Here is a rambling post about the William
Patterson University Spring Writers Conference that I attended on Saturday,
April 18.
Sometimes when I go to writing
conferences I get wrapped up in taking notes, but this time I sat back
and just absorbed myself in the day.
The keynote speaker, Porochista Khapour,
author of The Last Illusion was inspiring, generous, and interesting.
Here are some things I took away
from the keynote speech…
- Social media while great, is an artificial
pulse… Porchista advises us to slow down.
- Encourages you to get out of the
house. Talk to people.
- Position yourself to be lucky…how do you
do this? BY getting out of the house. By saying yes to things.
- Give yourself permission not to write everyday.
But live life everyday. Read everyday.
Then I attended Porochista workshop on writing
endings. We read endings of a couple of books and talked about different endings and well, okay – maybe I
should have taken notes…
Then we broke for lunch.
Porochista gravitated with a group of us outside of
the classroom and we ended up lunching together with my fellow writer friend Marianne
Sciucco, workshop teacher/poet Soroya Shalforoosh, and two other lovely
ladies.
The topics of discussion ranged from women
writers supporting each other, to books, to life. I really could've spoke with these women all day.
After lunch I attended Finding and Writing
Your Inner Teenager with Robin Wasserman, author of several YA novels, including the The Seven Deadly Sins series.
I took this workshop because I’m planning
to write a Young Adult story over the summer.
Robin handed out several pieces of writing
about teenagers and we had to guess if it was from adult fiction or from a YA novel. It was a great exercise.
I took these one-line notes…
-
nail the details of teenage life
-
flavor of way teenager talk
-
teenager have a small life but big dreams
-
it’s either a sunny day or doom and gloom
-
every emotion is operatic
-
teenagers weigh their choices differently than adults
-
lots of decisions aren’t up to them
-
try to emotionally connect to who we were
as teens
-
ask what is the relevancy of
family/adults to the story and if relevant do not make adults cookie cutter.
-
YA is a lot about 'firsts' .. first
date…first kiss, etc.
I feel better prepared to write this YA! Thanks Robin!
It was a great day. So glad I 'got out of the house'. I picked up a copy of The Last Illusion, which I can't wait to delve into. I couldn't help though to take a peek at the opening line...
Exactly ONCE UPON A time in a small village in Northern Iran, a child of the wrong color was born.
I feel better prepared to write this YA! Thanks Robin!
It was a great day. So glad I 'got out of the house'. I picked up a copy of The Last Illusion, which I can't wait to delve into. I couldn't help though to take a peek at the opening line...
Exactly ONCE UPON A time in a small village in Northern Iran, a child of the wrong color was born.
