Write On! Winter Writing Conference

With a promise that he could pre-ride an upcoming mountain bike race, my husband drove me to St. George and back so I could attend a Writing Conference and work on my book in the car. About 7 hours.

I wish we'd been able to stay longer to enjoy the weather, but apparently the mountain biking was great, and I know the conference was worth the drive.

The keynote was given by Ally Condie and was an incredible presentation on the questions that fuel us to write, and how we can dig deeper. It felt like a tutorial on the "five whys?" method but for authors.

So often we write to work through questions of our own by putting characters through the wringer. "Where is my home?" leads to "where is my character's home?" and then "can they even go home?" and "or are they maybe trying to run away?"

We ask ourselves "what is truth?" and then force our characters to wrestle with the spiral of questions "can I accept this truth?" and "what happens if I can't?"

She shared some the personal experiences that drove her to write each of her books, and what questions she was trying to answer for herself along the way. The whole presentation got me thinking about what questions I was trying to answer in my book.

The initial seed for my current novel came from a nightmare. Ever since I was young I've had the most vivid and horrifying nightmares... and they make excellent story prompts. This particular one stuck a question in my mind upon waking: "what if dreams and nightmares were currency?". And in the way that Ally Condie explained... I fell down the rabbit hole to find more questions and came out the other side to:

"What does it mean to be safe?"

"What happens when safety is defined differently by different people?"

"Or when the perceived safety of one is contrary to the perceived safety of another?"

"What happens if your safety is a lie?"

What questions drive you and your characters?

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I also attended sessions taught by Lisa Mangum of Shadow Mountain Publishing, and one by Rachael Bush - the President of the League of Utah Writers.

Rachael talked about outlining, and gave some lovely examples of how different story structures work. Her character sheet and outline tool were excellent. Lisa taught us how to be the type of author a publisher wants, which is definitely guidance I am looking for. I also got to see a bit of Johnny Worthen's presentation on the history of the mystery genre. I didn't know it was so new! It's always interesting to me to see how stories change over time, and how they stay the same. Humans have always craved the creative and artistic, it seems.

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I've loved my "jump in feet first" approach to the writing community and have been rewarded each time I've put myself out there. Writers really are a pretty great group of people! I can't wait to meet more, and attend more events - especially if someone else drives me there.

Next up is Pre-Quills!