Workshops will take place Saturday and Sunday, November 10 & 11, 2007, at the Oregon Convention Center. Geared for writers of all levels, Wordstock for Writers is two days of workshops designed to provide writers with hands-on strategies for improving their prose and poetry as well as a chance to work with some of the finest writers in the country.
Wordstock for Writers is the only writing workshop in the Pacific NW housed within a major metropolitan book festival. The schedule allows students to see most of the world-class readings at Wordstock and attend classes without having to leave the building. Inspiration and instruction combine to create a truly unique writing experience.
Workshop Fees
One workshop...........................$40
Two workshops..........................$75
Each additional workshop..........$25
Registration for Writing Workshops is closed. Spaces for some workshops may be available the day of the event. Visit the Writing Workshops sign up table to see if space is available.
Workshop DescriptionsSATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10th
OPB Seminar w/ Christy George & Eve Epstein – So you want to be a radio star….
(11:00 AM-12:00 Noon)
Radio is the best medium for capturing a reflective moment, a personal revelation, a memory. It's our modern oral tradition. But writing for the page is not the same as writing for the voice. Find your own voice for radio, learn about pacing and storytelling, and pick up a few tricks of the trade (how do you put a smile in your voice?) from two public radio veterans. Bring paper, a pencil and a two-minute essay concept with you to the workshop, and you'll emerge with a first draft of a radio commentary! Your essay should be about a personal event that has some topical significance.
Cheryl Strayed – From the Mundane to the Meaningful: Making the Leap from Life to Art
(12:15 PM-1:15)
Have you ever read a memoir or personal essay and wondered, “Why does this matter?” Have you attempted to write about your own experiences and come up short, unable to reach beyond the confessional? Do you have an interesting/tragic/hilarious/amazing story that you’d like to get onto the page but you can’t imagine how you’d first excavate and then clearly articulate the universal meaning of your deeply personal experience? The best nonfiction writers tell personal stories that transcend the personal. How do they do it? How can we? In this workshop we’ll discuss how writers make the mundane meaningful and we’ll experiment with how we can write our own stories that do the same.
Steve Almond – How to Write Sex Scenes (Without F*cking It Up)
(12:15-1:15)
This intensive workshop will examine the works of Mary Gordon, James Salter, David Lodge, and others, in an effort to puzzle out what makes an erotic scene sizzle, or fizzle. We'll focus on how to avoid sounding clinical, or gratuitous, while remaining precise. And making sure that your sex scenes serve to reveal character, not just fluff the reader. This will be an informal session, one which will, with any luck, get raunchy, so people should leave their inhibitions at the door.
Steve Almond – How to Survive as a Writer (Without Selling Your Plasma)
(1:30-2:30)
This workshop will begin with a call for volunteers: who's willing to sell their plasma? Joking! In fact, we'll discuss how creative writers can survive in a culture that generally doesn't pay much for creative work. This will include tips on how to negotiate the shark-infested world of high-power editors, agents, and fellow freelancers. More specifically: how to find a home for your work, how to keep your editor happy, how to deal with a negligent editor, and how to ask (politely) for more money.
Alyson Hagy – How to Start Your Novel: Tips and Tasks to Help Writers Begin Novels They Will Actually Finish
(1:30-2:30)
This one-hour workshop will focus on the knowledge of character, plot, and structure that a writer needs to develop a first draft of a novel that has tension and momentum. We'll discuss outlines (do you need them or not?), character development, and some principles of suspense. The workshop will also recommend examples of strong fictional starts that might be models for aspiring writers.
David Sanford – “No Fear” Book Publishing Strategies
(2:45-3:45)
Would you like to receive expert advice on landing your first (or tenth) book publishing contract? This workshop examines current market realities (based on the latest survey of more than 300 book publishers), reveals the three most important marketability questions (to give you the best competitive edge), and shows you today’s best practices for creating new book proposals. Most importantly, you’ll learn “no fear” strategies for pitching your proposals to top prospective publishers (or literary agents). The presenter is a successful author (7 books), editor (70+books), and literary agent (270+ books).
Ron Carlson – "The Inside Story"
(2:45-3:45)
In this workshop Ron Carlson will invite participants to read short relevant sections of their work as he talks about the elements of craft: dialogue, imagery, point of view, beginnings, character, inventory and such.
Jack Hart – Ten Tools of Narrative
(4:00-5:00)
Jack Hart covers a broad range of writing skills in his new book, “A Writer’s Coach,” but several relate directly to storytelling. In this workshop, the man who directed multiple Pulitzer-winning narratives will explore ten of the most valuable, offering practical advice that journalists, novelists, and essayists can apply the minute they get back to their keyboards.
