Jer and I discussed what that meant for us over lunch, (At the same place we ate dinner the night before--speaking of variety!) She said that my gift is being a concise writer-but it's very difficult for me to expand on anything I've written, so it's also my weakness. I thought her gift is her incredible imagination-which unfortunately keeps her from committing to a story line as it's hard to decide which way to go. I challenge anyone reading this to see if you can find your own strength/weakness point. (You might need someone else to tell you though!!!)

Another tidbit. I highly recommend "How to Write Killer Fiction" by Caroly Wheat. I did a workshop with Ann Cannon and she did an exercise based on some things she got out of that book. Her point was to compare writing a scene with storyboarding that movie makers do before shooting any film. She gave us a one page, very detailed outline, of questions to help create a scene---it is practical, easy, fun, and when you finish the exercise, you can pick tiny tidbits from the writing to help your scene expand in ways you might not have been able to see earlier.

I'm very proud of Jer and I. Instead of lying around the hotel room tonight watching tv, we are at Starbucks (the internet in our hotel room doesn't work!) writing!

However my brain is fuzz so I'm signing off.