To learn, or not to learn, that is the question.

Some friends and I attended the Texas Writers Conference event on Monday night at Schreiner University.  The keynote speaker was Bret Anthony Johnston, who is from Corpus Christi but is currently the director of creative writing at Harvard University.  Bret read for us and took questions.  He was funny and charming and complimentary of the questioners.  I figured he had to be pretty damned smart to be teaching at Harvard.  I wasn't disappointed.

Bret's writing is character-centric, which now seems different to me than storyline-centric.  The action in his stories is inside the characters.  I think this might be the way to write the Great American Novel; I am still trying to write a story as good as Last of the Mohicans.

My question for you is, can creative writing be taught?  There are a lot of classes which offer this.   My friend Tom learns well by reading and in classroom settings.  I learn best by doing.  What about you?  Your comments are invited.

  Bret Anthony Johnston

Write or Die

 

 

We have at least 6 people interested in a version of Sit Down, Shut Up, and Write.  I'll go over this concept with the FWC Brain Trust and we'll set a meeting, as well as another Open Critique Group.

We are looking at September 18 or 25 for the next Conference meeting.  I am hoping to get Publisher and Editor Ken Esten Cook of the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post as our speaker.  I messed up the planning for that, we did the Shameless Self Promotion Workshop with Eva Pohler instead, but I forgot to announce that and tell the speaker it wasn't happening.  Eva put everything she told us about promoting our work in an ebook.  If you couldn't make the class, buy the ebook and take notes as you go. 

There is a good blog on writing by a sassy and irreverent Canadian at http://bareknucklewriter.com/  "I like to have the grunt writing work done before noon, pouring out all the novel stuff in a caffeine-fueled rush like a hail of word-bullets."  She recommends downloading http://writeordie.com/ and setting it to kamikaze mode, which deletes words if you don't keep typing.

You might wonder what Fredericksburg Writers Conference is all about.  Here you go:

Support and encourage writers of all kinds by:

- quarterly meetings with interesting speakers.

- building relationships through critique groups and other meetings.

- holding an annual agent and editor conference just like the big guys .

- holding seminars on related skills (as in the recent promotion seminar, in which we net $250 towards that goal).

I believe we are finding a core group of writers to build this program around.  The way it works so far is that Mara Fox Moretti has the ideas, and I know how to make them happen.

Right Here! Three Summer Workshops for Writers

Fredericksburg Writers Conference Workshop

Dr. Eva Pohler has a day job as a professor of writing and English at the University of Texas in San Antonio, but she is also a wildly successful indie writer.  She didn't find this success by accident, but after a steep learning curve in generating publicity and readership for her Gatekeeper series of young adult novels.

The Fredericksburg Writers Conference has heard presentations by Dr. Pohler twice in our year plus of existence, and it was clear that her strategies take much longer than an hour to lay out.  Because we found such value in her advice for self published writers, we have set up a workshop:

Saturday, June 28th, 2014.  (location to be announced)

8:30 AM: Register/Coffee and Pastries/Introductions

 Creating Brand Awareness

 Using Social Media

 Soliciting Reviews

 Make Amazon Work for You

 Form Alliances/Box Lunch

 Format Your Book to Sell

1:30 PM:  Go home and get to work!

 

The fee is $60 including lunch. 

Texas Tech University Summer Workshops:
 

Reaching People Through Their Own Stories is set for 9 a.m.- 5 p.m., July 9 and 10. The workshop will provide attendees with a wealth of material—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, memoir—that is about a community both student and teacher actually live in, the issues and concerns that students see, talk, and wonder about.

How to Get Your Manuscript Published is set for 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., July 23 and 24. The workshop will provide attendees with the knowledge of how to write an author biography, query letter to an agent or publishing house and where to market your writing.
The presenter will be the delightful Christine Granados, author of six books, who was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.  These two-day sessions are $275 each and will earn CE credits.  Contact Christine Granados, christine.granados@ttu.edu or (830) 990-2717 for more info.