Real Writing

I’m going to continue my posts about things I learned at Honesdale, but this is about something I felt at Honesdale. The Whole Novel Workshop was an opportunity of a lifetime. It was a solid week of writing, complete with a brilliant critique of my entire novel, insightful comments from my peers, and spectacular food prepared by other people. I worried that I wasn’t accomplishing enough during my Opportunity Of A Lifetime. Since I returned home, I realized three things.  

1.  A revision of this magnitude requires hard thinking first and hard work second.   

2.  Real writing, for the most part, doesn’t happen in a cozy cottage surrounded by spectacular fall foliage. It happens around teenage rock bands that show up at dinnertime, mountains of laundry, and days when AWOL characters can’t be coaxed onto the monitor.  

3.  Writing must be done for its own sake. In the face of uncertain economic times and the changing publishing industry, the only thing a writer can do is make the writing as good as it can be.