Roanoke Regional Writers Conference

First Writers Conference of 2014 – Part Two

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To read Part One of this post, click here.

I’m a person who still reads two print newspapers a day (and a lot more online), so Radford professor Bill Kovarik‘s workshop, “Who Killed the American Newspaper and Where Do We Go From Here?” was something I really wanted to hear. However, Kovarik decided the first half of that title had been done already (He blames corporate media for their own demise, by the way.) and focused instead on the second half. His solution to the fact that corporate media no long meet our needs is a media co-op, or community media, citizen journalists who report on the communities where they live. The press, Kovarik said, has always been “cloistered, told not to join local groups, to keep aloof from the community to further their impartiality.” He believes that more involvement would lead to more honest reporting and not necessarily by trained journalists. He envisions shared equipment and broadcast time, but I’m a bit skeptical. Media co-ops sound great if your only interest is your local community, but I’m a world citizen.

Tiffany Trent, former Virginia Tech creative writing teacher, has found her niche in writing young adult fantasy and sci-fi novels, and her workshop, “SciFi and Fantasy in YA,” offered a great exposition on world-building. YA scifi and fantasy is “where it’s at,” she said. “It’s where the most exciting things in writing are happening right now.” However, to stand out you have to build a credible world, whether right here on earth or elsewhere, which the discerning readership of this genre can grasp. “You can take the usual or universal and give it a slight twist,” she said, “like changing gender stereotypes. For example, make the men the faceless, nameless ones. Or you can create something completely alien.” She encouraged YA writers to watch the love triangles–“that’s become a YA trope, and I’m concerned that it’s been overdone.” There are primal emotions/events–birth, death, fear of the dead–which can be used in fresh and interesting ways, as long as you “ground it in the real.” When describing a world you’ve built, your language has to be specific not general. Using your own experiences with the unusual or the odd in everyday life is a good starting point for creating a new world.

I’m not much of a YA fan, but Trent’s points on world-building were thoughtful and applicable to just about any genre. This was a fresh and engaging workshop with lots of helpful Q&A. I’m certainly going to try one of her books.

My final workshop for the day was “The Rebellious Essay,” presented by Cara Ellen Modisett. This was quite the crash course on the various types of essays–experiential, observation, or recall versus reflective. All essays, Modisett said, “are an attempt at making sense of a subject. The act of writing is an act of thought.” Inexperienced essayists tend to be linear, she said, “they start at A and progress to Z. However, the way people think and perceive may be A to E to L, or M to Z to C. Your essays should reflect that.” And be more interesting, I’m sure. An essay also has to be about more than one thing. “Two subjects equals two-dimensional, three subjects three-dimensional, and so on,” she said. Further, an essay can’t simply be based on our recollections because we often write about what others have also experienced. However, if we’re reflecting on the memory of an event and how that event led to varied other parts of our lives, then we have something new and interesting.

For fiction writers who delve into essays, Modisett emphasized, “Don’t make stuff up! Save that for your fiction.” To structure a good essay, she said, “Use verbs of muscle and adjectives of exactitude.”

For our writing exercise, she used something called the “braided essay,” which is taking multiple, seemingly diverse subjects and weaving them into a connected essay. For part one, we had to write about an object we had with us but couldn’t name it, i.e., we had to use some of those “adjectives of exactitude.” In part two, we were to write about the emotion we felt when we received that object, and for part three we had to take that same emotion and relate another time when we felt it for a different object. The result was pretty amazing, and I can see how these techniques can also aid my fiction.

A one-day writers conference may not seem like much compared to, say, AWP, but I learned new things, caught up with writer friends, made new writer friends, and found out about a group of Doctor Who fans who get together and dissect episodes. They are now doing a retrospective of the earlier, pre-Christopher Eccelston Doctors, and that made me wish Roanoke was just a little closer.

First Writers Conference of 2014 – Part One

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I was really looking forward to the short trip down I-81 to the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference last Friday–mostly because it was six degrees warmer than at my house. Why, it reached a balmy 32 degrees compared to the “low 20’s; feels like teens” at home.

