Novel workshop, poetry, memoir...all but the beloved short story

This weekend I spent twelve hours at part two of the "how to plan, write and publish your novel." I spent twelve hours at part one earlier in May, but since it was May I didn't bother to write about it. This weekend was awesome because not only did I get some great headway made on my novel, but I also met Swati, a fiction writer and all around totally cool chick. She is one of the fiction mentees this year along with my friend Heather, and though we had been introduced, we'd never really had the opportunity to talk. We have some interesting things in common, and when we went to lunch yesterday it was fantastic.

Outside of working on the novel, I've been writing poetry like freakin' Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. I've been studying Jude Nutter's amazing poems, and reading books that analyze poetry and talk about how to write it. As part of a challange with some of my Zoetrope writing friends, I've written five poems in the last five days. Overall the poems aren't great, but there are some sparkles of possibility in them.

This is all well and good and is certainly enhancing my writing abilities.........but I miss the short story. I miss revising, I miss putting the first word down. I miss cutting up a twenty page manuscript and laying it all out on the dining room table, sorting out scenes and mashing it all back together in a form better than it used to be.

This summer was to be my summer of challanging my writing safety zones--I wanted to reach beyond my comfort levels. I've done that, sure, but along with it I've also discovered that there's absolutely nothing in writing quite like the short story.