Updates

This week was devoted to painting: Today, I had my paintings at the Calyx Distinctive Arts show, and I sold two paintings! More than that, I have the event on my resume, met some amazing artists and was able to network and get info and cards/contacts. Super fun, and a very welcoming, friendly group–and extremely well-organized. Also, it was very cool to spend an entire day in a “gallery” going back to look at the paintings (and phenomenal glass, pottery, jewelry and fabric arts as well) over and over. Learning.

Busy weekend! Today, I taught at the Alexandra Centre (love teaching there–the course, Backstory Secrets, was extremely well-received and fun to teach!) went briefly to IFWA’s biannual writers retreat, the Write-Off (and amazingly, got some good work done), then this evening to the Rothney Astronomical Observatory to read aloud at their annual event. Not only fun, but I had a sale!

Writers retreats aren’t hard to create. A good friend runs one in his home every Thanksgiving long weekend, and I am privileged to be one of the invitees! Solved a plot problem at the gym (on the treadmill–dictated into my mini-tape recorder) and got good work done last night. Have another plot problem, but this one isn’t as tough and I have half the solution. Something to work on today.

Just came home from a style guide workshop with TWIG, through CAFE. Very interesting information, and the result was: I developed a style guide for my own editing.

I’ve noticed in a number of the courses I teach that I expect students to understand what a scene is, and they don’t always. So, I pitched a one-day “Basics of Scene Construction” course to the Alexandra Writers Centre, and Robin picked it up. I taught it today and it was great. I could easily have made it a two-day course, though for the material I had and the exercises and discussion. It was fun!