Category Archives: workshops

Riverside writers’ retreat

Posted on January 20, 2010 | 1 Comment


I was here over the weekend, and it was wonderful. (This was Saturday, after the rain stopped–the view downriver from the upstairs deck.) We had workshops with a creativity coach who talked about recapturing the joy in writing, and how to be happily interrupted and other such things, plus there was time to write, and a concert, and white elephant gifting. Some of the white elephants were lovely. Some were…not so much.

The location was a house on an island in, I believe, the lower Colorado River. The only access to this island is by barge, or aerial tramway. It rained all day on Friday, the day we arrived, too wet, really, to cross on the barge. So we crossed on the tram.

The tram was WAY up in the air! And it was small. The wind was blowing, and the car tilted sideways, and it swung back & forth when it crossed the towers (that’s the first tower in the picture–the barge landing is right below it, to the left). And I’m real nervous about heights. But I did okay. I did not scream and clutch at the handrails or cower on the floor. And I stopped shaking once we got on the ground. 😉

It was just a wonderful weekend. Everyone brought potluck for meals, and we had WAY more than anyone could eat. We didn’t even open the ham someone brought.

My BFF Belinda came down from Waco with her fella, and they spent the night Thursday. Then Friday, in the pouring rain, we drove the “back way” down to the river house. We had to come a different way from everyone else, because the others were all coming down from Houston, and we had to just slide down the coast and come inland some from our island. Belinda and I drove in my “bus” and Ken followed us. In the rain. He likes to drive around and look at the country side. We were driving through flooded fields on both sides, lined with moss-draped trees. It was lovely. (Okay, the several junk yards we passed by weren’t so great, but…)

The only access between the downstairs “quiet” floor and the upstairs “brainstorming / workshop” floor was an outside staircase, so we got a little wet carrying things up and down. Mary (whose house it was) got REALLY wet, driving the golf cart to pick people up. She was so wonderful to open up the house to everyone, and work so hard to get everyone there.

B and I got there around noon, so we could just wallow in the experience, and wallow we did. Belinda had a one-on-one session with the coach. I did Tarot readings for at least half of those who came, including the coach. Some of them told me what their question was, and others didn’t, but they all said the readings were amazingly spot on. Well, one said she didn’t see some of the things, but… Anyway– I got a kick out of doing that.

Saturday night, Kathryn the coach, who is also a singer- songwriter, gave us a little concert with some wonderful songs. She did not bring enough CDs for everyone, and I don’t have mine yet. But let me tell you, the song LIVING WELL is a fabulous bluesy creation and You Need To Hear It. I fully expect to hear another of her songs performed by some bigtime country singer in the near future.

Then it was time for the white elephant. I didn’t get an elephant. I got a gun rack (for my (non-existent) rifle collection). Yes, those are deer hooves. Real ones. With fur and everything.

As you can see, I did bring it home. It’s going in the Lions’ Club white elephant Christmas party game this next year. :)

I told my son to bring his friend Walter over to see it. Walter grew up on a farm/ranch outside Tyler, TX. I think he will appreciate it. (Yes, the picture is sideways, but the deer feet are the right way up.)

So now, it is time for me to run to the grocery store for ice cream and Cokes. (In Texas, all sodas are Cokes, whether they are Coca-Cola or not, but I really am going to by Coke Zeros.) And then pack my car and head off to the parents’.

I started rewriting a synopsis for White Elk, Red Sword while I was at the retreat. Mostly I was there to refresh and renew, but I did start on the synopsis. I finished it yesterday. So now I’m reading research books, and I hope to get back to work writing next week. I aim to get my head back into the story so I can do it.

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Posted in synopsis writing, Thunder in a Cloudless Sky, trips, White Elk Red Sword, workshops, writing

Retreats for Writers

Posted on October 27, 2009 | 1 Comment


Or maybe it was a Treat for Writers.

I went on my annual pilgrimage to Valley Mills with my writer friends for the Heart of Texas writers’ retreat.

The place we go isn’t fancy. There are cobwebs in the rafters, and the floor slopes across the back room from the bathroom to the back door. There are 3 bunk beds, providing room for 6 to sleep, and a double bed at one end of the front room. (There’s a kitchen at the other end.) There is no heat unless you light the propane heater–and we didn’t light it. It got COLD that first night…but warmed up later. My friend Belinda and I went out a day early because we both had the day off. And it was wonderful.

