Writing Conference Time Again…
Recently I was asked about what to consider before attending a writers conference. I have attended, volunteered, managed and been an instructor at conferences for over seventeen years, maybe longer, I’m old, I forget. Anyway, two Pacific NW conferences that I recommend are the Edmonds (WA) Write on The Sound (October) and the Willamette Writers (August in Portland OR) conferences.
To enjoy a conference you must first do your homework; what classes do you want to attend, what agents do you 
want to pitch, and most important, what do you want to learn? And I’d like to add to that list, how can you get out of your writerly comfort zone? Like if you only take workshops about utopian world building, this time take a class on how to craft a great sex scene. You’ll be amazed how widening your skill-set will enhance your writing. So give these things some serious thought and design the kind of experience you want: if you set your intention before you attend a conference you position yourself for success instead of disappointment, because who likes that.
Every conference has a personality, a theme and a culture unique to that conference. In Portland the Willamette Writers (WW) is a fairly large conference that takes place in hot August, hundreds of people from all over the country gather in an air-conditioned Portland hotel and cohabitate like college dorm mates. The focus is heavily on screenplay and fiction writing master classes and workshops where the amount of note taking can be exhausting – I mean seriously try to keep up with Larry Brooks or Eric Witchey at 8:00 AM after a late night pitch session – Don’t worry, there’s always coffee in the lobby.
WW is a great place to pitch your project; novel, memoir, or screenplay. I hosted one of the sessions a few years ago and had a blast. We had 60 nervous scribes pitching a panel of literary or Hollywood type agents. Even if you just watch and learn, it’s a priceless experience. The late night pitch parties, cocktail parties, or hanging out in the lobby bar or café are surprising places to garner tips and make connections. And let’s not overlook fun, I mean how often do you get to hang with your tribe, right….
Conversely, Write on the Sound (WOTS) is a smaller conference of maybe 350 participants from all around the country because it’s so easy with the train depot within walking distance. WOTS has an overall atmosphere of art and fall writing, education and the mentoring of like-minded souls – it’s like going back to school. It’s always in October, the sky is (more often than not) blue, the leaves are red and the wind off the Puget Sound is jostling through the streets. The classes are mostly in the old school turned arts building called the Anderson Center where the weekend is spent, writers as pupils in old fashioned school rooms, and breaks in the hallway where cookies and drinks await the rush of trading one classroom for another before the bell rings. One of my favorite things is the walk from the Anderson Center to one of the coffee shops or restaurants a few blocks away – the streets are filled with walking, talking writers in search of fuel, or cutting class to hang with a new writer friend. During WOTS the serene city of Edmonds is overtaken by enthusiastic and boisterous writers. The Friday workshops are roll your sleeves up and get to work events with (past) master instructors like Robert Dugoni or local celeb, Rick Steves – See this years line-up here. The Saturday night book signing and happy hour event is a great time to network, meet people, make contacts and then walk to a local wine bar and continue the evening talking about favorite authors or how to best write that elusive sex scene.
So, my best advice is to do your homework before you go, sign up (early) for the classes you want to take or the agents you want to pitch, get out of your comfort zone and attend a class or event you normally would not, talk to people, and have some fun. These are two PNW conferences where the quality of instructors, the organization of the conference and bang for your writing conference buck is always a good deal, time well spent, lessons worth learning, contacts worth making, and most importantly, unforgettable.
Queen of the Desert
I just had to share this fabulous woman…In researching for the background of a (secondary) character in my WIP I stumbled onto Gertrude Bell and was gob smacked by this woman’s hootspa. She was described as an ‘outsider’, the ‘Queen of the Desert’ and ‘the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day’. How inspirational! She was just what I was looking for. As always, it’s important to write female heroines and depict women (girls) as capable of
doing ANYTHING (and more) than their male counterparts. Thank you Wonder Woman, Senator Kamala Harris and my new favorite hero, Gertrude Bell! My protagonist grew up with a mother (1920s-30s) who traveled to Egypt and with her husband explored antiquities, pyramids and cultures of days gone by. My protagonist was a young girl when she traveled with them giving her a fascinating childhood. But then their idyllic lives were cut short when they were thrown into a concentration camp in 1939, as you can imagine. So in writing her brave mother I sought other women of that time period who traveled and explored along with their male colleagues. Why? Because the mother is the primary influence, and ultimate wound to my protagonist.
Bell (a perfect character role model) was born in County Durham in 1868, then went on to study history at Oxford. She met TE Lawrence 1909 at a dig at the ancient city of Carchemish, which would now be on the Syrian-Turkish border. Their first meeting was icy due to Victorian ‘traditions of snootiness, sexism and arrogance’ as well as Lawrence feeling ‘intimidated’ by meeting a woman who was ‘his intellectual equal’ and ‘spoke Arabic better than him’. But they became good friends. A couple years later Bell was recruited by British Intelligence during the First World War to help guide soldiers through the deserts, before being made Oriental Secretary in 1917. Even after the war she stayed on with the British Government as a diplomat helping to draw up Iraq’s borders and establish the state, and served as mediator between the Arab government in Iraq and the British officials supervising it.
Bell was far bigger than life and certainly the material of a great fiction heroin. Grateful for her journey, and grateful 
to have found her as my inspiration. Just had to share this remarkable woman.
