My Life as an Armadillo: Essays on Workshopping and Writing

By Matthew Howard

My Life as an Armadillo collects my thoughts from 2016 to 2021 about writing and becoming a better writer by workshopping with others. It is not a complete guide to style nor a manifesto on how to run your own critique group, but I share it in hopes that you can learn from my experience and apply the ideas you find most helpful.

Essays are grouped into four main sections: Group Participation and Leadership, Starting a Major Work, Basic Revisions for Style, and Style and Substance. You will find guidance for leading a workshop group and getting the most out of participating in one, refining your prose based on style tips commonly given in workshops, and overcoming the fundamental challenges many writers struggle with.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Howard
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005019808

Matthew Howard

Matthew is a mammalian vertebrate who occupies spacetime, where he possesses mass and generates electromagnetic fields. He absorbs and reflects photons, and is currently recycling his own body weight in adenosine triphosphate every day.

Book preview

My Life as an Armadillo:

Essays on Workshopping and Writing

Matthew Howard

2021

My Life as an Armadillo: Essays on Workshopping and Writing.

© 2021 by Matthew Howard. All Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Ebook Edition ISBN-13: 978-1-00-501980-8

Paperback Edition ISBN-13: 979-8-72-806539-5

26K words.

The Benefits of a Fresh Perspective and Writing a Killer Pitch appeared in their original form in A Passion for Planning: Nine Things I Wish I Knew Before Making My First Book © 2017, 2019, and 2020 by Matthew Howard.

Knowing Your Narrator and Exploring Other Narrators appeared in their original form in Virtually Yours: A Meteor Mags Memoir © 2019 and 2020 by Matthew Howard.

Beyond the State of Being appeared in its original form on the blog MarsWillSendNoMore.com circa 2016. Workshop Leadership and Culture and Eight Mistakes Workshops Taught Me to Improve appeared in their original form on a now-defunct blog circa 2017.

The four points of Meeting Etiquette in Workshop Leadership and Culture were formalized in meetings with the assistant organizers of the Armadillo Authors Workshop in 2020 and distributed to all active members.

With gratitude to my friends and fellow wordsmiths in the Armadillo Authors Workshop.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Group Participation and Leadership

1. The Benefits of a Fresh Perspective

Honesty and Expertise

Discovering Blind Spots

Varied Perspectives

Connecting with Others

2. Getting the Most from Critique Groups

3. Guidance for Giving Feedback

4. Guidance for Receiving Feedback

5. Workshop Leadership and Culture

Meeting Etiquette

Part II: Starting a Major Work

6. First Things First: Memoirs and Novels

Memoirs: Your Personal Story

The Despair of the First Novel

Conclusion: Questions to Answer

7. Writing a Killer Pitch

Seven Elements of a Killer Pitch

Examples and Analysis

Conclusion

8. The Writing No One Sees: Behind-the-Scenes Work of Storytelling

Are You Stuck?

Final Product Versus the Foundation

Freewriting: Dance Like No One Is Watching

Structure: Outlines and Their Alternatives

Workshops and Classes

Storyboards, Maps, and Timelines

Synopses and Scene Summaries

Adding Depth to Characters

Character Bios

Character Interviews

Writing Characters out of Context

Character Poetry

Character Memories

Conclusion: Writer’s Block is a Myth

Part III: Basic Revisions for Style

9. Eight Mistakes Workshops Taught Me to Improve

10. Beyond the State of Being

11. Twelve Common Prose Pitfalls to Revise

Part IV: Style and Substance

12. Simultaneous Action

13. Showing Versus Telling

14. Knowing Your Narrator

15. Exploring Other Narrators

Third Person Limited

Second Person

First Person

Unreliable Narrators

Conclusion

16. Bringing Body Language to Life

Conclusion

End Notes

Introduction

My Life as an Armadillo collects my thoughts from 2016 to 2021 about writing and becoming a better writer by workshopping with others. It is not a complete guide to style nor a manifesto on how to run your own critique group, but I share it in hopes that you can learn from my experience and apply the ideas you find most helpful.

You might disagree with what I have to say, and you can undoubtedly think of exceptions to any rules I give you. Consider them guidelines instead of rules. What makes for good writing is a matter of opinion and preference. So is what makes for a good workshop or critique group. No one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter solution works for everyone.

If you want to make your own rules, then do it. That’s what I did. And if you want to break them, then do it creatively and with purpose.

But in my years as an editor, author, and consultant on all things related to writing and self-publishing, I’ve noticed some things work better than others. Most of this book is built around solutions to problems I’ve helped people overcome many times.

I didn’t always get the solutions right the first time. Despite studying technical writing and professional editing at the graduate level, founding and leading a workshop for four years, publishing more than two-dozen of my own works, and guiding award-winning authors through the process of self-publishing, I am still learning. Every author I work with brings something unique to my life, and every project has its own set of challenges.

As a result, I developed much of my philosophy about editing, writing, and workshopping in response to new situations, tested it on different projects, refined it through the years, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

It helps that I took notes along the way.

I don’t expect you to take my word for anything, unless you’ve worked with me before and know that I’ve earned your trust. What I expect you to do is what I did: Try everything for yourself, see what works and what doesn’t, and reach your own conclusions.

But if what I share with you shines light on your path and helps you find your way, if it helps you make sense of the chaos or inspires you to keep taking your craft to the next level, if it sparks an idea that leads to your own unique solutions, then just do one small thing for me if you can.

Take what you learned and help someone else.

PART I: GROUP PARTICIPATION AND LEADERSHIP

1: The Benefits of a Fresh Perspective

Workshop often means a paid seminar or a creative writing session, but I am a big believer in a different kind of workshop: groups of writers meeting to read each other’s manuscripts and provide suggestions on how to revise the works before publishing.

In Phoenix, many of these feedback groups meet weekly or more often. I attended dozens of sessions at three locations with the Central Phoenix Writing Workshop in 2016, and the experience inspired me to start my own weekly group in February 2017: The Armadillo Authors Workshop. I led that workshop for four years until I handed over the reins of leadership in January 2021. We survived a few disruptive attendees (and their removal) in our early stages, the loss of the original venue from which we took our name, and—through the efforts of members who helped set up virtual meetings—even the loss of our second venue due to the viral pandemic that swept the nation in 2020.

What sustained the group? A mutual commitment to growing and learning together as writers.

The constructive criticism and insightful suggestions I received in these mutual critique sessions were transformative for my writing. If you’ve never been to a workshop like this, or you’re on the fence about whether you could get something out of it, let me share what I discovered.

Honesty and Expertise

Family, friends, and colleagues can provide valuable feedback on our manuscripts. But unless we work or live with professional writers, our co-workers and loved ones lack the attention to the craft of writing that editors and other authors bring to the table. When we ask for our best friend’s opinion or hire a branding guru, we are unlikely to receive guidance on the fundamentals of story structure, the mechanics of punctuation, or examples of relevant works we could study. For those, we need writers.

Writers in a workshop usually don’t know us like people in our social circles do, so they can give more direct feedback. They focus on our writing, where friends and coworkers also consider how their feedback might affect our personal or professional relationship. People who love us can turn a blind eye to the flaws in our writing, but a workshop will examine them and offer possible solutions.

Being outside our social network means we gain an opportunity to see how total strangers react to our work. Why is this important? Because people who buy our books will be strangers, too. They won’t have the context of having known us for years, and we won’t have a chance to stand beside them and explain any parts of the work that aren’t clear.

It can be a challenge to