-
Get a Story Each Month
Want to get a brand new, original Cat Rambo story in your mail each month for as little as $1? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
Tag Archives: online workshops
Why Podcast?
This Sunday, Folly Blaine and I are teaching another podcasting class. Here’s the description: Podcasts, both audio and video, are an increasingly popular way to reach an audience. In this two hour session, learn what you need to know to record and edit your own podcast, how to promote your podcast, and what equipment and software to use. As Folly Blaine, Christy records and acts as Podcast Manager for Every Day Fiction, and has also recorded podcasts for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Wily Writers, and This Mutant Life; Cat is the former fiction editor of Fantasy Magazine and has recorded podcasts for Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fantasy Magazine.
Continue reading
New Podcasting Class With Folly Blaine!
It’s spring in Seattle and I’m celebrating by trying something new. A class that will equip you to record, post, and publicize your own podcast.
Continue reading
What is the First Pages Class?
This is the class that more people have enthused about afterwards than any other, in my experience. It’s team-taught. You give us the first 500 words of your novel. One of the instructors reads it aloud, then both discuss it.
Sounds pretty simple, no? Sure. It’s that simplicity that lets the instructors range across a wide array of tools and strategies.
Continue reading
Class Notes: The Art of the Book Review
The first session of this class went well! Nisi Shawl was a terrific guest speaker.
In talking about reviews, we talked about good reviews and what they do. Here’s the notes from that. Continue reading
Posted in classes & workshops
Tagged art of the book review, book review, nisi shawl, online workshops, writing book reviews
1 Comment
What We Talk About When We’re Not Talking About Writing
Tonight’s the final session of the recent Thursday F&SF class, and it’s the one labelled in my notes as “Everything Else.” All the career stuff, the mechanics of submissions, how to schmooze at conventions, foreign reprints, agents, etc. Here’s the rough outline from my notes.
Continue reading
The Writer’s Toolbox: What Goes In It?
A metaphor that I was exposed to at Clarion West (now nearly a decade ago) still works beautifully for me, and it’s one I use when teaching: the idea of the writer’s toolbox.
In my mind’s eye, it’s a big red metal tool chest, small enough to be carried around, large enough that you wouldn’t want to HAVE to carry it around all the time. Inside, drawers lift out to reveal neatly packed devices and tools, each in their own padded slot.
There’s a blade capable of lopping off awkward paragraphs, and sharper, tinier words designed for work at the sentence level, trimming beginnings till they catch a reader like a fish hook and pull them into the story. There’s a box of punctuation marks, with a special slot for the semicolons. There’s the intricate device of an unreliable narrator, calculated to wobble like a gyroscope yet still remain true to the story’s course. There’s a set of filters, each one a specific point of view, each letting you cast a section in a different light. And a layer of ornamental gadgetry: epigraphs and scraps of poetry. And a valuable gimlet, capable of drilling down to a character’s motivation: the question, “What does s/he WANT?”
Continue reading
Posted in Writing
Tagged genre fiction, literary techniques, online workshops, writer's toolbox
3 Comments
Special Offer: Two Classes For One Price
I just got back from a fabulous weekend in Port Townsend with friends and now I’m about to head off again, but I’ve realized I need to get more sign-ups for the Writing F&SF Short Stories class that starts this … Continue reading
Final Version of the Postcard
So I wanted a postcard to put on con giveaway tables advertising my classes because I’m always trying to scare up new students. I know that once they take one class, they’re very likely to take more from me, which really pleases me, but the trick is getting them into that first one. Yeah, it's not particularly pro looking, but the colors are bright and pretty, so perhaps a few people will be intrigued enough to pick it up. Note that the postcard itself trims some of the edge off, so what you see here is not entirely representative of the final result.
Continue reading
Posted in classes & workshops
Tagged advertising, classes, gimp, online workshops, postcards, publicity, vistaprint
3 Comments
Classes Through the End of the Year
I’m about to head off to Worldcon Thursday morning but I will shill a bit before departing, because I’d like to get these classes filled up in advance in order to avoid having to beat the bushes at the last … Continue reading