I’m coming to know the Hollins University campus better than my alma mater’s, since this was my fourth trip there in two years, and once again RRWC didn’t disappoint. After a Friday evening networking session, we started the conference with short speeches from several of the instructors.

First was Rod Belcher, whose genre mash-up Sci-fi/Western is intriguing. Entitled “Perseverence,” it was truly inspiring. His description of getting the notification his book had been accepted for publication by Tor (a huge sci-fi publishing house) gave us all some hope. Early on, like me, he received a rejection for a sci-fi story which amounted to “why do you bother writing that crap.” Like me, it put him off writing for some time. His mother broke the impasse by buying him a typewriter. In that way he happened upon his writing process: “put your butt in a chair until you pull it out of thin air.”

Carrie Brown, visiting professor of creative writing at Hollins, spoke on problem-solving. All of writing, she said, “is problem-solving.” The writer as problem-solver comes from the fact “a writer is someone who undertakes a task without knowing what to do.” I found that a very interesting take on the writing life.

The keynote speaker was Sheri Reynolds, and the title of her talk was “Giggling Past the Funeral Home: A Look at What Makes us Laugh.” I’d heard Reynolds speak on a panel about “road trip novels” at last year’s Virginia Festival of the Book. She read from her latest book, The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb, which had us all falling from our chairs. The book tells the story of Myrtle, a teacher fed up with her husband’s teasing about an asymmetrical aspect of her female anatomy. As she’s headed to an appointment to have surgery to fix it, she panics and keeps driving. Somewhere along the way, she finds a black man in the back of her vehicle, which prompts her to drive further, knowing her husband and family would disapprove. Although her other works are described as serious literature, Reynolds indicated she infuses all of her work with some aspect of humor. She also mentioned that this particular book underwent several rewrites and changes of POV, until she finally settled on first person–and that worked.

Saturday was the main day for the conference, and my first session was “Telling Stories: The Greyhound Bus, the Swedish Gal, and the Flophouse in Seattle.” If that title wouldn’t attract you to Dan Casey’s workshop, I don’t know what will. Casey is a local journalist in the Roanoke area who also does a regular column wherein he tells a story of local life. I’d gone to his workshop the year before at RRWC and knew this would be great. It was, though it also was a different kind of workshop: In between telling the story encompassed in the title, he dropped little bon mots about being a storyteller. After the workshop, a woman started chatting with me and said, “Well, that was a waste.”

“How?” I asked.

“All he did was tell his own story. I wanted to learn about how to tell my stories.”

I said, “Well, I took a page and a half of notes.”

“On what?”

“Well, let’s see. Find inspiration in everyday things. Take ordinary events and turn them into hair-raising adventures. Tell a story over and over until you fix the details in mind, and lots more.”

“Oh.” She moved on.

Next, I went to Sheri Reynolds’ workshop, “Dreamwork for Writers: Using your Dreams to Deepen Your Stories.” Reynolds pointed out how some part of her own dreams ended up in every one of her novels. “Just think of your dreams,” she said, “as a new story every night.” She encouraged the use of dream journals and explained that you don’t necessarily use a dream literally. “Take a disturbing or haunting image and explore it in your fiction,” she said. “Use your dreams as dreams for characters to show the characters’ conflict or the things they–and you–can’t face in real life. Use dreams as scenes–or reflect on a dream you’ve never had but wanted to and use that!”

The first writing exercise was to jot down a recurring dream of our own. Then, after a few minutes of that, Reynolds had us identify what in our dream hit the five senses. To conclude the writing exercise, she had us pick a person from the dream, not us, i.e., “I am the other,” and rewrite the dream from the other’s POV. This was probably one of the more useful exercises I’ve experienced.

Reynolds closed by talking about how to write down your dreams–don’t edit as you do so, don’t let your analytical mind step in, and focus on the images which resonate and recur.

To be continued in Part Two.

