As part of PBW’s Left Behind & Loving It virtual workshop series, I’ll be doing my very first workshop here on my blog at the end of next month.

Oh noes! Coherence…I’ll has to has it!

It doesn’t have a snazzy workshop title yet, but I’ll be talking about punching up word choices in the second draft to add humor, show instead of tell, strengthen voice, and deepen characterization in deep POV. I’ll have some examples of my own, some examples I’m going to ask a couple of authors for permission to use, and, if anybody wants to post a paragraph or two or three, hopefully some hands-on stuff.

I’m pretty excited about it because it’s one of the more fun aspects of writing, while giving it oomph at the same time.

In the meantime, I’ll be over here in the corner trying to apply it to my own stuff while hiding from two children who really can’t stand each other this week and a clingy dustmop of a dog.

Speaking of the dog…she’s learned that if she comes running up doing the mad pee-pee dance, I’ll drop whatever I’m doing and take her outside RIGHT NOW. No, she doesn’t have to pee. She wants to play and roam the yard and lay in the street and chew her stick. But she KNOWS Mom can’t ignore the mad pee-pee dance.

Then, after I’ve dragged her back in the house and gone back to what I was doing, she gives the short kid the “I went potty, where’s my yum-yum look?” and he gives her one!

Mini has exceptionally well-trained humans.

I’m thinking about litterbox training her. Srsly.