There’d been a lot of rain lately, so the tank (man-made pond, for you non-Texans) right behind the cabin had water running into it, and out of it–into a pretty good-sized waterfall not too far away. Lots of limestone makes for lots of waterfalls. When there’s enough water to fall. This was the first time the tank’s been full enough to have a good-sized creek running out of it, and the water sang to us the whole time we were there.

We critiqued my synopsis (B came up with the perfect last line for it.) We wrote our morning pages. Belinda and I are going through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron together, and we were bad. We wrote our morning pages together, and we kept stopping to talk. It took us a couple of hours to finish. By the time we went into town for lunch and got back to the ranch, the other participants were starting to show up.

Friday night, we had 7 there by the time everyone got off work and came out. We ate sandwich for supper. (One great BIG sandwich in a ring, we cut into sections. We ate that sandwich a couple of days.) We critiqued the chapters of the people who sent them–four of us. We talked plot for the chapters we critiqued. I got too loud.

Four of us spent the night, one more came back around 10:30 a.m. And we did some writing drills–the ones where you take an assortment of items out of a bag and write a scene that includes all of the items. We plotted stories for me and another lady. B and I walked around the tank and down where we could see the waterfall from the front side. Sort of. Then we jumped the creek to get back. I took off my shoes and socks, in case I fell in. I didn’t have walking shoes, and I almost slid out of the backs of my clogs climbing the back side of that tank, because clogs don’t have backs.

We spent some time writing on our own stuff. B and Diana (the middle person in this second picture–Belinda is on the right and Shelley on the left) went into town to get Diana some water, and brought back pizza for supper. After supper, we watched the movie “Twilight” and then analyzed its plot points. We used the plotting method from the Save the Cat book by Blake Snyder, and found it interesting that the main plot was the romance between Edward and Bella, and the subplot was the bad vampires. Most movies are the other way round. We talked writing until midnight or so, and it felt like we’d hardly got started.

Of course, after sleeping 3 nights on those bunk beds– they weren’t bad, but they weren’t the best beds in the world either– we weren’t exactly looking our best. Belinda did not want her picture taken. I haven’t seen all the pictures taken of me. I’m hoping I can cut myself out of the worst ones… Yes, I forgot to take my camera. I forgot my sleeping bag–you think I’d remember my camera? (The beds had clean sheets and blankets that worked just fine.) I remembered all the critiques I’d printed out, and my notebook for the morning pages. The important stuff. (Also my toothbrush and blow dryer.)

Sunday, we got up and did some other exercises, then cleaned up, threw away our trash, divvied up the remaining groceries (I got the Fritos, a package of bagels and the blueberry cream cheese), hugged everybody good bye and went home again. We’re going to try to do this again in the spring, so we can have a spring and a fall retreat, more than just once a year.

So now my synopsis is fixed, my partial’s been critiqued, and I’m printing it out to send off to the agent. I really like retreating… :)

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Posted in cool beans, trips, workshops, writing

Still plugging away

Posted on November 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’m plugging along–at life, as well as the writing. I’m very tired today. Had trouble sleeping last night after my local RWA chapter meeting. (I love getting to see everyone and talk writing at least once a month.) I think I drank too many Cokes with caffeine too late at night. Anyway, after tossing and turning, I got up and read Jeri Smith-Ready’s THE REAWAKENED.

It was one of the two books I got at Borders’ “Buy One Get One Half-Price” coupon thingie (My other book was AN INFAMOUS ARMY by Georgette Heyer. I have broad tastes.) and was really NOT the book to be reading in the middle of the night when one needs to go to sleep. I read the whole thing.

But I still got 3 pages written today. I was going to be happy with two. I got up late, didn’t have much time to get writing in before heading off to work, and just didn’t think I’d get much done. But hey! THREE pages. And I got 5 pages Monday and 6 pages Tuesday. I’ve been having so much trouble getting Anything written, for a while there I was happy to have a mere half-page done. Maybe it’s because I’m able to be a little more consistent with getting to the desk, or maybe…I don’t know. But I am pleased with my progress.

The workshop last night had me thinking a lot about my process. The author presenting the workshop claims to be a “pantser,” someone to whom plotting does not come naturally. But dang, she plots her books WAY more than I do, and–while I Cannot write as a pure “fly into the mist” type, I can’t write down what scenes go in what chapters either. If she is a pure organic writer, she’s probably using this plotting-by-chapter method to keep herself on track, but my books don’t have that much structure that early.

