Writing Competition and Workshop

I have been so fucking delinquent in updating this blog it isn't funny. Today is the 4th of December and this deadline which is weeks away might as well be fucking seconds away because I am going nowhere fast with this work. Fictions, as a piece of art, seems to have inherited my combination of talent and indiscipline.

The stories, and their alignment, keep writhing and changing shape just as I am about to corral them into what is supposed to be a holistic, fully conceived artistic endeavour - and a completed one. I've pulled off tight shit before but this is going to be tighter than anything I've ever done before.

More important than my personal literary woes is this announcement by Signifying Guyana that she (C.D. Valere) is hosting a Short Story Competition with a significant amount of money being put up for prizes. There is going to be a workshop component of the Prize organised by yours truly, though the details are yet to be worked out. Before the end of the week, Charmaine and I will come to some agreement on the role of the workshop but that sort of minutiae aside, I honestly believe that this is going to be a significant step in the development of local writing.

I am currently working on the 'curriculum' for the workshop, which should take participants through the fundamentals of the short story and how they have changed (or evolved) from Maupassant through Borges to David Foster Wallace. The main point of the workshop however is not going to be teaching but the provision of a space conducive to the production of good literary writing.

More updates on how it goes soon.