F&SF will be hosting a writers workshop run by Gardner Dozois. I imagine that it will be pricey, but the hook is that the stories produced in the workshop will be published at F&SF at the rate of 3 a year. There will be about 100 people per workshop (I take it the workshop will be online) and maybe will be run 3 or 4 times a year. This will improve the odds of getting a good story real consideration (but will not help your average stinkeroo).
I am not a big fan of the writer’s workshop idea. I firmly believe that the Clarion workshop has been teaching hundreds of students how to write Clarion style stories while ignoring other kinds of stories, and what is worse, some of the students became editors and they only accept Clarion style stories. This has resulted in a myopic viewpoint, anti first person, anti omniscient viewpoint, non-technical, sort of writing. It is a sort of bastardized Hemingway approach to the short story that wears on the reader after a few dozen iterations.
I believe in “free range” and “outsider art” approaches to literature. I want to see into the soul of the writer without this A-B-C-done approach. The idea of getting access to Gardner Dozois and F&SF is very tempting, but will probably not be able to afford it and I can justify my cheapness by being philosophically at odds with the whole concept.