Writersfest Baby!

When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre.
— Sandra Cisneros

In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge.
— Theodora Goss

The writing workshops and programs that are everywhere have encouraged writing. And if that produces more writing, it's also producing more readers of an elevated level. So all in all, a good thing.
— James Salter

After a three year break I’m back at the Kingston Writersfest. Four days of masterclasses and author stage events. Not to mention four days of living in a hotel with a room to myself and not having to cook or clean. ;-)

Once again I got a festival pass, but this year I came for all four days. Well, technically it was five, but there was only one masterclass on Wednesday so while it was included in the package, I didn’t think it was worth the price of another night in the hotel. But I did spring for one of the live stage events – a reading by fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay.

Part of the fun of going to something like this is sharing, so in the next few weeks I’m going to share a few of the things I learned/wrote. We start with Life Lessons: Telling Your Story, presented by Armand Garnet Ruffo. In it we learned how to put more of ourselves in our writing.

“The rawness, the emotional response is what you want to get on the page.”
– William Faulkner

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself, the tension that we have inside us. Memories are chaotic and visual, we remember what we see in snapshots. It is easier to remember trauma, heightened emotions. If you can feel it in the body, you’re on to something.

“Did it move you?” That’s the writing we go back to, that stands the test of time. Emotions and memories are connected, one leads to another. The tension and emotion is more important than the conflict it arose from. This is what we can explore. This tension is what draws the reader in and makes them want to keep reading.

Snapshots of memories are imbued with emotion. If we look at them like a string of pearls, one bleeds into another. It doesn’t need to be smooth and circular, but they’re all connected. With a snapshot you’re focusing on one memory at a time. You write dot by dot instead of all at once.

Everything begins with character, the character tells us to come along for the journey, it’s the driver for the plot. What are we interested in when we read? Character.

Exercise #1 – look through a backwards telescope to see the ring and narrow the focus on a single snapshot. Write as much detail about the snapshot as you can and then see where it leads you. Write it as a stream of consciousness.

The air was chilly, which is why I was wearing my snowsuit – the red one made of quilted nylon with a red pompom on the tip of the hood. There are women’s voices in the background, my mother and her friend Mrs. Carver. This was back in the day when children respected their elders, never calling them by first names or nicknames or honorary names. She was Mrs. Carver, wife of Red Carver, who was my father’s friend. Red and my father were in the army, stationed together here at Camp Borden. The Carvers had children as well, two sons, older than me, as old as my sisters. My closest sister was seven years older than me, making me the baby, or most likely the pest. Mrs. Carver sewed up little stuffed animals for a church bazaar and gave my sister a pink calico pony and me a pink calico dog. I really wanted the pony. Funny, I can remember those pink calico toys but I can’t remember if my mother aldo made anything for the bazaar. While the ladies talked, I toddled about the kitchen. “Be good” and “Don’t touch anything.” Be good was a refrain I’d hear time and again, until it was engraved in my heart. Being good was my default, seared into my soul along with “Good girls do this” or “Good girls don’t do that.” It shaped my life in ways I never realized until I was an adult looking back. “Good girls don’t fly off to foreign lands and take pictures” so I gave up my dream of becoming a photographer and never quite found anything to take its place.

Isolate a couple of snapshots from your memory. Write a detailed paragraph or two about them. Keep the snapshots narrow. What do you see? Grab these images and create something new. Take two of these snapshots and look for the cross-connections.

I invite you to give it a try yourself. What have you got to lose?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

The good news is I brought the total words up again, the bad news is that it wasn’t extra words, just longer blog posts, same as last week

I’m actually surprised my words were up a bit. I guess the whole “making lists and prioritizing” thing works after all. I had a lot on the go last week, even before I came to Writersfest. And as much as I would have liked to write the installment of the Pond before I left, that didn’t happen, I wrote it here (and was only 10 minutes late posting it).

I have been writing a lot since I’ve been here (today is the last day) but only during the masterclasses (well, and this blog post and Friday’s post). It might have been a different story had I left my new Lynsay Sands book at home. ;-)

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,859+879+307+805=3,850
Poetry – 65 words (included in blog post)
Total = 3,850

Goals For Next Week:
Increase the words

EDITING:
Finished
I am done, done, done diddly done! Magical Mayhem is done. Now all I need is the cover, blurb, and tag line. Dare I hope that I’m able to have it finished for a Christmas release?

Goal For Next Week:
Dig out An Elemental Spirit and start the edits on that.

MARKETING:
No Marketing. Not even an attempt at marketing. Too much other stuff on the go.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECH & TRAINING:
Well, no tech, per se. But I have been learning an awful lot here at Writersfest.

Goal For Next Week:
Check out the features of Dropbox.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
The Jisei wasn’t so much of a form as it was a type of poem. But I did write three entirely new examples for it and I’ve never done the Chinese Kanshi form before, so I’d say it’s close enough.

As far as an anthology goes . . . Yeah, again, it was a busy week and I just didn’t have time to get started on it.

Goal For Next Week:
New form to share. Start compiling the anthology

CRAFTING:
This is one of the things that took up so very much of my time early last week. Tuesday I had meeting with my stitchery group and it was time to make good on my promise to deliver items for the Christmas craft sale. What I made wasn’t hard – hand sewn felt stars and my traditional snowmen and penguins – but they were time consuming to make.

And I got to wear my hand embroidered blouse to the stitchery meeting – the ladies were all suitably impressed, which was not why I did it but it was a nice bonus.

And of course, because I don’t have enough to do, I signed up for an upcoming class on making felt poppies, presumably in time for Remembrance Day in November.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the cancer afghan. Work on pansy pillowcases.

WHAT I’M READING:
The only book I read was After the Bite by Lynsay Sands, and that pretty much took up all my spare time during Friday and Saturday at Writersfest.

The Writersfest organizers had a book store set up and I may have bought one or two or five books by some of the participating authors. Can’t wait to start reading them.

Goal For Next Week:
At least start my list of books so I can update my Goodreads account!

GOAL REVIEW:

The extra words thing is hard to pin down because I although I have been doing quite a bit of writing during my masterclasses, it’s all hand written so it’s difficult to calculate. But I was on time with my posts, or almost on time. I was only 10 minutes late with my serial installment. But again, there were no late nights involved.

Just as well that I don’t have those pesky games on my laptop anymore because I wouldn’t have had time to play them. It was a really busy week, did I mention that?

I got a big chunk of my Christmas crafts done, and delivered, so that was a big weight off my mind. This is something that can be ongoing, but at a less frantic pace. I don’t think I’ll be making any more penguins or snowmen, but the felt stars, and maybe some gingerbread men, are something I can do while watching TV at night.

As much as I’ve enjoyed being here, I’m also looking forward to going home today and this week I can start working in my office.

Happy writing.