Patricia Stoltey

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Conferences for Writers — Colorado Has the Best of the Best

September 15, 2015 By: Patricia

I want to tell you more about the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference I just attended in Westminster, Colorado, September 11-13, but I’m having trouble deciding where to start. So before I begin….

Please stop by on Thursday and meet my guest blogger, Jason P. Henry. Jason is the conference director for the Pikes Peak Writers Conference which will be held in beautiful Colorado Springs, April 15-17 (with a prequel on the 14th), 2016. I haven’t attended PPWC yet because it’s down there on the other side of Denver from where I live (and I’m not a fan of driving on I-25), but I’ve heard such wonderful things about this organization and the conference that I’m seriously thinking about 2016.

I know, I might be turning into a conference junkie, but I figure it’s one more way I can learn more stuff, meet more authors, and buy more books add more books to my To Be Read List.

Okay, back to our original discussion–my experience at the RMFW Colorado Gold Conference. Today I’ll just hit the workshop highlights.

Friday

2015_Carol BergThe high point of the Friday afternoon activities was a two-hour workshop called The Joys, Pitfalls, and Techniques of Revision presented by award-winning fantasy author Carol Berg.  I’ve been stuck with a couple of first-draft manuscripts for ages, paralyzed, unsure how to even get going when I seem to have so many interruptions and disruptions. One of the things I’ve tried to do is print out 30-50 pages at a time and focus on that small chunk. Then I would get distracted again and by the time I was ready for the next chunk, I’d lost the flow of the story. Continually starting over wasn’t working.

The most important piece of information I took away from Carol’s workshop was the better how-to plan.

(1) Print out the whole first draft. Place it on your worktable with a supply of legal pads (or a notebook or blank paper), pens, Post-It notes, colored highlighters, and anything else you need to record the information and ideas you’re going to discover as you do the next step.

(2) Read the manuscript carefully from beginning to end, taking notes and jotting down ideas as you go. Record page numbers on the notes so you’ll be able to find the spot needing work when you’re ready for the next step. Add Post-It notes and tabs when helpful. Use the highlighters to color-code the problems you find (overused words, telling instead of showing, stilted dialogue, etc.) Do not stop to make revisions at this time.

(3) Then finally do the revisions and rewrites. Although some writers might do all the work chapter by chapter, I think I will approach it task by task. Adding or rewriting scenes first, then fixing dialogue or fleshing out descriptions, and finally attending to the details of word choice, overused words or phrases, etc.

Saturday

This was a day of attending panels. The one called Failure and Self-Doubt: The Silent Battle drew a large audience. It appears we writers are an insecure bunch, and the horror stories about publishers, dropped authors, and years of rejection are familiar to many. But when a panel of authors talks about overcoming these disasters and renewing their careers, everyone is lifted and encouraged.

The other panels I attended were those with agents and editors talking about their work and answering audience questions. These are always very informative, sometimes discouraging, but even more often, an inspiration. We had a great lineup of editors and agents at the conference this year, including two editors from Five Star. That publisher’s Frontier Fiction line has expanded to include mystery, history, romance and more and covers the period up to about 1920. I’ve been reading some of these novels (such as Michael Zimmer’s award-winning The Poacher’s Daughter) and look forward to reading more.

Sunday

Chris Goff

Photo by Mark Stevens

Chris Goff, author of the newly released thriller Dark Waters and a whole series of birdwatcher cozies, did a workshop on the Elements of the Modern Crime Novel. Chris packed a lot of information into that hour, but it was almost an unrelated piece of information that stayed with me. In a brief mention of the bestselling novel Gone Girl, Chris mentioned that the thing that bothered her most about that successful book, loved by some and hated by others, is that the cop was cheated out of solving the crime.

That was like a light bulb going on for me, especially because I was about to cheat my own cop out of solving the mystery in my work in process. It’s true. We don’t want some kind of accidental, unrelated incident to take out the villain or let him escape. We want our cops to win. Gotta go in and mark that passage with a yellow highlighter and rewrite!!

Those were just the workshop favorites for each day. I’m going to talk about the keynote speakers in a separate post, especially the uplifting story from our Writer of the Year, Susan Spann. Stay tuned.

More from my site

  • A Few Things I’ve Learned Over the Last Couple of YearsA Few Things I’ve Learned Over the Last Couple of Years
  • Random Stuff: Hey, There’s a Dead Guy, Colorado Gold, and Big BrotherRandom Stuff: Hey, There’s a Dead Guy, Colorado Gold, and Big Brother
  • I’ve Been Playing Some Serious Blog HookyI’ve Been Playing Some Serious Blog Hooky
  • Sudden Change of Plans … by Lisa BlackSudden Change of Plans … by Lisa Black
  • Self-Editing One Step at a Time: How to Identify Dragging NarrativeSelf-Editing One Step at a Time: How to Identify Dragging Narrative
  • I’m Back from Conference!I’m Back from Conference!

Category: The Writing Life, Writer's organizations Tag: Carol Berg, Chris Goff, Colorado Gold Conference, crime fiction, Revisions

Comments

  1. Susan Gourley says

    September 16, 2015 at 6:10 pm

    I love conferences. I would go to one every month if there were any nearby. And if I could afford it. Very interesting speakers. I always enjoy editor panels though not the agent panels as much. I actually print out my first draft just like Carol Berg recommended and then mark the heck out of it and make pages of notes before starting any revisions.

    Susan Says

  2. Madeline says

    September 16, 2015 at 7:54 am

    I always like to sit and read the draft of the ms from start to finish, making notes as I go. I find it helpful to get my head back into the story world. Of course, it can also be somewhat depressing when I realize how much work still needs to be done. 😮

    Funny – I don’t remember that part of Gone Girl bothering me at all….

    • Patricia says

      September 16, 2015 at 11:43 am

      Chris Goff writes mysteries and thrillers, so she’s probably more conscious of the police behavior in books due to her own plotting experiences.

      As for revisions, yes, I agree with you 100%. I fully expect to get depressed during this process, but I realize it’s the only way to get the job done sometime in the next decade.

  3. Margot Kinberg says

    September 15, 2015 at 3:08 pm

    Oh, my goodness, Pat! This conferences sounds so helpful. And I really like the practical kinds of topics that are addressed. It’s little wonder that you found it such a great conference. And I know all about adding books to the TBR…

    • Patricia says

      September 15, 2015 at 7:49 pm

      I only brought home twelve new books, Margot. I put all the rest of the want to reads on my list. So many books….

  4. Alex J. Cavanaugh says

    September 15, 2015 at 12:05 pm

    You need to go to that other conference next April.
    Don’t want to cheat our heroes out of a win.
    And we are a bunch of insecure writers…

    • Patricia says

      September 15, 2015 at 2:58 pm

      Hi Alex — I wonder if there are any secure writers. Even the wonderful Jeffery Deaver had a few bad experiences in his career and was kind enough to share them with us in his keynote speech.

Meet Patricia

I read, I write, I blog, and sometimes I do the laundry and cook. My 2014 novel, Dead Wrong, was a finalist in the thriller category of the 2015 Colorado Book Awards. Wishing Caswell Dead (Five Star/Cengage, December 20, 2017) is a historical mystery set in 1830s Illinois in the fictitious Village of Sangamon. The novel was a finalist for the 2018 Colorado Book Awards for General Fiction. Read More…

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