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I know just how this LOLcat feels! Last night I shared my pillow with Smalls and Chaos. The cat was on the top half of the pillow along my head. The dog on the right half and along my side. Not much room for me. Not much blanket either since the dog was laying on top of it. A snuggie may soon find its way onto my want to buy list.
I spent Thursday and Friday in bed trying to recover from whatever flattened me mid-week. The rest helped. I felt good enough to attend the Rose City Romance Writer's Winter Intensive. It was a two day writing workshop at the Red Lion at the Quay in Vancouver, Washington. I haven't been to anything like this since attending San Francisco RWA in 2008 so I was looking forward to seeing other romance writers and learning new things.
Saturday's workshop speaker was Michael Hauge. He's written books on screenplay writing and pitching. I attended a weekend workshop with him in Berkeley way back before I'd sold with author Barbara Freethy, who was a critique partner at the time. What I learned there about story structure helped me sell my first manuscript. Hearing some of that same info again, as well as knew info about a character's essence and identity, was awesome. I jotted down pages and pages of notes.
I used my current story idea (proposal I sent in a couple of weeks ago) to fill in the worksheets. When I was back home on Saturday night, I was still working on it. Had an epiphany in the shower on Sunday morning, but I'm still fiddling to get it right. Needless to say, what I heard really resonated with me and provided much food for thought.
It was funny though how the Mount Hood Christmas story really fit into his structure though I hadn't read his book in years, including the new character stuff I hadn't heard before. I guess some things just get internalized.
Sunday was Bob Mayer's Warrior Writer. I've been wanting to take this workshop for months, but neither had the time nor the money. I was so excited to see he was part of the RCRW's Winter Intensive.
Warrior Writer is all about you as an author. Bob uses his Army Special Forces and own experience as a NYT bestselling writer to help authors come up with a plan. Not for a manuscript, but themselves. It's career planning at it's finest and makes so much sense. Some of it I've already done, but other stuff I'd never considered before. I walked out of the workshop with a strategic goal for my writing. Now to come up with the tactical goals to get there!
Bob is starting up his own publishing house, Who Dares Wins, focusing on a niche market of Special Ops fiction and non-fiction, and it was interesting to hear his take on what's happening in the market.
There was so much information presented in the workshop, and all of it was delivered rapidly. Fortunately, there was a handout with most of the info. I think my hand would have given out if I would have had to scribble that fast! I can't wait to go through the handout, delve deeper and answer the questions he asks. I highly recommend every writer to check out his website and buy his new Warrior Writer book that'll be released soon! Good stuff that we all need to learn!
So what did you do this weekend?
