Many thanks to editor Matt Potter at Truth Serum press for selecting this story to include in the True Anthology, first published 15 February 2017.

As many writers do, I workshop often because it’s a great way to connect with other writers practicing the same form and, if I’m lucky, I also get some practical feedback from a really great instructor. Can all those conditions be met in one place at one time? Yes. Yes, they can.

Being an abstract-random learner, I met my dream workshop leader that summer.  I dedicate this story to the life-force of awesomeness who goes by the name Arlaina Tibensky. This story is an homage to one wonderful workshop I had at Gotham’s 8th Avenue headquarters, and is also an exercise in how to have dialogue tag action.

One day, my workshop notes looked like this sketch. So, it’s fun to go back and remember my classmates and their likes and looks. I remember one day just watching what my shopmates did with their hands as they talked. And that’s really what this story is about. What hands do when an artist speaks.

I got a lot of great feedback on the full-length short stories I was able to workshop, by the way, and two have gone on to publication!  “Jean, 1947” was published in Change Seven magazine, and “Don’t Upset the World’s Best Second-Rate Writer” went to Soliloquies Anthology.

This story, “Today’s Workshop Leader,” is the flash fiction about writing those stories, and the advice I got about world-building and characterization.

Thanks as well go to my fellow classmates Chad, Amy, Ray, Yvonne, Thomas, Karly, and Jenny. Workshopping online has its pros and cons, and I used it often, but there’s really no substitute to sitting at a table in the real world and hearing the music, having the laughs, passing the papers around.

Plus: New York City. Inspiration by the square foot.
As of now, the story is available in a paperback edition.  Here is a link for more information.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. I feel sometimes like I’m whistling in the wind with these posts, but I like to rememory here. :o)