The Year of Writers Conferences Redux

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A new year brings a new round of writers conferences and workshops. The first for me is the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. I tried this one-day conference last year and was amazed by the depth of the too-short workshops, but I’m back for more this year.

Hollins University is also the site of the week-long writing workshop I attend, Tinker Mountain, but this one-day event is rather like an appetizer for that.

The keynote speaker is Virginia novelist Sheri Reynolds, and among the workshops are ones for non-fiction and fiction, YA, self-publishing, marketing, and getting an agent. Yes, some of these are topics you see at any writers conference, large or small, but sometimes it’s the different perspective on the issue which is most helpful.

I’m looking at attending Dan Casey’s “Telling Stories: The Greyhound Bus, the Swedish Gal, and the Flophouse in Seattle” first thing on Saturday morning. Casey’s workshop last year was hilarious and educational, so I’m looking forward to this presentation.

Next I think I’ll attend Sheri Reynolds’ workshop, “Dreamwork for Writers: Using Your Dreams to Deepen Your Story.” I love incorporating my odd dreams into my writing, so this workshop should be fascinating.

I’ll close out the morning with some non-fiction work in Bill Kovarik’s “Who Killed the American Newspaper and Where do we Go from Here?” Since I’ve done freelancing for my local paper, and I’m still enough of an old fogey that I start the day by reading two actual newspapers I can hold in my hands, I think this will be an interesting and topical discussion.

After lunch, and because I’ve never thought of doing a YA novel, I’m going to attend Tiffany Trent’s “Science Fiction and Fantasy in YA.”  This is a growing genre, and, who knows? Maybe I’ll get inspired, even though I think with The Hunger Games and Divergent series, we may be reaching the apex of this trend.

I’ll end the day with “The Rebellious Essay,” a workshop hosted by Cara Ellen Modisett. I do some political blogging I consider a bit rebellious, so maybe this will move it to the next level.

A full day of workshops, networking, and connecting with writer friends–I’m looking forward to getting back into the writer conference groove.

 

Roanoke Regional Writers Conference – The Finale!

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After a great lunch–I discovered during Tinker Mountain last year, Hollins has a wonderful cafeteria–we settled in for the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference afternoon sessions. First up, we could choose from “Experiences and Options in Self-Publishing,” by Michael Abraham; “The Diverse Ways Writers Manipulate Time on the Page,” by Jim Minick; “Structuring Song,” by Greg Trafidlo (who bills himself as a “troubadour”–how cool is that?); and “Writing Dark Fantasy and Horror for Young Adults,” by Tiffany Trent.

I went to Jim Minick’s workshop. He and I were at Tinker Mountain together, and he had been a guest reader at SWAG last year. His wonderful memoir, The Blueberry Years, was a delight to read, and he now teaches at Radford. His workshop got us to look at ways we convey time in our writing, on the macro and micro levels, but he emphasized that we have to keep the reader’s perception of time in mind. The reader experiences our writing in real-time as he or she reads it, but we control the pace. How we break a work into chapters or scenes (macro level), the sentence length and type of punctuation we use (micro level) all determine the pace for the reader. This is all unconscious on the reader’s part but very conscious on the writer’s part. We speed up or slow down using dialogue or the choice of specific verbs. “You are gods,” Minick told us. “Every word choice, sentence length, etc., creates a world.” Minick also suggested a time-honored way to check how you’ve used time–read your work aloud. A great workshop, and it would certainly be great luck to be one of his students.

The mid-afternoon sessions were “Understand Your Publishing Options Before Your Manuscript is Finished,” by Teri Leidich; “Visual Images as the Source of Stories,” by Carrie Brown; and “Telling Stories,” by Dan Casey.

I went to Casey’s workshop because he is a journalist and editor of a local paper in Roanoke, and journalists, not to mention those from an Irish background, are the best story tellers. Casey’s method of workshopping is to demonstrate by action–he told story after story, and in so doing taught us about chronology and setting, how to inject humor and suspense, and showing not telling. The latter is particularly interesting in the telling of the story, but he managed to do it. He reminded me of the times I spent with my Irish grandmother listening to her spin tales; she’d tell the same ones over and over, but with each telling she showed me something different. Casey bore that out when he emphasized that when we revise and edit, we are telling the story over and over until it’s the right one.

