Working on the first workshop assignment
I've written over 500 words on the first workshop assignment (the target word count), and I like where it's going, but it needs a lot of work. I've managed to come up with a scene in which setting is important, but I'm having trouble getting all the scene description worked into the, admittedly slow, action.
Part of the problem is that I've got "tell a story" working against "write a scene that demonstrates that you can write setting description." This setting description may be adequate for the scene, but it's not adequate for the assignment. Which may mean I picked the wrong scene, but I'm going to keep working with it... it may not have enough setting description.
Workshop first-day let-down
Well, that was anti-climactic. I've been looking forward to this online workshop, and part of what I've been anticipating has been the student interaction.
When I logged onto the workshop yesterday morning, there were only three other students enrolled, which wasn't promising. By mid-afternoon, it had grown to seven, so that wasn't bad... seven seems like a nice number. I have to critique other students' work, and critiquing more than six is probably more than I want to do. (I guess people wait until the last minute to make the decision to enroll.)
So I introduced myself on the message board, as requested by the instructor, and I waited. And waited. And complained to Twitter, and waited some more. More than 24 hours later... still no other introductions. It's just weird.
Part of the deal is that I have some questions I want to ask about the assignment, but since my questions go in the same space as the introductions, I thought I'd wait until the introductions were done before I cluttered up the forum with assignment discussion. Maybe I should just ask my questions.
Maybe I need to find a better social outlet, if lack of social interaction in an online class is bugging me so much.
Waiting… for the workshop
I hate waiting! :) The writing workshop starts a week from today, I've been enrolled for three days, and already I'm darned impatient.
Fortunately, even though the "Lecture Hall" isn't open yet, all six "lectures", reading and writing assignments, and optional creative exercises are available. So I can start working ahead... I just can't interact with anybody in the workshop yet.
Got the text book from Amazon on Tuesday, but haven't had a lot of time to read it... mostly the introduction. A 4-week-old orphaned kitten, attacked by my stupid "but it's all that I know!" dachshund, has hampered my sleep. As has my mother-in-law being in the hospital with pneumonia and my wife spending a lot of her time up there. Tuesday, when MIL went into the hospital, Karen didn't come home until 12:30 AM. I was still up, my 8-year-old son got up, and my kitten was up. I think I managed to get to bed at one, but Karen was having sinus trouble (and ended up sleeping in the recliner). I don't think I got to sleep until two, and I got up at four to feed the kitten (who didn't want to eat, adding to my stress.) I think I might have gotten four hours of sleep on Tuesday night. So yesterday, even though I took the day off to run Nathan to the dentist, then out to my mom's, then the kitten to the vet... then some laundry and all, when I laid down to read the book, I fell asleep. And woke up minutes later to my wife coming in the door and the Leak Frog in the basement screaming that there was water on the laundry room floor. (Somehow I'd dropped a couple paper towels into the utility sink the washer drains into and it had overflowed. Not a huge deal, since the floor is kept clear after the last time we had overflow troubles. Just had to mop up a half-gallon of water.)
I crashed at 10:30, got up again at two to take care of the kitten, and then up for good at 6:30 to take care of kitten, ducks, and get started with work by 7:30. (Yay, working from home, but I like to start at 7:30 so I can be done by 4:30 and still have an hour lunch.) While I slept well last night, aside from the 2 AM kitten feeding, now that I've made it to the end of work, I'm definitely dragging from lack of sleep on Tuesday night. I'd like to go read, but I think I'm going to take a nap.
So, while this post was supposed to be about the workshop, it's managed to focus on the workshop about as much as I have, and for much the same reasons. :)