It’s a new year. You’re still alive. You defied every relevant doomsday prophecy and (if you’re a US citizen) avoided America’s more lethal episodes of gun violence.

It’s 2013. You’ve made it.

And yet.

The problem remains… you’re still a shitty writer.

Admit it to yourself. It’s the first step. The next step is signing up for The Loose Cannon. It’s the on-line writing workshop designed and led by me that makes one, and only one promise: at the end of the workshop you will suck a little less than you did before.

It’s not for the weak-minded or weak-willed (read: writers). It’s a lot less talking and a lot more writing. It’s practical, hardcore nuts and bolts education. It has shaped minds and careers of authors all over the world and will continue to do so until the rest of you are dead or better writers than you are now.

It’s not for everyone.

Which is good. Because everyone sucks. Especially authors. The worst thing to be as an author is everyone else.

I’m restructuring TLC slightly this year to encompass one weekend a month. Saturday’s workshop will slant more toward the introductory/novice side in terms of how hard I work you and how much I ask you to process, while Sunday I’ll conduct much tougher, “advanced” workshops designed to pretty much break your brain (in a good way).

Both workshops are and will be open to everybody. You just have to decide you can handle it.

I’ve released the TLC schedule for January/February.

And hot damn, here it is!

JANUARY

Saturday, Jan. 26th, 2:00 p.m. PST: “Dialoguing” Some of you have attended TLC workshops on dialogue before, some of you haven’t. All of you will benefit from working on your grasp of character dialogue. We’ll focus on writing naturalistic dialogue (put simply: things that sound like real people said them), and then branch off into how to make your character’s voices distinct, singular, and dynamic. These are two of the most basic and most important tenets of dialogue writing, and the two that can and will set your story and characters apart and make them stand out in the right way.

Sunday, Jan. 27th, 2:00 p.m. PST: “Editing & Rewriting Power Session” A TLC Power Session means one thing: a lot of writing, over and over, with me giving you more and more to do and less and less time in which to do it. This Power Session will focus on editing and rewriting. We’ll also, obviously, cover tenets and tactics of the editing process and that of which rewriting should and should not consist.

FEBRUARY

Saturday, Feb. 23rd, 2:00 p.m. PST: “They’ll Write On My Tombstone: ‘At Last, A Plot’ ” We’re going to break down the mechanics of how to construct and execute the plot of your story, how to integrate and balance subplots and what a subplot is, and finally and most importantly… what’s the difference between plot and story? This is one of the most important questions to which you need to know the answer if you’re going to fully execute both in your fiction.

Sunday, February 24th, 2:00 p.m. PST: “TLC Challenge: A Short Story In Three Parts” The “TLC Challenge” is something new I’ve come up with, and it’s going to be a doozy. In this workshop, for this first TLC Challenge, you will literally write an entire short story from start to finish. We’ll break it up into three parts (beginning, middle, and end) as you go, review each part as you write it, and I’ll give you notes and guidelines between each mini-writing session to carry forward into the next. You’ll learn a lot, write a lot, and probably have a psychotic break. Don’t come to this one unless you’re ready to do the work. Seriously.

E-mail matt@matt-wallace.com for more details, and to sign up. TLC Annual Passes are also available at a 50% discount off the standard yearly rate, so ask about that if you’re really ready to commit to not sucking.