Conference Program: Post Conference Workshops

Saturday February 28, 2009
5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

 

Registration open to general public

Post-conference workshops offer an extended four hours of hands-on experiences in writing. These workshops also offer an opportunity to share in the experience for writers not able to otherwise attend the two-day conference.

The Post-conference workshops are held on Saturday evening from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in private venues on south Whidbey Island and are available at additional fee. The extended fee is $50 in addition to the conference fee.

Fees for general public are $75.00, with a discounted fee of $65.00 for WIWA members.

Either way you may register online or by phone.360-331-6714

Any questions may be directed to WIWA office staff at phone number above or writers@whidbey.com .

Four Hour Workshops

My Middle Sags! -- Carmen T. Bernier-Grand

Streaking Through Flash Fiction -- Marian Blue Cancelled

Thirty Ways to Tell the Story -- Wendy Call

Apprenticing the Masters (Good Writers and Remarkable Storytelling) -- Molly Dwyer

Screenwriting: Story, Structure, Character -- Bill Kerby

Who’s Telling This Story, Anyway?  An Exploration of Viewpoint -- Wayne Ude

Passion of Place—Writing the Land -- Carolyne Wright

My Middle Sags! --Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
 Prop up those middles! Be prepare to exercise! After learning about beginnings and endings in the class session on Saturday, students will learn how to avoid sagging middles to deliver a novel that rivets from end to end. Students of this workshop will benefit greatly from the class session Beginnings and Endings (Saturday afternoon 1:15 p.m.). Students of this workshop not registered for conference call Asharaine at WIWA office 360-331-6714 for special admission to this class.

Streaking Through Flash Fiction -- Marian Blue Cancelled
Drabble. Nano-fiction. Flash Fiction. Sudden Fiction. Short-short. Prose poem.
 Genre-bending definitions spill across pages of definitions for the short story that fits on a page or in a paragraph, for short fiction that plunges the reader into the sudden rush of love at first sight or that moment between the time you know your car is going to crash into another car and the moment it does so. Flash fiction creates the moments between ordinary life, the moments that some people seek and that others fear but that everyone experiences.
How do you create that intensity in less space than it takes to define the genre, in less space than that between each breath? Let’s talk about how – let’s write some flash fiction together. Bring pen and papers and the desire to write.

Thirty Ways to Tell the Story -- Wendy Call
In this fast-paced evening, we'll zoom through two-and-a-half-dozen writing exercises, searching for the best way to get those words on the page. If there's a story (factual or otherwise) you've been itching to tell, this is your chance to anchor those words to the page. Multimedia writing prompts - questions, answers, lines of poetry, images, sounds, even nontoxic scents (with an alternate exercise for the chemically-sensitive) - will help us open the dusty drawers of memory and empty them out. Each participant will leave with a completed draft that's ready for revision.

Apprenticing the Masters (Good Writers and Remarkable Storytelling) -- Molly Dwyer
What makes it work? What keeps us turning pages? Why has it lasted? Good writers are influenced by good writing—we learn from outstanding literature. In this workshop, we'll analyze a selection of audio excerpts with an eye to understanding what makes for remarkable storytelling. We'll explore the expertise and creative insights of the greats, and write variations and improvisations of our own: mimicking, imitating, deviating, discovering our capacity for creativity and daring through mindful apprenticeship. (for all levels)

Screenwriting: Story, Structure, Character -- Bill Kerby
 Beginning with a class session, How to Break a Story, the technique of screenwriting is a hands-on workshop with lots from a unique individual and an experienced Hollywood pro. Prerequisite: 2 hour class session: How To Break A Story (Saturday afternoon 1:15 p.m.) Students of this workshop not registered for conference call Asharaine at WIWA office 360-331-6714 for special admission to this class.

Who’s Telling This Story, Anyway?  An Exploration of Viewpoint  -- Wayne Ude
First person, third person, omniscient:  these terms barely begin to describe the nuanced range of viewpoints available to the writer.
Is a first person narrator consciously aware of telling the story, or is he or she seeming to experience it with no awareness of an audience?  Is the first-person narrator telling the story shortly after it happened, a few years later, a lifetime later? Does that narrator know more now than he or she did as the story took place? Is that narrator reliable or unreliable—and if unreliable, does the narrator intend to be unreliable or does he or she believe his/her account is the truth, even though the reader can see that it isn’t?
In third person, an additional layer of meaning becomes possible. Consider this range of options:

He was an honest man. He knew himself to be an honest man. He believed himself to be an honest man. He had always believed himself to be an honest man. He figured he was honest enough. He was as honest as the next guy.

And then there’s omniscience—the freest, most difficult viewpoint of all.This four-hour class will explore the range of things which can be done with first person, third person, and omniscient viewpoints.

Passion of Place—Writing the Land-- Carolyne Wright
"The land was ours before we were the land’s."  Robert Frost’s poem recited at JFK’s inauguration speaks to us in the West, and particularly the Northwest, where sea and landscapes have a powerful hold on our imaginations and in the poetic voices and traditions that flourish here.  We will read sample poems and narratives from a number of poets and writers of the West and Northwest—from Stafford’s quiet illuminations in his Reports from a Far Place, to Kizer’s tutelary Great Blue Heron, to Hugo’s Triggering Towns, to DeFrees’s Light Station at Tillamook Rock; to MacLean’s River That Runs Through It, to Doig’s House of Sky, to Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and the glacial depths of Robinson’s Fingerbone Lake.  And we will write our own poems and/or narratives about scenes and landscapes that move and matter to us, using as many senses as we can to describe the scene, and if there's a story associated with it, tell the story.  (Emerging and experienced writers.)
We will spend about one-third of the workshop time in instruction / reading and discussion of sample poems and narrative, one-third in active writing in response to triggering prompts, and one third in discussion and constructive critique of workshop participants’ efforts.  Workshop members may bring work already in progress for critique, but we will emphasize the generation of new work as well.

Workshop presenters and content subject to change without notice.