They have structure, but they don’t have chapters. I don’t know where my chapter breaks fall until I put the book into the computer on my 2nd draft. I know my turning points, and I write from one to the next, but if I tried to decide ahead of time what scenes will go into what chapter–I never know just how long a scene is going to be before I write it. It might expand way beyond what I think it will be once I get into it–and then have to be shortened. Or maybe not. I was thinking in an earlier place that I would get some action into the story by having a riot–but something else happened instead. And my heroine had to be rescued. Hmm. The scene I’m working on now will have a riot-ish occurrence–so this would probably be a good place to show her competence, and that she can rescue the hero as well… Okay, good. Thanks for helping me with that.

In other news, there is a brand new stoplight–not a post-hurricane repaired one, but a brand, spanking new one–on my way to work. I haven’t decided yet if I like it. I seldom go through it during rush hour–and yes, we do have one. So the stop sign really worked better for me when I was using it. But everyone else is probably glad of not getting run over by rush hour. 😉 On the rest of the island, we’re still dealing with “sometimes the stoplights work, and sometimes they don’t.” Oh well.

I’m going to draw names for the ARC giveaway for my newsletter subscribers after Thanksgiving. The Texas grandboys, and our boys, will be home for the holiday, so I’m not going to think about promo stuff till then. I’ll try to blog next week. Who knows. Maybe I’ll make it back here before then.

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Posted in books I'm reading, contest, Old Spirits, workshops, writing

Workshops

Posted on August 22, 2008 | Leave a comment

Going to take a bit of time, (I’ve been talking to the English guy in the newsroom too much, I think. Ian’s rubbing off on me.) before I have to run to pick the son up at the airport (from England–hmm) and do that blog about RWA workshops I went to, while I have it. Time, I mean.

Okay. The first workshop in my little notebook (a non-spiral composition book in a smaller size I bought just for conference, and have decided I really like), is MEDICAL FACTS AND FALLACIES. This was presented by an actual doctor, who said that movies are really bad places to get information about how doctors and hospitals and emergency rooms and the like actually work. For instance, in one movie, a man was trying to look up poison someone had been given by thumbing through the Physician’s Desk Reference to match pills. A doctor would actually look in one of the books called a “toxidrome” which lists poisons by their symptoms. She gave lots of juicy little details. Like, bullet wounds don’t get infected like knife wounds, (the bullet’s speed of travel makes it too hot for germs to stick, or something like that) so they don’t dig them out, unless the location is dangerous. She recommended a book GREATEST BENEFIT TO MANKIND (according to my notes), and said that writers could fudge the facts for the benefit of the premise of the story–as long as you don’t fudge too much. This was a great workshop, and if you can get it on tape, do so.

I went to HOW TO REVIVE A DYING PROJECT OR A DYING CAREER. This was more of a motivational workshop than a crafty “how-to.” Yes, it was How To, but it was How to deal with fears and perfectionism and the stuff that gets in the way of getting the writing done. It was pretty good too, and in it she recommended the books by Ralph Keys, COURAGE TO WRITE and THE WRITER’S BOOK OF HOPE.

I also went to Theresa Meyers’ DOWN AND DIRTY MEDIA TRAINING which had a lot of great ways to handle interviews and how to get interviews. Like, in order to get a media interview, you need a hook to connect yourself to the audience, so first you can identify a problem the audience might have, and then shoot it down. “The economy is bad and people are depressed. But Romance makes people feel good, and it’s cheap.” Had some really good stuff in this one too. I’ve been impressed by Meyers on line. Now I was impressed by her in person.

I went to the PLOTTING WHEEL workshop, but the original person who was supposed to give this workshop couldn’t be there, and the sub wasn’t very good.

The workshop on how to make the Regency Historical connect to today’s readers was a good one. It gave me some good ideas for my own works–like creating a place on my website where my readers can experience my fantasy world. The early 1800s is far enough away that it’s like a foreign universe, so that’s what these speakers did.

I went to a Writing the Selling Synopsis workshop. I always need a good way to write a synopsis. I’m not sure I use any of the stuff that I’ve workshopped on, but maybe it’s soaking in. Anyway, this workshop gave one way to organize things and did a good job of it. And since I sort of use this method, maybe it helped and will help me refine what I do.

I think I went to a couple of other workshops, but they weren’t the kind where you take notes. I went to the theft of intellectual property/plagiarism workshop and got a lot out of it, and I went to a “What RWA can do for you” workshop that I liked a lot. And as I said earlier, I went to the Tor spotlight and saw my cover.

Okay, time to go. Though the boy’s (and girls’) plane is about 2 hours late, this will give me time to go by the bank, and mail the son-in-law’s birthday present.

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Posted in family, workshops, writing