The final workshops of the day were “The Craft of the Art,” by Amanda Cockrell, who is also a professor in Hollins’ writing program; “Developing Ideas That Publishers Will Buy,” by Roland Lazenby; and “Selling Your Young Adult Novel 101,” by Angie Smibert.

“The Craft of the Art” workshop was a condensation of a semester-long course Cockrell gives at Hollins, and frankly it would be worth auditing, if that were possible. Through a series of interactive, workshop exercises Cockrell emphasized that the typical aspects of a story (POV, setting, characters, etc.) comprise a toolbox we should draw from and that we should use the right tool at the right point in the story.

Cockrell had us spend five minutes writing down our earliest memory as a way to delve into our own subconscious. Several participants read theirs aloud, and I was surprised at how much detail I could recall about my earliest memory when I got quiet and thought about it.

The next exercise was to write the letters of the alphabet in a vertical column then write a vignette about something that starts with that letter. Again, a few people read their vignettes, but Cockrell made us promise to finish the exercise on our own or use it as a way to overcome writer’s block. “You may be surprised,” she said, “to find you’ll end up working bits of this exercise into a story you’re writing. Everything we write comes from somewhere in us, of our knowledge of other humans.” Cockrell noted that the things most people read aloud came from their childhood or teenaged years. “We draw from childhood,” she said, “because it’s new and from our adolescence because it’s tense.”

The final exercise Cockrell offered was to have us draw a picture of the childhood bedroom we spent the most time in, and that was quite the challenge to recall. As the minutes went on, though, I found I recalled more and more detail, including the spot where I started writing stories at my desk and in, first, spiral notebooks then on a manual typewriter. Great fun and very instructive.

The final session of the day was a panel on the future of blogging. Unfortunately, I opted out of that because yet another snow-maggeddon loomed, and I wanted to get home without driving in the dark in a snowstorm.

Overall, my first experience with the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference was a very positive one. There was a lot of depth and breadth in the workshops, and in many cases it was difficult to choose which one to attend. The presenters were all excellent, and I took away useful advice and plenty of writing tips. I think this will become a regular conference for me, and I’d recommend it whether you’re in Virginia or not.

 

Roanoke Regional Writers Conference – Part Two

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On Saturday, after the great Friday evening social hour and opening events, we got down to the nitty-gritty. The first session started at 0830, and there were three possibilities to choose from: “Ten Things You Can Do Now to Promote the Book You Haven’t Even Sold Yet,” presented by Gina Holmes and River Laker; “Why New Media Changes the Way We Write and What We Can Do About It,” presented by Bill Kovarik from Radford University; and “Writing Cookbooks,” by Waynesboro, VA, author Mollie Cox Bryan.

I chose Kovarik’s presentation on New Media, which was a brief primer on social media. We introduced ourselves and told how involved we were in social media, which ones we used, etc. I was surprised by the number of people much younger than I who were terrified or who lacked knowledge of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. So much for the Gen-Xers and Millennials who are supposedly the most cyber-smart of us all. Kovarik did a fascinating measurement of the number of monks it would take to produce the amount of information moved about in one day on the Internet. He used monks because they were the ones who first delved in media by reproducing by hand the Bible and other, then-rare books. Basically, it would take billions and billions (sorry, Carl Sagan) of monks to generate the information we have access to today, but it was a fascinating way to show how media have grown over a couple of millennia.

We got into a debate about whether we, as writers, adapt to technology or whether it adapts to us and concluded it was probably a little of both, but Kovarik got the point across that today’s social media “has changed the way we write, publish, and promote,” and that we definitely need to adapt to media as they evolve.

