The thing about resolutions for the new year is they’re generally forgotten by mid January. It’s why, traditionally, I never used to bother. You can’t break a promise you don’t make. But lo, I’ve reached mid January and I’m about to tick one of my resolutions off the list.

I’m heading to a writing workshop. It’s for novels and it’s called Taming the Beast. It’s offered through the Writers Victoria Summer School and I figured since I’m a member, and I live in a City of Literature, I may as well try to partake and get out of my usual routines.

Pretty sure Sonia Orchard will have interesting advice and things to say. Reading some of her  novel, The Virtuoso, I thought it not so dissimilar to what I’ve been trying to do in my novella. Not with the specifics, but writing fiction about a historical (real) person. Her character was a real pianist from the 20th century, mine was a real poet from 4000 BC, same but different.

The point though, is not my novella, but to get back to my NaNoWriMo project. I’ve got the 50,000 words or so, but it is indeed a beast in need of taming, and finishing.

Tis said you ‘earn’ a herald like this if you fulfil your writing resolutions.

This is what is offered:

How to clarify your novel’s themes and goals

Finding you narrative voice

Understanding narrative drive

Troubleshooting and problem solving techniques

Mapping out the path ahead

Fairly certain I’ve got the narrative voice, but will happily hear all about the others so this novel is completed. I’ve got a beginning, I’ve got bits of middle chapters, and multiple endings. Really, if I sort out the drive, themes and goals, and map out what I need to do, it will solve itself, (this is the positive self talk happening).

Chart of my temperature as panic and dissatisfaction with the novel project rises and contracts. 

There are benefits to attending these sort of things, like meeting new people with similar interests, getting new perspectives, and even learning a thing or too. But whatever happens, I’ll let you know how it goes, and if it will help kick this thing I’m constructing out of imagination, panic, and mild confusion into an actual novel.