Signed up today for another writing seminar, that I’m especially looking forward to:  How Hundreds of Writers Have Leveled Up Their Craft More in 6 weeks Than 6 Years of Trying (and Failing) on Their Own with Tim Grahl from Story Grid.

I’m currently listening to the Writing Made Easy podcast where Savannah Gilbo interviews Tim Grahl about his newest fiction book and he said something that really spoke to me: ” But once I started writing the book, my goal was to just make each scene as good as it possibly can be, and he [Shawn Coyne] did do a line by line edit and amped up parts of the book as well, but for the most part it’s what I wrote and I think more than anything, people don’t understand how important that one skill is is like can you write a scene that is so compelling that people turn the page and read the next scene and, based on everything I see coming across my desk, most people can’t do that.” (Italics are mine.)

Savannah highlights this powerful quote at the beginning of the podcast: “One thing that drives me crazy about writing is that in almost every other art form we separate performance and practice as two separate activities, and in writing we just smush them together. So it’s like I’m going to learn how to write while I write something I want to publish. That’s like saying I’m going to learn how to play the guitar while playing a concert. Like that doesn’t make any sense. I wish more writers would stop trying to produce their work in progress and just become really good at the skill of scene writing.” (Italics are mine.)

So the goal for this year is to finish the damn book. The goal for next year is to practice writing compelling scenes. I’d love to take the 12 week course that Story Grid is offering but I can’t even imagine what the cost would be, especially since they’re offering a $250 discount if you do whatever. Plus you have to apply to take the course. Hopefully this free seminar will have some good information for me to start with!