Last Saturday, before I got sick, I did attend a writing workshop. It was fairly interesting in that the speakers would present for about 10 minutes and then we'd have 50 minutes to practice whatever technique they'd introduce. I'd say the trickiest technique is writing from memory -- if I were writing a memoir it'd be fine -- because I think there's a tendency to go to The Issues and then Writing Becomes Therapy. This isn't to say that Writing Therapy might not bee a bad thing, but if one is trying to write fiction, it can become detracting. I spoke with E.S. after this concept, and she said that she had to make a conscious effort to recall happy things so that she wasn't continually rehashing Issues. I spoke with N.F. and she pointed out that Writing Therapy is a good thing for the self, and that not everything written has to be for publication.
The other interesting session was a session on compound sentences. It was refreshing to hear a presenter giving permission to write convoluted prose with lots of commas.
