Thank you, thank you! One Good Thing has been a longstanding rule of mine, too, especially when my job has sent me to boring-ass training. And the concept of "narrative urgency," so simple and obvious and something I never thought of, has been worth the price of admission. I hate to say it, but I have to.

I mean! Any sentence that doesn't directly make you want to read the following one gets deleted or altered until it does. It's disciplined, it's demanding, and it's brilliant. Best editing tool I've ever heard of.

As to the weightlifting metaphor: excellent reminder. The assignment of speaking to strangers about our writing is painful--he said as much--and it's founded on two false and unexamined premises: one is that it's better to be an extravert than an introvert. The instructor claims to be introverted himself (we all had to cop to our Myers-Briggs types), and says that the effort of acting like an extravert made him a better writer. So the second false premise--typical of privilege everywhere--is that "being more like me," especially if it hurts, is the way to success for someone everyone else.

Well, Mitt, I've got news for ya, baby...

Thank you. I needed the reminder about what dangerous bullshit "no pain, no gain" really is. I had no intention of doing the assignment, but now I feel okay about that! :D