I signed up last night for Robert J. Sawyer's A Thematic Approach to Science Fiction workshop. I'm looking forward to this in a big way, as he's been one of my favorite writers for longer than I care to think about just now. An unfortunate side effect is that I've been over-preparing outlines and stuff all day, and so I don't have any new story parts to post tonight.
The good news is the workshop is at the end of the month, so hopefully soon I'll become that much better at what I'm trying to do.
I'm not sure what form the workshop takes, but it's several hours long so it should be fun to find out. I've heard nothing but good things about RJS' workshops, and it's been a LONG time since I did one.