One of my favorite humor writers, Laurie Notaro, is doing an online workshop class for Humor Writing 101, and I signed up. She did a real-life workshop in Phoenix last year and I was super sad that I couldn’t participate. I signed up immediately after I saw the online class because she actually workshops your writing via a Facebook group. I’ve been in the class for a couple of weeks now and I love it. It’s totally self-paced, which is good because I don’t have a lot of time to devote to it, and she takes a really systematic approach to writing and being funny. That really appeals to me because I’m a rule follower in the body of a poet, or maybe vice versa. Anyway, I’m using the workshop to help me craft an essay to submit for publication, Life Thing #9.

I’m pretty excited about the story I’ve decided to tell. It involves a romantic getaway gone awry, my hypochondria, a harrowing shower, and wibbly-wobbly timey wimey cell phones.

The workshop is different from others I’ve done as we’re all creating a new piece together, in stages, following a PDF guiding document and videos that Laurie created. (I’m calling her Laurie now because we’re totes writing buddies.) It’s a different writing process for me as well. I’m looking forward to seeing what becomes of it, and when it’s all over, hopefully, I’ll end up with something I want to submit for publication. I figure I ought to start on that one early so I have plenty of time to get rejected. I’m not putting myself down there. Rejection is a great literary tradition. A Wrinkle in Time was turned down by 26 publishers and J.K. Rowling received 12 rejection letters from editors who are probably still crying about the billions of dollars they could be swimming in Scrooge McDuck style.