Third Day - PennWriter's Conference

The third and last day of the conference came too quickly. I attended a networking breakfast, then attended the final two workshops, followed by closing ceremonies.

08:00 - 09:00 Networking Breakfast
09:15 - 10:15 Avoiding Passivity with Catherine McLean
10:30 - 11:30 Life Balance for Writers with Anne Grenville
11:30 - 12:00 Closing Ceremonies

Arriving sort of early at the Networking Breakfast, I chose a table devoid of squatters (I'm kind of shy), and a few moments later a pleasant looking woman in business attire asks if she could sit beside me. I said, of course, and we talked for a little while. It wasn't until more people came to the table that I found out it was Victoria Skurnick, an agent with Levine Greenberg.  Thanks for the chat, Victoria.



Avoiding Passivity with Catherine McLean

Passivity in a story is a culprit behind the much versed "show, don't tell" rule of story writing. Catherine tells us (I suppose you could say shows us by using examples. lol!) that breaking free from the "telling" habit will require scrutinizing a first draft to look for the 3V's - View, Verbs, and Vividness.

The basic take home message about View (POV) was that if you can master it, then you can eliminate 90% of telling. You should also try to use "action" verbs and use helping verbs (verbs ending in LY or ING) sparingly. The last point was about Vividness. Try adding a little detail about the object you are describing. How about a few descriptive adjectives or a new, more descriptive noun altogether.

She closed with instructing us to look up the word "as" in a dictionary. I've done it, now it's your turn.



Life Balance for Writers with Anne Grenville

A great workshop to end the conference. She talked about having our "buckets" and which aspects of our lives go into each bucket and how we could and should balance those buckets. This was a very imformative session, in which Anne went over great detail about organizing our writing lives and making goals. She gave us some goal worksheets to fill out, along with a template to show us how it should be done. I got a lot from this workshop and have made several copies of the blank goal worksheet for my own use. She has pdf files of these worksheets on her website at elizabethkelleybooks.com 




Closing Ceremonies

This was the closing of 2011 PennWriter's Conference, which ended all too quickly. There were several gift baskets that were raffled and the tickets were drawn at this time. 3rd place, 2nd place and 1st place winners in the "In Other Words" writing contests (One each for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) were declared.

Since I didn't buy any raffle tickets for the baskets (I know... I know.... ) I left as they were calling off winners.

Overall, 2011 PennWriter's Conference seems to have been a great success with all the attendees and speakers, etc. It was a real eye opener and positive experience for me, too. I will not hesitate to attend this again next year.  

Second Day - PennWriter's Conference

The second day of the conference (Saturday 5-14-2011) was very productive for me. There were four workshops I attended. Jonathon Maberry was the keynote speaker at luch, and delivered a very powerful message of "Yes We Can"!

08:00 - 09:00 Networking Breakfast
09:15 - 10:15 The Agent/Author Relationship with Nancy Martin
10:30 - 11:30 Your Life is Poetry with Timons Esaias
12:00 -   1:00 Lunch with Keynote Speaker Jonathan Maberry
  1:30 -   2:30 The Geography of a Novel with Kristin Blair O'Keeffe
  2:45 -   3:45 Writing from the Inside Out with Dennis Palumbo
  4:00 -   5:00 Book Signing
  5:00 -   7:00 Cocktail Party



The Networking Breakfast was a great opportunity to meet with more writerly minds, and enjoy decent food. I met a few more folks and saw some from my writing group, as well.



The Agent/Author Relationship with Nancy Martin 


She told us what what we should want from an agent and what we do not want in an agent. On the flipside, she also told us what agents were looking for in a client and what they did not want.



Your Life is Poetry by Timons Esaias

This was a very informative workshop in which I will blog about in more depth in a few days. So, all I'm going to say for now is that a poet takes a particular or practical event and transforms it into a Universal Experience.



The Geography of a Novel by Kristin Bair O'Keeffe

Something I learned (although, I already secretly knew it) is that people's habits grow out of relationship to place, that characters also react with place. One piece of advise Kristin gives is that you should at some points in your story, zoom in on the detail of your setting (such as a rock, nail, flower, bird's beak, etc.) and describe it as best as you can.



Writing From the Inside Out with Dennis Palumbo

I have to say that this was probably my favorite workshop. Dennis used to be a screenwriter and currently works as a psychotherapist who specializes with writer's issues. In this workshop, he spoke with us about writer's block and procrastination, and how "writing begets writing" which I actually blogged  about last week and referenced an interview that Dennis participated in. He say's we need to adhere to the 3 cosmic rules of writing.

3 Cosmic Rules of Writing:

1 You are enough right now to be the writer you want to be
2 Work with what you are given
3 Writing Begets Writing

He gave us a few informative handouts. I will probably post about this workshop in a future post, as well.
I bought two of Dennis's books while at the conference.

Writing From the Inside Out - Nonfiction
Mirror Image - a novel set in Pittsburgh whose protagonist is a psychotherapist

I got both of them autographed by Dennis. Cool!


The book signing was after the last workshop of the day, in the hospitality room.

After that, we  met in another room for the cocktail party. I had a glass of wine and about 3 beers. No, I didn't even waiver an inch. I was asked to go to dinner by a couple I had met the day before. There ended up being a group of 6 of us that went to Quaker Lube not far from the hotel. We enjoyed some good food and had great company. Thanks Larry, Hillary, Darrell, Jessica, and Sirena.

Knowing that it would be a late night and an early morning, I had decided to rent a room at the hotel for Saturday night. It was a good thing I did. I had a great night's sleep.















 

 

Preparation for Writer's Conference

I'm attending a writer's conference this week beginning Thursday and ending on Sunday. I'll have to drive about 1.5 hours there and back each day, and because I didn't have any posts prepared for those days, so I'll probably post a Haiku poem a day, unless I have time to post something more about my day at the conference. We'll just have to wait and see.

I've been up all night and will try to stay up all day so I can get to sleep early tonight. I'm not a graceful early morning riser. I get to pick up my business cards later today. Woohoo!

I'm working on a flash fiction story for a contest they are having. Wish me luck!