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My firstest ever writer’s conference

I’ve been writing for years. It hasn’t always been my primary hobby. In fact, I took a break for a couple years to build a house become a parent, explore some hobbies, make sure my career was in solid enough shape to ensure things like retirement and food. What I haven’t been doing much is interacting with other writers. Sure, I started this blog to start doing that and also to share my various and sundry problems with writing and any solutions I may have cooked up to deal with those. What I haven’t done is any sort of face to face interactions. 

You might be asking why, if I consider myself a writer, I haven’t been active in the local community of writers or at the very least been a part of a critique group. Well, the truth is that I watched my wife (you know who she is. She’s a wonderful writer in her own right, if she doesn’t believe it herself), before she was my wife go through a creative writing class. It is rude, heartless, and just plain mean to say, but I’m going to say it anyhow. Most of the utter crap she brought home to read along with her own descriptions of pompous, self-righteous artist wannabes put me off the writing crowd. To further bolster this really unfair and mostly incorrect opinion, I joined an online science fiction and fantasy writer’s workshop. It was actually not horrible. The only jerk I ran across was me. The problem was that it relied upon writers providing criticism to one another. This is how it’s done, but since it’s an online environment, it’s not a super solid strategy. Many of the writers on that site/group/whatever were looking for validation more than advice or were as inexperienced as anyone else joining and couldn’t provide any more technical writing advice than a potato. It was your classic case of the blind leading the blind. The only thing I learned is that it’s not okay to actually hit someone for telling you to show not tell. Most of the advice was unhelpful at best and probably only somewhat understood by those providing critiques. Truthfully, the critiques were honest and generally contained a seed of ‘you have a problem you need to fix’ within them. Unfortunately, as a very new writer, most of the suggestions were less helpful than simply saying, this bit of writing is rubbish, go take a class. So, I gave up and decided to work on my own for a while. I suppose that went okayish, but not really. I spent more time on world building, home building, dealing with starting a family, and career than actual writing, but I didn’t really learn anything new about the craft. At least until I got online again and start trying to get connected with other writers – I did start to learn some things then.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, and in spite of years of spluttering on about it, I went to a writer’s conference. This was one of the best writing decisions I think I’ve ever made. In no way can I say that this conference will be the key to getting published or selling enough copies of a book to quit my day job and write full time, but it taught me something that I wish I’d learned years ago. There are places, groups, and organizations who genuinely want to help writers and will supply experienced advisors to help you get there. Social media is indeed one place as is (in retrospect) the online writer’s workshop I did, but there are other places. This conference though put experienced, indeed award winning, writers in front of a room to explain what works, what doesn’t, and share real world experiences. 

I’m such a jaded person, in general, that inspirational quotes do very little for me. I’d even go so far as to say they generally piss me off. In spite of that, I found myself not only inspired, but motivated. I came away with new tools, new perspective and a couple of new contacts. Here are a few of the most basic things I came away with.

1.) Go to writer’s conferences

2.) Bring business cards (Really? Yes – writing is a business too, it’s how business people connect why not writers?)

3.) Look over the agenda and pick your sessions, prepare questions

4.) Don’t eat 3 pieces of pizza

There was a whole lot more, a lot, but I can’t fit those things into bullet points, I’m sure I’ll write more blogs on this as I think about the new information and advice and try to put it into practice.

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An article in the newspaper

I know this blog is supposed to be about writing and writing problems, and so often I vent about life’s curve-balls. Today, I’m going to dispense with anything like that. Last week I had the opportunity to be interviewed by a local newspaper reporter Caitlin Skvorc about Wine Bottles and Broomsticks and my efforts to see it published through inkshares.com. It’s a lovely article – check it out:

http://www.frontiersman.com/arts_entertainment/witchy-work-wasilla-author-hopes-to-publish-with-public-s/article_a0484ba6-81bb-11e6-b064-9728b1c5a0ec.html

 

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Breaking a Fairy Tale 

Except for my efforts to get Wine Bottles and Broomsticks published on inkshares.com I’ve got two major works in progress at the moment. The first is the Deep Space Help Desk – I really want to knock that out, but I got stuck -I have to back up a chapter or two and take a different angle. Really, I just need a solid day to focus on that project to get it put back on the rails again. The second project, The Dark Queen of Darkness, is in slightly better shape, even if I’m finding it a slightly more difficult project to write. 

The Dark Queen of Darkness is an unexpected project. It launched as a way to test out my new iOS version of Scrivener, and also an excersize in employing tricks learned (stolen) from Terry Pratchett. Not so much as taking his words or style as incorporating parts of his approach to story telling, it appeals to me and, as they say, what doesn’t kill you or get you sued for copyright infringement will only make you stronger. In any case, the story has taken hold because it’s got a fairly clear trajectory. At least, it has if I treat it like a fairy tale, albeit a seriously broken, yet true-to-form fairy tale.

With all that in mind, and some advice received after sharing the first part of the first chapter, I went back and pivoted slightly more toward a YA vibe, and starting working the fairy tale angle a little harder. Right now, I’m looking largely at Snow White, while brining in characters from other tales. This isn’t anything like a new idea, but it’s a new approach for me. I also happen to be fortunate enough to have in my possession a stack of books containing hundreds of old fairy-tales with a publication date of 1928, which I realize as I write this puts these books at nearly 90 years old – the oldest we have in the house by a considerable number of decades. The image up top features one of these books with the illustration of Snow White and Rose Red, which I only know because I read that one last night from the other book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

In any case, the idea with this story is to make it an upside-down fairy tale that takes on the well trodden tropes and re-uses them in a slightly bent or fully ironic manner. For example, there’s the huntsman. He appears in a bunch of stories, I’m going to work him in with a lead role. Prince Charming comes in all over the place, even if not by that name. He’ll appear, after all how could a good, epic fairy tale end without a kiss by a Prince Charming? I’ll also see about writing in some dwarves, trolls, elves, wizards, and other various characters. With that, I’m off to do a bit of research and plotting.