Presenting at LARA meeting on Sunday

Filed in: blog | workshop | writing    Tags: hooks | lara | writing workshop

Wow, this trip snuck up on me since I’ve been busy revising and packing items for the Ruby-Slippered Gift basket to be shipped off. This Sunday, June 13th, I’ll be presenting the “Page 1, 5, 50 – Keeping them Hooked” workshop for the Los Angeles Romance Authors (LARA) chapter at the Encino Barnes & Noble.

I’m rather excited as LARA was my home chapter and I’ll be seeing a lot of friends and familiar faces. It’s also a very good thing that I get to do this one more time before presenting “Selling the Hard Sell” at Nationals.

So I studied up on the “film” from my last presentation…just kidding — I just asked my friend to take a couple of photos. After looking at the pics, I realized a couple of things. I totally stand bow-legged while presenting! I don’t know if I’m going to be able to break that habit. The second thing is, hey, that’s a picture of Amy Tan on the wall at the MORWA B&N meeting room. I thought that was kind of cool.

I’m feeling better about this presentation after having done it once in New England. I’m going to tighten it up a bit for Sunday. Hope to see some friendly faces in So. Cal. Wish me luck!

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Pitching for the Shy Writer

Filed in: blog | pitching | workshop    Tags: guest blogs | pitching | workshops

I’m giving a workshop on pitching today, so I revisited my blog post over at the Shy Writer’s blog hosted by Rebecca Clark. Re-reading it made me feel a little bit better about having to do the talk today.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine. For someone who enjoys public speaking, I still do get the worst case of nerves before a talk.

Pitching with Confidence at the Shy Writer’s blog

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Speaking this weekend – Pitching 101

Filed in: blog | pitching | workshop    Tags: fear of public speaking | morwa | pitching workshop

This Saturday, I’ll be speaking at the MORWA chapter meeting on pitching at conference. I really need to get a savvy title for my pitching talk on par with the “Selling the Hard Sell” or “Page 1, 5, 50 – Keeping Them Hooked” title.

I was asked to do this talk after doing an informal coffee talk last year for the chapter on pitching. Here was my interview:

Kim: “Hey, you’ve pitched at conference, right?”
Jeannie: “Umm, twice?”
Kim: “Can you talk about it?”
Jeannie: “Okay.”

Kim is Kimberly Killion, our chapter president, who couldn’t do the talk herself because, well, she had to be president at the same time. I’m only vice-president. My job is pretty easy. I take notes and get flowers to celebrate first sales and accomplishments. And I soothe ruffled feathers if there happen to be any. I also have signing power on the checkbook should the treasurer be out of town.

This weekend, the informal talk is morphing into a one hour formal workshop. At first I thought it was odd that I was actually doing a talk on pitching because I was shaking like mad when I first pitched. I had gone to Nationals twice before attempting to pitch and everyone always seemed so nervous and keyed up. It’s a boiler room atmosphere down in the pitch room, really.

Kind of funny, but I remember checking out a book in high school from the library titled, “How to Talk to People”, because I was morbidly shy. More funny stuff – my first job out of college was a speaking job as a technical trainer.  After a few years in technology, I switched careers to teach high school science. Every time I stood in front of class, I got that fluttery stomach feeling. So perhaps this puts me in a good place to give this sort of talk. No one knows how to fake confidence better than me.

I did have one freak out moment when I realized that Margie Lawson was our speaker last month, and she rocked the house. Talk about a hard act to follow! *cliche alert!* More irony – next month I’ll be speaking in Los Angeles at the LARA chapter meeting, following on the heels of their Bob Mayer all day workshop. I really need to get someone to help me plan these engagements better.

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Margie Lawson Rocks My World

Filed in: blog | craft | workshop | writing    Tags: EDITS system | empowering characters emotions | margie lawson | writing workshops

*Cliche alert* — As I kept hearing all weekend.

I just took a one and half day Empowering Character’s Emotions workshop with Margie Lawson through the MORWA chapter this weekend. This is THE system for amplifying your voice and writing. I wish I had discovered her EDITS system a year ago, or two years ago, or three…basically before anyone had read my writing. I wouldn’t have been so in the dark about what wasn’t working.

One of my very last “steps” I took before the writing started getting noticed by agents was an amplification pass. I went through the manuscript which I believed was “ready” and picked out lazy lines and paragraphs and shined them up a bit, purposefully made them more interesting and sparkly and unique.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it made my writing tortured and purple. But sometimes you just have to try harder. That’s how my Little Sis marks these lazy areas in the manuscript, “try harder”. I mark them as “make unique” or “do better”. Good, solid writing isn’t necessarily distinctive enough. Good writing doesn’t get noticed. Special writing gets noticed.

Margie calls it “fresh writing”, but she goes much deeper, giving you concrete tools to catch and amplify the writing. Much more effective than feeling around in the dark, as I was doing! Her system resonated with me because of several big ideas:

1. It’s an instructive system. An empowering system. It’s for writers to be able to delve deeper into their own work. The way to get the most out of it is to analyze your own writing. And reflection is never a bad thing.

2. At the heart of it, she pushes writers to stretch their boundaries and take risks. It’s not about “Don’t” rules; what not to do. Margie emphasizes “Do” rules. She gives a toolset of devices to use and concrete techniques that you can apply immediately.

3. Teacher Jeannie appreciates the lesson design. Cognitively, EDITS is a well-structured system. There’s tactile involvement (highlighting), visual cues through the color coding, actively engaging to the learner — lots of hands on exercises. Margie was also a very good teacher. Lots of positive reinforcement, modeling, creating a safe space by lowering the affective filter. I was very impressed just watching the way the workshop was structured.

The ten hours just flew by.

Oh, I wasn’t going to actually try to explain the system and the ten gobzillion things I learned. Margie does so in lecture packets which span hundreds of pages, so I doubt I can even scratch the surface. If you’re curious, check out her website (http://www.margielawson.com)– after you appreciate the work of art that is my marked up draft.

I also got a little special star for my effort. The Capote quote definitely embodies my writing process and philosophy.

I’m off now, to make it AWESOME.

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“Selling the Hard Sell” at RWA conference

Filed in: blog | publishing | workshop    Tags: kristina mcmorris | nashville | rwa national conference 2010 | workshop

Our workshop “Selling the Hard Sell” was approved for the RWA national conference in July. I’ll be speaking with partner in crime, Kristina McMorris, debut author and fellow Golden Heart® finalist.

We came up with the idea because, as new authors, we may not have tips to offer in regards to long-term career and craft, but we know how it feels when no one wants that book of your heart because the writing is good, but it’s a “hard sell”. Kristina’s background is in marketing and her WWII set debut novel, Letters from Home, is scheduled to be released in February 2011 after a long journey through contests and queries similar to Butterfly Swords.

After some discussion,  we reflected on how we had kept a keen eye on the market, despite having “unmarketable” proposals. The workshop will outline our query and submission process and the very specific approach we each took. Beyond the tips and tricks, Kristina and I might have some war stories under our belts that writers in the query war might find heartening as well. It’s going to be an exciting conference.

I hope I don’t forget my lines. I hope the room isn’t empty. *crickets chirping* I also hope we get to speak early so I can get the butterflies over with and breathe easy!

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