Tung-Hui Hu – Poetry and Found Footage
(4:00-5:00)
I've often thought that poetry is as much a process of recognition as of writing--of noticing poetic lines inside newspaper articles on politics or baseball scores. In this workshop, we'll discuss and edit words that already exist in the world, looking for the right places to site the beginning and end of a poem. Participants are asked to bring in found text: from film subtitles, the built environment, advertising, or any unusual place. We'll try to hear the prosody of everyday English, ask how the act of appropriation changes the role of the author, and, hopefully, take inspiration from the language that surrounds us.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11th
Tom Spanbauer – Dangerous Writing
(11:00 AM-12:00 Noon)
Dangerous Writing is about getting to the sore, secret, silent places and investigating them. There is a broken heart at the bottom of this deep well, and it is a broken voice that will give it utterance. Character lies in the destruction of the sentence. By destroying sentences, and messing with syntax, one creates a voice speaking with a burnt tongue, or what the New York Times described the language of The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon: poisoned lyricism. Bring an open heart, a handkerchief, and a pen.
Janet Fitch – Issues in Dialogue-craft
(Sunday, 11:00 AM-12:00 Noon)
Editors will tell you, the dialogue scene is the single most likely element which marks the divide between the intermediate writer and the professional. But why? We've all had thousands of conversations, what's the difference between dialogue in your everyday life and dialogue on the page? In this one hour craft lecture and discussion, novelist Janet Fitch will take you on a tour of the pitfalls and minefields of the dialogue scene, and expose you to the tools of good dialogue writing, including compression, exposition, conflict, the million dollar line, attributions, gesture, internal and external landscape, and silence itself.
Tom Larson – Memoir Writing Workshop
(12:15-1:15)
A memoir is a story that focuses on the meaning and intensity of a singular phase or relationship in the author’s life—unresolved feelings for a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend; coming to terms with a loss, an illness, a death; recalling a phase like childhood or adolescence or a period like college in which the writer was challenged or changed. We begin with a discussion of the differences between traditional autobiography and contemporary memoir, then list and select important phases, relationships, and passions in our lives, and choose one to focus on. Among the questions covered are: What’s my purpose? Where do I begin? How do I discover the emotional truth of my story? How do I write honestly about myself and those close to me?
Lauren Kessler – A 12-Steps Program for Writers: How to Stop Sabotaging Yourself and Start Writing
(12:15-1:15)
Writers are renowned for acts of self-sabotage, from extended experiments in procrastination to epic bouts of self-pity. To be a productive,successful writer, you need more than good ideas and literary talent. You need to learn to stop shooting yourself in the foot. This workshop is a practical, “tough love” kind of session—no Higher Power, I promise—but a dozen down-to-earth strategies for building and taking control of your writing life.
Ehud Havazelet
– Beginnings
(1:30-2:30)
From the Bible to Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice to Huck Finn, 1984
to The Go Between, great opening lines have forced readers to lean
forward and pay attention. Similarly, an opening page, while not
necessarily as riveting or quotable over drinks as these sentences, must
both entice and subtly announce to the reader not just plot and character
but the formal and thematic concerns which, under the surface, must
already be working their way into the reader’s imagination.
We’ll look at a few great openers, as well as at the first pages of
participants fiction to explore for what might lie ahead and what
direction to take.
Poe Ballantine - Exploiting the Lost
Years
(1:30-2:30)
We’ve all had our lost years. My own dark season lasted for twenty
years, but this was the medium, the material from which I formed as a
writer. It was from this period that I also gained sympathy for human
beings, that I began to understand the general principles of creation.
I’m here to encourage you to make mistakes and from these to
construct a meaningful individual philosophy from which stories may be
transcribed. Whenever you write about being lost, it’s not only free
therapy, you’re also addressing a potentially large audience.
Sally Nemeth – Stretching the
Truth: The Use of True Story in Screenplay
(2:45-3:45)
The instructor, Sally Nemeth, a former writer for "Law &
Order", will demonstrate hands-on how to use the newspaper to
generate story ideas for screenplay. She will discuss the difference
between screenplays "based on" and "inspired by" a
true story, and will discuss why true story must be fictionalized to fit
within the 2 hour form of screenplay. Participants should come prepared
to think on their feet.
Paul Brians – From the Web to
the Printed Page
(2:45-3:45)
Paul Brians has published two books: Common Errors in English Usage
(William, James & Co.) and Modern South Asian Literature in English
(Greenwood Press) as a direct result of work he published on the Web. His
Internet sites have also led to numerous invitations to write articles,
give lectures, evaluate manuscripts, and allow his translations to be
reprinted in anthologies. His Web-published photographs have been used in
programs on the History and National Geographic channels. He explains in
this talk how giving work away for free on the Web can lead to
opportunities such of these and added income.
Sarah Grace McCandless – Memoir
(4:00-5:00)
Even if your 10 year reunion has already come and gone, that
doesn’t mean you can’t reach back into your past to find
inspiration for your present. We suffered for a reason, right? Make it
count – join author Sarah Grace McCandless for a workshop that
explores effective ways to use the best and worst moments from the most
awkward years of your life in your writing, whether your goal is fiction
or memoir. Participants should bring an artifact from their childhood
and/or teen years, such as a journal, photograph, fake ID, mix tape,
letter, yearbook… even your old prom dress. Come on. We double
dare you.
Willa Schneberg – Creating Poems
Through the Artist's Lens
(4:00-5:00)
In this workshop we will employ the medium of photography for
poem-making. Although
