Confession Time...

This month's MasterClass is Neil Gaiman. You all know how much I LOVE Neil Gaiman. He is the whole reason why I signed up to do these MasterClass things in the first place. I love his writing, I love hearing him read his writing, I love listening to him talk about writing. All of it.

But...

It turns out that he is not very good for my writing.

Let me be clear, the class is amazing. He is actually teaching things. Good solid writerly type things. The workbook that goes along with the class has all of these exercises that will make you a better writer. Questions about character motivation, conflict, depth. Worksheets to help you map out your novel. Really brilliant things.

Which always leave me a little flummoxed.

I write for fun. I write for mental health. I write to amuse myself and hopefully amuse you all as well.

I accepted a long time ago that I will never write for money. That the odds of anything of mine being published are slim to none. Even with submitting for contests (I sent in something for the first quarter today, by the way, go me!). I know that a novel length story is out of my grasp. Yet I still write. I still have worlds and people and things to share. I'm just not ever going to make a living at this.

A big part of that are the things in the course from Neil Gaiman that I am taking right now.

I am not a craft person. I'm just not. And because I don't have to be I can ignore it all. The outlines, the questions, the paths, all of that stops writing from being a fun thing I like to do. It becomes homework. And worse than that it becomes a bore. So I tend to skip it. And because I am just writing and posting I don't even feel badly about it.

Usually.

Except while I am taking this course and listening to him and looking at what he does to make the beautiful worlds that he makes and then looking at my stuff and thinking... eh. I should probably try harder at what I do. I should probably take it a little more seriously. I should probably actually have an idea about what I want to say before I start typing. I should probably join one of those writer group things where you exchange work and critique it and become better at what you do. Just so many things that I probably should be doing. Motivation type things, right?

Which should, in theory, lead itself to beautifully crafted worlds inhabited by three dimensional people who have needs and desires but instead leads to this being only the 4th blog I've written all month and the fiction I've written was a story at the beginning of the month before I started the course and three 53 word stories (yes, 53 words) for a contest. That's it. Because I sit and stare at the blank page and think "I should..."

So....

Next month when I can process everything he tried to teach me and just take the fun parts out I will apply them to what I do. I hope. Or I will fret about every word I put out and give myself the first case of writer's block with Neil Gaiman's accent...