Week 2-- a downer

I don't know what is it, but last night I just wasn't feeling the love. Dan told us that we were going to workshop two stories a week, so that means we each have to go about twice. Then the days when class had been canceled because a visiting writer was going to be presenting at the same time, now are not canceled, instead we're having class at 4:00. I guess that all kind of deflated me a little.

But I think more than that was my dismay when he told us we should be working 2-3 hours a day, not just the original 48 minutes, and we need to schedule our work for a specific time every day. I nearly cried when I thought of it, because the past week the writing has been painful. I think the main part of that is that I just have not been excited about what I was working on, a project I started because I thought it would be a good "literary" thesis project. But I hated it almost from the beginning. I like the idea, but I think I just had not spent enough time letting the idea ferment and not enough research. So my choice was to do one of two things--continue with a project I don't like right now or go back to something I enjoyed working on, something that I doubt is literary.

Today, I came up with a compromise. My short stories naturally tend toward the literary, and I had already been working on the short story collection anyway, so I started work back on one of my favorite unfinished novel, A Ghost Of A Chance. And I wrote more in one 48 minute period than I did all last week. So for the literary, I'll work on the short story collection, for fun, Ghost. After I made that decision, I felt a lot better about working 2 hours a day.

Next week, we workshop tow stories and then go to our first reading. I glanced at the first story, actually it seems to be a novel chapter, and I am afraid I'm not going to like it. *Sigh* This is why I hate workshops! And I stupidly volunteered to submit for the following week. I thought it better to at least get one submission done and over with early on.

Here's to hoping next week is better!