Wow it's been a long time since I last posted here! So you'd think a lot has happened (just don't even get me started on the computer issues)... well, one great thing, one good thing, everything else's been pretty dull - unless you count the nose-bleeding volume of the music at someone's 21st at the pub the other night (it doesn't happen often, but I have sensitive hearing and a tendency to want to sleep sometime before five-thirty in the morning). Oh and the uh, lawn mower race.

I swear I'm not joking.

Aye, so really, the good news is I got through April Fools and got past my word count goal of 15 000, reacing 15 307 words in total. And then did SoCNoC (Southern Cross Novel Challenge) in June, reaching 20 764 words, with 29 236 left to go. I then went on to win Zing Thing in July, so overall I'm - by my standards - a very busy writer, and a very happy little camper.

Also, I signed up for a writing class, Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways, and it's fantastic! I didn't come into the course with many expectations - different schools I was in (way back when. Ha!) would hire authors to present a class on writing, and a few times, the English teachers themselves had a go at it (ironically enough, the only ones who tried that were published authors themselves). Those classes were interesting, but nothing actually stuck. And unfortunately, I remember virtually nothing they taught me.

Which is the reason this class just blew me away.

Besides the advantage of not being in a classroom with someone at the head of the room trying to make themselves heard over the class' usual furore, it's the approach.

Holly incorporates left-brain thinking and right-brain thinking - the muse and the conscious mind. When I go to work on one of the lessons, I'm not sitting down making a list of whatever I happen to think would fit the story. I'm actively evolving it, I'm involved in it.

These plans are something that I actually can (and do) care about, because unlike the approaches I've been taught in the past, and the approach I've been using up until now, it's creative rather than analytical. I've learned that intuition really won't ruin my story - and I've come to realise that the biggest thing I've been doing wrong, was I wasn't feeling enough, I wasn't identifying with the stories I was working on. And I honestly believe that was why I've failed to turn so many great ideas I've had into stories which worked out. I was enthusiastic about the ideas, but I wasn't really... hm... relating to the characters or storyline in the way I needed to. I'd lit a fire in the fireplace, but I'd neglected to remember the wood.

For most people, that would be a redundant statement, but for me... well, it's an eye-opener. And it's only up to Lesson 5! I've been having fun with this new approach (clustering in particular), and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of it brings.