You can read more about this fascinating woman here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4428004/Incredible-life-British-adventurer-Gertrude-Bell.html
In 2015 Nicole Kidman starred in a movie about her life, Queen of The Desert http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1837636/
A 2017 documentary about her life appropriately titled, Letters From Bagdad was released this year. Take a peek here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6086614/videoplayer/vi3633887513?ref_=tt_ov_vi
I haven’t seen either of these films but plan to.
Staying Grounded in Basic Storytelling Principles
This last year I’ve really gone ‘dark’ as they say, which means I’ve been very quiet (and unproductive) on all fronts. It’s been a good break, a needed break so I could recharge and take care of myself, but now it’s time to get back to work.
When I’m struggling with a section in my WIP (work in progress for you non-industry folks), or trying to re-wrap my mind around my story I return to basic tools for guides out of that self-imposed darkness.
Larry Brooks, who if you don’t know him yet, you should – who writes writerly-how-to books is one of the gurus (via 
his books and blog at Storyfix.com) that I return to over and over again. Not because I’m that stupid (well, not always) but because stories, characters, plots, themes and all the magic elixirs that make up a story world, are fluid, changing, often morphing into something completely different from what I thought I started out to write. So back to the basics I go. If I don’t go back to those grounding basics of storytelling; premise, concept, plot, theme and so on, then I get lost in the words. SO MANY WORDS! And when I get lost in the words it takes FOREVER to finish a project, be it novel, short story or essay.
Oh, and when I said my story could ‘often morph into something completely different’ I meant it. I recently had a conversation with Hollywood script guru, Michael Hague (author of too many books to mention here) who asked me which aspect of my story fascinated me the most, because, he said, that’s where your passion lies and that’s what you should follow. My answer shocked the baggeebies out of me. So, with that answer, which I wont’ share here…maybe later in another post – changed my entire story. After the initial shock, I was happy our conversation happened when I was only 150 pages in.
When a local writer friend, Pam Carter (Writer, Producer and Playwright) asked me about premise,
I realized during our conversation about hers that I actually needed to re-consider my original premise now that the story had changed so dramatically, and so revisited all my information on premise and concept. Again, back to Larry Brooks
who teaches this stuff like hell fire and damnation from a preacher ablaze with the truth. If you’ve seen him live you know exactly what I’m talking about.
So while I press through; re-entering my story world, getting back into a writing groove, editing, re-outlining and all the other blue-collar work a writer does to create a story-world and narrative that will be of interest to readers, I wonder, what tools do other writers return to time after time, and why? Okay, back to work.
Why Authors Should Be Virtual Vision Boarding
The research aspect of writing historical fiction is a full-time job and often disregarded once the book is done. Add to that reader’s expectations have elevated, so authors are obliged to meet their escalating anticipations with additional information/entertainment. For example, with the sensitive subject matter of the holocaust in my second novel, keeping research organized and verifying facts is vital. For me that’s made easier by using virtual vision boarding on Pinterest to create story-boards, story images, park my research, and SO much more. That way I have the images and links to critical research at my fingertips for referencing later in blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and so on, utilizing my research by turning it into marketing gold. If you’re just beginning your first novel or starting your fifth novel, virtual vision boarding is a great author’s tool – for research, writing and marketing – that’s never too early or too late to utilize.
I’ll be sharing this information and more at Edmonds Community College in July. Click here to sign up for the workshop.
A Writer’s Strategy Saves Time in Marketing
Writers, did you know that having a writing strategy could save you time in marketing? And I’m not talking about the long disputed ‘pantsers vs planners’ kind of story approach, I’m talking about what types of objects and subject matter you select for your story landscape. I’ll be teaching a workshop on that in July… I’ll share more about it later.
Anyway, every published author I know complains about the amount of time they spend marketing once the book is published. So obviously saving time in marketing is vital if you ever want to write again once your book is released into the world, which I learned waaay late in the game, but you can benefit from my hard-learned lessons.
What I didn’t know then was that the best time to start marketing is before it’s published, long before, like when you’re researching your story. In the workshop I’ll share how you can turn that research into marketing gold. I’ll also share time management tips for social media, like;
Did you know the perfect length for a twitter headline is 6 words? Why waste time thinking of more when 6 (or less) 
will do. KISSmetrics has reported that readers absorb the first 3 words of a headline and the last 3 words, making a six-word headline ideal.
And did you know that the school of thought on headlines (being full of keywords and information rich) is old school? These days instead of being helpful in the traditional sense headlines are now meant to raise curiosity and capture clicks.
Today’s effective social media headlines don’t contain much context and are merely a worm on a hook – it’s the click through that matters. Once they’ve clicked then they can read the article, buy the book or watch your video. But you’ve got to hook them first, so effective marketers rely on shock, emotion, or curiosity factors. Readers don’t know what to expect, and that’s why they click.
Whether you are an aspiring writer, published novelist or short story writer these tips will enhance your writing, social media and marketing time management. In the workshop I’ll share a lot of writing and social media information for example, 8 effective headline strategies backed by psychology – why waste time when you can rely on science….
Join me JULY 15th at Edmond’s Community College for a fast-paced, hands-on 3 hour workshop about using objects in writing and how to transform those objects into marketing gold. How to use your research as promotional fodder and why digital vision boards are a vital tool for writers, artist, and any small business. Click here to sign up
Mindy Meyers-Halleck 