Overshopped Ten

Before we get to the Monday Ten, here's the winner of the Win What PBW Reads This Week giveaway:

Carolyn Bahm

Carolyn, when you have a chance, e-mail me at LynnViehl@aol.com with your ship-to info, and I will get this box out to you.

Onward:

Ten Signs That You've Attended Too Many Writing Workshops

1. Ask and Ye Shall Sound Smart: The night before the workshop, you write a very long, technical question for the speaker inside your notebook, and read it out loud to make sure it sounds intelligent. You also write a very long, technical back-up question in the event someone asks a question similar to your first one before you can. You already know the answers to both questions.

2. Colorized: You insist on calling red things crimson, scarlet or cherry, blue things azure, lapiz or turquoise, and green things by latin plant names, even when they're not plants. You become infuriated when the Department of Transportation will not change the eye color listed on your driver's license from brown to "terabinth at dusk."

3. Coordinated: You keep a personal supply of ten thousand 5 X 7 notebooks, twenty thousand pens, and every color of Post-It note and index card known to mankind. There is also a dry-erase board on the wall near your computer, along with a set of twelve color dry-erase markers. All of these items are brand new and will never be used.

4. GMC'd: You've outlined the goal, motivation and conflict for your boss, your friends, your family, the dog, the cat, the hamster and the parakeet, but you still can't decide on the GMC for your protagonist.

5. Handouted: You save and store your conference handouts in 4" binders that take up at least one entire bookcase. Once in a while you'll make copies for very special writer friends, but otherwise no one is allowed to touch them or look at them.

6. Is This Love?: You and your spouse separate because you can't think of twenty reasons (besides sex) as to why you should be in love. You cite "lack of character development" as your reason for wanting a divorce.

7. Plot-Savvy: You've never plotted out an entire novel because the ten thousand plotting methods you've already learned may not be the right ones for your story.

8. Saved by Clarion: Your justification for why your manuscript keeps getting rejected changes from all those editors hate me and buy only crap to I can't afford to go to Clarion yet.

8a. Ruined by Clarion: After you go to Clarion, you blame your rejections on 1) all the editors who hate you and buy only crap, and 2) Clarion.

9. Seating Arrangements: You will elbow your way past a fat blonde in stretch jeans and her friend, Heidi on Crack, to grab a seat in the first row in front of the speaker's podium. You will save the seats on either side of you "for friends" and then decide as people come up and ask you if they're taken who gets to sit there.

10. Sound Bites: You own workshop tapes from every con in your genre dating back to the year you started writing. Although you promise every speaker that you'll purchase their tape after the con, at least half of your tapes are bootlegged.

If any of the above might apply to you, try the PBW cure for workshopaholism: for every con you attend, write and submit two manuscripts.

Upcoming on PBW this week:

Your Best Writing Life Now

Self-Promotion That Doesn't Suck

John and Marcia: Darlingalingus

Scene Building 101

That vampire parody I promised, along with other interesting stuff, if I can get into the archives. If I can't, we'll just wing it . . .