The second morning session offered “Refining the Pitch for Your Book,” presented by Neil Sagebiel; “Writing Humor,” presented by Michael Miller; “Legal Protections for Writers,” presented by Roanoke attorney Erin Ashwell; and “The No B. S. Guide to Networking,” presented by Sarah Beth Jones, a freelance writer.

Because I’m in the process of developing a query letter to obtain an agent, I opted for “Refining the Pitch for Your Book.” This was perhaps the only disappointment for the conference. The conference brochure clearly said, “Refining the Pitch for Your Book,” but the presentation itself was “Refining the Pitch for Your Non-Fiction Book.” And the presenter noted the process was somewhat different, namely when you’re pitching a non-fiction book, it doesn’t really have to be completed. The agent bases his or her decision on  a lengthy and detailed proposal. Why didn’t I leave? Well, climbing over a row of people in an auditorium would have been too obvious, and Sagebiel had an interesting story to tell of how he turned his love of golf into a best-selling book about a little-known but significant event in golf history.

In the third and final morning session, we could choose from “Marketing Your Own Work,” presented by Kathleen Grissom; “Self-Publishing How and Why,” presented by Brooke McGlothlin; “Memoir: What’s So Important about Your Life?” presented by Judy Ayylidiz; and “Making Your Photos Better,” presented by Christina Koomen.

I’d enjoyed Grissom’s keynote address from the evening before, I attended her session. Grissom indicated after she finished a draft of her novel, The Kitchen House, she set out to understand “the business of publishing.” Through trial and error, she learned that one of the most important aspects of that business is “don’t send a manuscript out too soon,” which she sees as the reason for all her early rejections. By chance she encountered another writer in the town where she lived, and that writer became her mentor, assisting her with a re-write and a second, successful agent-querying round.

However, Grissom may have a leg up on the rest of us: She had previously worked in marketing and promotion and had built a career doing that. She did, though, explain to us how she took that knowledge and applied it to marketing and promoting her book. For example, once she developed a list of bloggers who reviewed books, she familiarized herself with the blogs, contacted the blogger directly and sent review copies, then followed up. When she got a review, she sent a thank-you to the reviewer, whether it was a good review or not, and she followed any comments on the review–and responded to them.

Grissom also made personal contact with independent book stores and libraries within a three-hour drive of where she lived, i.e., she went to those places and gave a copy of her book, then set up a reading or signing event on the spot. She also emphasized the use of social media– “Make sure each book has its own Facebook page”–and drove home the importance of positive interaction with commenters on social media.

Yes, a busy morning with lots of note-taking, discussion, and great ideas. In Part Three, we’ll move on to the equally busy afternoon sessions.

Roanoke Regional Writers Conference – Part One

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Yes, this writers conference was two weeks ago, but when a cold puts you low, low you are. This small, regional conference was such a positive experience, I decided to rise from my sickbed and finally give it its due.

Okay, that was way dramatic–too much Downton Abbey. Being sick meant I watched all three seasons in two days, so I’m overly influenced.

The Roanoke Regional Writers Conference had been planned for the final weekend of January, but a snowpacalypse (which never arrived) forced a one-week postponement. So, we gathered the evening of February 1 for a writer meet-and-greet. You know, this is where you approach, or are approached by, complete strangers with the question, “What do you write?”

An aside here–I was almost the only attendee NOT writing YA paranormal romance. There may or may not be a lesson in that.

After the meet-and-greet and some great writerly conversations, we had the opening session for the Sixth Annual Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, the fifth sell-out in a row. Hollins University, whose writing program has earned it the nickname “Pulitzer U,” was the host, and probably the most encouraging words came from Hollins’ current Writer in Residence, Karen Osborn (author of Centerville), who spoke on “Working in a Changing Publishing Environment.”

Osborn said, “Getting published has always been difficult, but failure to publish is not a marker of your work’s value.” And after that garnered a loud round of applause, she added, “Publishers are most interested in selling books, but they seldom know what will actually sell.” She reminded us that traditional publishers are focused on the bottom line, but she didn’t discourage. “If your agent won’t send out your book, send it out yourself,” she advised and emphasized university and small presses. Osborn believes we have more options than ever before for publication, ones which allow us to take more control of our work, but, she said, “Believing in the work is the most important step.”

