Manuscript Workshop

Tackett Family Rafting - 1999

I have been working on my collection of National Park essays for five years now. It covers a time period of 25 years - 1989 to 2013, so this is the year I will put the finishing touches on it.

I'm taking a Manuscript Workshop through Barbara Simpson's writing group, Sunset Coast Writers. There are four of us in the group, plus Barbara and I am workshopping this national park manuscript.

We meet on a Saturday afternoon every other week and I submit 10 pages of my manuscript for their critiques. So far I have submitted only material I already have written, while I work separately on a few more pieces that I have in the pipeline. I will also add work from our trip to Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia this summer before I call it done.

They have several great suggestions and almost universally want more information than I'm giving them.  Because of my current schedule and the fact that we only have about nine weeks before we head out to California, I'm not even going to try to take their suggestions for revision until this summer after we are back and I've tackled the new material I want to write.

Then, I anticipate a fun summer spreading out my notes and their notes and starting at the beginning and looking at it with fresh eyes.  My goal is to have it completely revised and ready to search for a publisher no later than October 1. We'll see how that works out. Goals are good.