The Muse & the Marketplace 2016

Join Literary Change Agent and author advocate April Eberhardt in a wide-ranging discussion about all the ways you can be published now. Your choices range from tried-and-true traditional to self-publishing, with partnership, cooperative, and semi-assisted publishing arrayed in between, each with its own pros and cons. How do you decide which route suits you best? Come learn about how the industry is changing, and how to devise a strategy that suits your goals, dreams, timetable and budget. 

So you have a book idea that you've been turning over and over in your head. Or maybe that novel you've been revising for the past three years is ready for the world. What's the first step? In this workshop, publishing veteran, Cherise Fisher, will walk you through all the steps: perfecting your pitch, the key elements of a proposal, recruiting your team, asking "is self-publishing right for me? and, perhaps most importantly, keeping the faith. 

Who am I? Not only is it a topic that philosophers and rock 'n' roll poets have wrestled with for millennia, it's also the primary concern of personal essayists, who must find a way to capture their truest self on the page. Am I funny? Am I a tearjerker, or a jerk on a tear? In this guided writing session, students will be led through a series of exercises that will help them discover their voice on the page while looking at a single personal essay topic of their choice from multiple perspectives. The goal is to complete several writing exercises that will help them find the best means of turning the stories of their lives into compelling, dynamic prose.

Hermit crab essays and stories adopt already existing forms as the container for the writing at hand. (The hermit crab is a creature born without its own shell to protect it so it must find an empty shell to inhabit.) By using a hermit crab form such as a “to-do” list, field guide, or set of yoga poses, one can craft a narrative where the form organizes or even dictates the content, and where these formal constraints help bypass our intellectual minds to make us more open and available to unexpected images, themes, and memories. In this class we will brainstorm a variety of forms in order to work with the tender underbelly of our own stories, and then we will use these “shells” to draft writing that aims for something new, exciting, and emotionally engaging-- for us and for the reader. You'll leave with a list of readings and additional exercises to further your study.d

Jacqueline Sheehan has sold over half a million books and has been on the New York Times bestseller list twice. Yet when it came time to sell her fifth novel, The Center of the World, publishers were hesitant to buy it. Why? Because the novel was partly set in another country and to quote one publisher, "American readers don't like books about other countries." Her new book is set partly in Guatemala, amid the indigenous people of the highland, the Mayans.
Jacqueline will discuss the hazards of writing from the sensibility of another culture. How can an outsider ever truly understand a culture that is so different from her own? Are we underestimating American readers? Are we truly xenophobic in our reading inclinations? What happens if writers never try to experience another culture?
If there is time, we will use a short writing exercise.

You know the basics of submitting your work: the cover letter, the waiting. Maybe you've had a piece of narrative nonfiction, a personal essay or short fiction published. But you want more out of submitting and publishing: perhaps to increase the frequency, or to publish in a way that gets you closer to a goal, such as a book. You may want to move up to the next tier of publication (we'll question if these tiers still exist and the very different things various publications can offer.) Or maybe you just want to publish pieces that are more fun, interesting, or longer: pieces that are less constrained by the procrustean effects of anticipating what editors want and more "you." We'll look at ways to be more strategic and successful so you're not just lobbing queries into the abyss. And we'll debate the merits of viewing publishing your work not quantitatively but qualitatively. We'll move between small tips and overarching philosophies. We'll share submission mantras, horror stories, victories, long shot dreams, nagging fears, and of course questions. (Come with all of these.) And we'll learn the important difference between simply publishing and publishing what you want. (Note: most examples will deal with nonfiction but many tips will apply to submitting short fiction as well.)

Having outside readers look at your work-in-progress is an essential part of the process for every writer--essential and intimidating! How do you find a reader you can trust, and how do you work with feedback once you have it? Join Kate Racculia (author, manuscript consultant, and writing instructor) and Louise Miller (author and Novel Incubator graduate) as they discuss their approaches to reader feedback and critique, and share their own experiences–both the good and the not so good. They will talk about different options for finding readers, how to know you are ready for feedback and, critically, how to know when you have had enough. They will also discuss what to do with conflicting feedback, and other critique pitfalls that can happen along the way. You will leave the session with inspiration and a roadmap for taking feedback and transforming it into a revision plan. This lively discussion will leave ample time for Q&A.

"Character" refers to the people in your book and keeping them real in word, deed, and circumstance.  But "character" also refers to the need for the writer to exhibit true character in the crafting of the stories s/he tells. In this talk, attendees will explore with children's literary agent Ayanna Coleman how to write through fear and with empathy and compassion to tell the stories that are either not told enough or not told at all. This requires risk-taking and a bit of bravery, especially in our highly-charged political environment. Come prepared for a frank and generative discussion. 

One of Neil Gaiman's writing rules is, "Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it." Like members of a software project team, writers often become overwhelmed by the work required to carry a project to completion. In this interactive session, Kelly Ford will guide participants though project management techniques that can help writers who struggle with focus or time management. We'll talk about a different kind of setting: that which includes goals, priorities, and deadlines. We'll also discuss common time management pitfalls: how to avoid them, and how to get back on track if you fall into them. Writers will leave the session with an action plan for how they can stay focused on the finish line, whether their goal is to complete a draft or a revision.

In ten steps, award winning writer Ann Hood will help you take your good essay to kick ass. We will read essays by Jonathan Lethem, Joanne Beard, and Junot Diaz and discuss why these essays are successful. Then Hood will take you through the steps that you can apply to your own essays to make them moving, resonant, and memorable.