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I’ve failed. I promised to try keeping my blog updated over the course of Odyssey, and that just didn’t happen. But, there’s good reason.

300,000 words – That’s how many words I read of other people’s writing. Twice. As in 600,000. And line edits for every single bit of it.

40,000 words – Written critiques of other people’s writing.

150 hours spent working on critiques.

30,000 words – written for my own stories, six of them. That’s just first draft. I don’t even want to think about the time spent here, subtract the critique time, 5 hours class time per weekday, and 4 hours sleep per night, and the rest was writing/revising.

20,000 words in revision of my stories.

10,000 words of deleted scenes and aborted stories.

Not to mention classwork, exercises, social get togethers, and finding time to eat (13 pounds lost) and sleep (will I ever not feel tired, or stop waking up at 5am?).

By the last two weeks, it was an effort to respond to text messages, let alone email, or to even think about blogging.

So. Sounds terrible, right?

I’d go again, right now, without a second thought. I’ve learned so much that I didn’t even know I didn’t know. I learned that I wrote on instinct before Odyssey. Oh sure, I knew some basic things, and my instincts (I think) were decent, but I had no idea how to tell if I was on the right path with a story, or wildly off kilter. And if I was off, I had no way of knowing how to understand where I went wrong or how to fix it.

I can look at writing in a completely different light now. I’ve kept my instinct (I hope) because it is a great tool, but now it’s tempered with knowledge. Once this MBA’s worth of learning completely sinks in and settles in my brain, I will be a writer and not just a guy who writes.

If you ever get a chance to go to Odyssey, you’ll be exposed to one of the smartest people I’ve ever met–Jeanne Cavelos. She won’t pull punches, but everything she’ll tell you will be delivered kindly, with your writing future in mind and everything she points out will be dead on. There’s no question about writing she can’t answer, and there’s very few of them where she’ll not only give you an answer but also one or two other things that you hadn’t even thought about.

And I haven’t mentioned the friendships. I’ve made friends that I’ll have for life. I’ve changed as a writer, (<– I would’ve missed that comma before Odyssey) and I’ve changed as a person. For the better in both aspects.

If you’ve ever thought about applying for Odyssey, do it. If you have questions, feel free to ask me and I’ll try to answer them.

Enough gushing. I’ll try and post more specifics in the next few days, but no promises this time!

Okay, I haven’t been posting as much as I’d hoped. It’s not because I don’t have the time. I don’t have much but I do have moments here and there. It’s because every time I think about blogging, I think “Ugh, not more writing!” We were told early on in the first week, “If you’re not writing, you’re not writing.” And that mantra is starting to take over. Every time I get up to take a break, I think to myself, “I should be writing.” The group went to dinner tonight and I found myself thinking that before the meal was even served.

But, I don’t mean to make it sound worse than it is. I love it. The people here are great (I have to say that, they stalk me) and it is so refreshing to be constantly having conversations that revolve around writing.

So… this week, I got feedback from the class on my now infamous “Serial killer” story. I think it was received pretty well, but had some (what should have been) obvious problems. The worst was, just because you are having fun with the main character doesn’t mean you should forget about all the others.

I also met with Jeanne (the instructor) on Friday and we went over my first three stories. My strengths seem to be plot and interesting characters, so that was encouraging. My weaknesses: I let my protagonists off the hook too easily, I short change my characters and setting when it comes to description, and I break almost every grammar rule there is because I’m an instinctive (read: lazy) writer. So those are the things I’m working on this week.

We also talked about getting ideas that excite me, i.e. that I want to write about. After brainstorming a bit I think we figured out that I get most of my story ideas while I’m driving home from work. In other words, I need a menial task to occupy the analytical part of my mind so that my subconscious can talk to me (or come as close as it ever does). It should have been obvious, but it took someone else to point it out. And no, don’t suggest exercise. All I think about when I exercise is how much I hate exercise and when will it be over?

One of the stories that Jeanne critiqued was 26 pages with a twist at the end that I thought was pretty clever. I looked through her line edits of my manuscript and on page 6 (PAGE 6!) she wrote a comment in the margin that completely nailed the ending. On Page 6. That’s what I’m up against! Ha ha, I was beyond impressed.

My next story will be given to the class on Tuesday for critique on Wednesday so wish me luck!