Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

My Trip South

I’ve been a slacker the past two weeks regarding my blog. In life there are priorities and blogging is not always at the top of my list, although it is an important aspect of my writing. A writer should write every day and not make excuses.

In the past two weeks I've been traveling by car down South to see my in-laws, daughters and their families. Linda and I try and do this yearly. We don’t get to see them often enough and life changes while our attention is turned elsewhere. My daughters have good husbands and provide excellent parenting and as I often tell them... one of the objectives to raising kids is not “Screwing Them Up.”

Concurrently with the trip I've been doing reviews associated with my New Horizon’s Academy class, The Exploratory Writing Workshop. Then, there was the driving, usually ten hours for the five days we were on the road. To do the class we would stop at McDonalds and I would send the reviews, written in the car, to the students.

These reviews are not that hard to do because for each lesson there is a checklist of what I expect a “Vignette” to contain and then I comment on what I liked overall and considerations for improvement. It is like a quilting workshop and the format of the class allows me to deal with a full range of writers on the road of their professional development.

I like this format because it allows me to offer feedback to the occasional writer who is further along than me, as well as those who have well developed skills and those who don't.

As I facilitate the workshop the process becomes ever clearer in my mind and at some point I’ll have to go back into the lessons and post up all the “Lessons Learned.” Having said that, I have to say that the forward looking vision that Karen and I showed in course development wasn’t half bad and we put together a pretty good workshop. The attrition however, is high. I’m lucky to finish with a third of the students who started. In a sense this is disheartening but in another it allows me to focus on those with the time and commitment to make the investment. Writing the reviews for each weekly lesson is hard, but no harder than what the students must accomplish in completing their lessons. Several of my students have taken the class more than once and their understanding of tactical, operational and strategic writing shows it.