Rio Hondo
I’m attending my first writers workshop, and I can say it’s _great_. Right now I’m sitting in the common room at the Snow Bear at the Taos Ski valley, watching the snow come down, and sipping a cup of coffee.
This workshop was founded and is run by the amazing Walter Jon Williams. Rio Hondo is known for the high level of critique, but also for the food. OMG, let me tell you about the food.
We arrived on Sunday afternoon, and that evening Walter treated us to an Indian feast. Chicken with almonds, lamb, saffron rice, curried watermelon (I know it sounds strange, but it was delicious) chick peas in this amazing sauce.
Since then Maureen McHugh has treated us to pork roast with roasted potatoes and carrots. (The potatoes were actually pretty good, which for me is high praise because I hate potatoes.) Catherynne Valente served shrimp pasta in a cilantro, white wine, cream sauce, and a salad that consisted only of fresh tomatoes, onions, zucchini, cilantro, and fresh pineapple. Dessert was fresh mangos sprinkled with pumpkin seeds in dolce de leche,. Wednesday night Walter made shrimp remoulade and black roue gumbo with a dessert of Bananas Foster. I’m up tonight, and I’m more worried about how my dinner will be received than I was over the critique of my story. I’m making coq au vin and a vegetable pot pie. In fact I cooked it yesterday so it would have a day to enhance the flavors.
Okay, enough about food, and back to writing. This is an amazing group of people. Many of them are folks from Critical Mass — Ian Tregillis, Daniel Abraham, Walter Jon — which helped calm my nerves. I also had a good friend, Sam Butler. The wonderful new people I’ve met are Maureen McHugh, Catherynne Valente, Kristin Livdahl, and Allen Deniro.
The level of talent and professionalism is profound, and I got great notes on my story. What was interesting was that the notes I got — add these two critically, dramatic scenes — took me back to my initial instinct. I had written those two scenes, then because I’m not great at short stories I second-quessed myself and took them out. I’m hoping I have the story on the thumb drive I brought up so I can start to work.
As I was writing the story I found myself thinking of it in terms of a thirty minute screenplay. Which meant I’d envision a scene, and decide not to include it because “I just didn’t have the budget for it.” Unfortunately, I took it too far, so now I have two scenes to add back in. Still, as a method to help me overcome my fear of this form I’m going to stick with looking at the budget.
The other thing I tried was intercutting as if I had a camera. between a story in the past and the man listening to the story in the present. That part did seem to work. (I will post this on my website under works once I have it revised because it is an Edge story about a Paladin in 300 ad.)
In addition to the food and the work, there was hiking. But more on that later.