I like to teach. I’ve taught writing workshops for years and I like what it does for the participants and what it does for me. Sure, the majority of my students do not go on to publish masterpieces. But in the cauldron of the workshop, where the heat of careful observation meets trust and goodwill, they have the writing equivalent of a kind of outward bound experience. In my classes at the university, in particular, students would have that wonderful experience of seeing their writing improve visibly and shockingly in a matter of weeks. I love the craft. I love watching people learn it. I love talking about it. It’s what business calls a win-win.

Next week I’m off to Madison, Wisconsin to teach a week long intensive workshop in writing. Last year I taught an sf workshop and while it was adequately attended, the workshop coordinators felt that genre doesn’t seem to provide a huge draw. They did want me to come back and I said I would. They asked me if I would teach a workshop on plot.

I wanted to say, “Have you read my work?”

Let’s just say no one says out of the box, oh that Maureen. She can sure plot. In fact, if anything, I get accused a lot of not having a plot. I know a ton of people for whom plot is the easy part. In my blog I mentioned Walter Jon Williams, who admits that he not only thinks of plots, he dreams them. Sean Stewart, as well-rounded a writer as I know, talks about plot with incredible ease. I love working with him because I just sort of coast along in the slipstream, murmuring yes and nodding.

I’ve bought books of critical theory on narrative structure. They were no help. Some of them were not even any fun. I’ve spent years thinking about plot. It never comes easy.

I think that might be a good thing, at least in the service of teaching plot. There are things I think I do well, and I do them intuitively. I’m equally fascinated by voice, which I think is an extraordinary and often overlooked issue. Narrator. But I don’t know what I’d do if I was required to teach those things. I just…do them. Plot, I have lots of things to talk about. Hints for how to generate one. Exercises about plot. Ways that plot is nested in character and situation. Ways in which plot draws on conventions. Ways in which we now recognize those conventions and telegraph plot, allowing other things to happen around it. Ways in which I have failed. Ways in which I have succeeded. I’m thinking that maybe my difficulties can be a good thing for students.

I’ll know next week.

(I don’t know if I’ll have Internet connection–I was supposed to last week but while I was composing my post for EoB, the Internet connection went down and I never got to post.)