The evening’s keynote address came from Kathy Grissom, author of The Kitchen House, and her topic was “Becoming a Writer.” Grissom was a perfect candidate for this topic because, as she admitted, she never intended to become a writer. “Writing,” she said, “was something only extraordinary people could do.” She learned through inspiration that writers are “ordinary people who write extraordinary things.” Grissom outlined her writer’s journey, from poetry and journaling to being inspired by an unusual event in her life. The inspiration led to research, and a chance conversation with her father led her to a “story I knew I had to tell.” The result was The Kitchen House, a novel about a young Irish orphan who finds her real family among the slaves of a southern plantation. Now, Grissom says, “My job is writing.”

We were treated to a song written by Greg Trafidlo especially for the conference, and the chorus said it all, “You have to sit on your butt and write.” We also participated in the presentation of scholarships from Hollins to “non-traditional” students, women who have returned to school after a break for marriage or children. The Horizon scholarships are funded by the faculty for the conference, who forego being paid to endow the scholarships. Applicants have to write an essay on why they want to return to school, and the scholarships are billed as “recognition of writers by writers.” The recipients are students in Hollins’ writing program, and this was an uplifting way to end an evening of writerly discourse.

Next Post – Day Two–Down to the Nitty Gritty

An Artful Friday Fictioneers

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Friday Fictioneers LogoI’m off to my first writing conference of the year today–the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference at Hollins University. It was supposed to be last weekend, but The Weather Channel convinced the organizers that Winter Storm Khan (cue William Shatner voice) would make the road messy. So, they postponed the conference to this weekend.

Winter Storm Khan didn’t materialize, at least here in the Shenandoah Valley, but it was too late to make a change to the change. I’ll report on the conference next week.

This week’s Friday Fictioneer’s inspiration photo immediately brought to mind one of those inane conversations you overhear at a modern art museum. You know the one that usually poses the question, “But is it art?” I’ve even participated in a few of those myself.

On purpose, there are no dialogue tags and no indication of the gender, or number, of speakers. I leave it up to the reader to delve the meanings behind “Hephaestus’ Wedge.” (A Google search for “Athena’s birth” might reveal one of them.)

If you don’t see the link on the title above, then click on the Friday Fictioneers tab at the top of this post and select it from the drop-down list.

Let the Writing Conferences Begin

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I was so overwhelmed by the AWP Conference last year (just me and 9,999 other writers), I decided I needed a warm-up to get ready for AWP Boston in March. And at least it’s something close to home.

Hollins University, site of Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop, hosts the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference this coming weekend: a meet and greet and some speechifying on Friday evening, then a jam-packed Saturday of workshops. And, oh, those workshops. They make you want to defy the laws of physics and be in two–in some cases four–places at the same time.

From book promotion to pitches to writing humor and/or cookbooks to marketing and memoirs to self-publishing to craft to blogging, there is something for everyone. It’ll be a long, but invigorating day.

I’m looking forward to attending workshops by writers I’ve not met as well as one by Jim Minick, who is a Tinker Mountain classmate and previous presenter at my local writing group, SWAG Writers. I look forward to all the pointers and advice I know will be forthcoming from all the presenters.

And just so February won’t feel left out, that same SWAG Writers is sponsoring a playwriting workshop on February 23. The location is yet to be determined, so stay tuned for the details. If you find yourself in the Shenandoah Valley that weekend, consider giving it a try. I’ve taken a “writing for movies” workshop before, but I’m eager to stretch my boundaries a little–or a lot.

March will be a two-fer: AWP then the Virginia Festival of the Book. In May I’m attending my first writing retreat, and I’ll write more about that later. June will be a return to Tinker Mountain, so right now I have April open. Suggestions, anyone?

I’ll report on each workshop after it happens, and I hope to see some of my writer friends at each.