Winter Writing Practice Retreat

Relax and Prepare for the New Year with Saundra Goldman

Saundra Goldman

10 AM – 4 PM Saturday, December 5
at Austin’s Casa de Luz
1701 Toomey Rd
$109 WLT members / $169 nonmembers

(Advanced reservations must be made through the Writers’ League.)

This winter’s retreat will help you set the tone for the season with a day of writing practice and meditation. While the media tells us to shop, party and overeat, the Earth gives us a different message, that it is time to withdraw, to go under. May Sarton wrote that, “Winter is the season when both animals and humans strip down to the marrow.”

Topics and exercises at the retreat are designed to help you go deep inside yourself, to strip to the marrow, and get grounded for the weeks and months ahead.

A macrobiotic lunch is included in the registration price. We will be breaking for lunch, so students also have the option to leave campus and purchase food during that time.

Open to all levels of writers.

Who Should Attend?

• Anyone interested in starting a writing practice
• Writers who want to deepen their writing experience
• Students of past “Build a Writing Practice” classes

Writer and art historian Dr. Saundra Goldman brings years of experience in writing practice, including intensive study with Natalie Goldberg. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have been published in literary journals, museum catalogs, textbooks, anthologies, and professional journals, including Art News, New Art Examiner, Art Papers, Theater and Drama Review, and the Texas Observer. She also served as art critic to the Austin American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle. She is currently writing a book about the feminist performance artist and sculptor Hannah Wilke.

Interested? Register here.

Blast Off: the Book Launch and Beyond!

Monthly Program from our “Build a Book” Series

Tweed Scott

David Marion Wilkinson

 

 

 

 

 

 

7:30 p.m. Thursday November 19
at the Writers’ League Office
611 S. Congress Ave., Suite 130
*FREE*

You’ve written your book, landed at a publisher, and now it’s time to meet your public at book signings and events. Authors who’ve been there will share their experience about how to prepare for readings and signings; plus, we’ll hear from a bookseller to see what works from the store’s perspective. Arrive early; seats fill up fast!

Panelist: president of the WLT Board of Directors, Tweed Scott and public relations specialist, David Marion Wilkinson.

Please join us beforehand 5 – 7 PM at Doc’s Motorworks Bar & Grill, 1123 S. Congress (two blocks south of the WLT office) for a Mix and Mingle Happy Hour!

Writing the Successful Synopsis and Query Letter (or Selling Your Book Without Selling Out)

John Pipkin presents how to create a successful pitch!

John Pipkin

2 – 5 PM Saturdays, November 21 and December 5
at the Writers League Office
611 S. Congress Ave. Suite 130
$99 WLT members / $159 nonmembers

 

This two-part class is designed to teach you how to write a concise, interesting, one-page synopsis of your novel or nonfiction book and how to compose a pitch-perfect query letter that will attract the attention of an agent. Whether you are just starting to write your book or have already finished writing, this class will help you see how the synopsis and query can not only help you sell your manuscript but can also help you develop and polish your work.

The class format will be primarily lecture with some in-class writing assignments and opportunities for class discussion and Q&A. Students will not be required to share work or critique work in class, although students are always welcome to share portions of their synopsis and query if they wish to do so.

By the end of class, each student will walk away with the following:

• a completed a synopsis
• a completed query letter
• a written critique from the instructor of their synopsis and query
• an understanding of what agents are looking for in the synopsis and query
• insights into how the synopsis and query can help you develop, edit, and polish your manuscript
• a written critique from the instructor to help him/her polish the synopsis and query

John Pipkin’s first novel, Woodsburner, was published to national acclaim by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in April 2009 and recently sold his second novel to Doubleday based on just a query and synopsis. Woodsburner very recently won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize! John received his Ph.D. in British Literature from Rice University in 1997 and was an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Rhetoric at Boston University, before working as an editor and content specialist in educational publishing. He is the former Executive Director of the Writers’ League of Texas.

This class is already very full, so please contact the office before registering. Or you can risk it and go ahead to register here. If the class reaches its limit, we will notify the registered students about potential cancellations.

The Art of Interviewing

Learn Effective Interviewing Skills with Suzy Spencer

Suzy Spencer

2 – 5 p.m. Saturdays, November 7 and 21
at the Writers League Office
611 S. Congress Ave. Suite 130
$99 members / $159 non members

 

Effective interviewing is an art form essential to the success of all writers — whether you’re doing research for a novel or nonfiction book; writing newspaper, magazine, or journal articles; preparing your thesis or dissertation; creating web content; blogging; or promoting your own book.

In fact, if a writer doesn’t know what questions to ask, how to ask or answer them, as well as how to listen to glean information that no one else has, the writer could miss key opportunities to make an even better book, story, or article.

New York Times best selling author Suzy Spencer, a professional in the techniques of interviewing, will teach the course through lecture, discussion, and role-playing. This two-session class will teach writers how to prepare for an interview, how to conduct an interview, how to turn a bad interview into a good one, and how to follow-up after an interview.

The information from this class is useful for everyone, but especially if you are: a freelance writer or journalist who wants to bump up your interview skills to excel in a tight market, a blogger who wants to add original reporting to your blog, an authors who is — or who plans to be — interviewed to promote a book, or an author interviewing prospective agents and/or publishers.

Interested? Register here.

Master Class: Character in Fiction and Nonfiction

Successful Characterization with Tracy Daugherty

Tracy Daugherty

1 – 5 p.m. Friday, October 30

at the Writers’ League office

611 S. Congress Ave., Suite 130

$99 members / $159 nonmembers

One way to think about successful characterization in either fiction or nonfiction is to say that characters work best when they match the narrative situation. That is, in the short-hand that is literary craft, everything they do illustrates their core qualities and values. Within the narrative parameters you have established, everything about the character’s nature is clear to the reader.

Instructor and  acclaimed author Tracy Daugherty will help explore strategies for creating successful characters in a narrative, whether it is fiction or nonfiction. Together the class will write and share work and ideas, and the instructor will provide published examples of characterization. The class will be in a lecture/discussion format.

Students will learn:

• a firm concept of characterization
• a sense of effective dialogue in fiction and nonfiction
• an understanding of tone, as it relates to characterization
• strategies for developing narrative situations that effectively illustrate character
• an understanding of how to build story from character, rather than the other way around

Interested? Register here.

Book in a Month: Novel Writing Tool Kit

Novel Writing Online Class with Kit Frazier

Kit Frazier

Self study, online course

starts Oct. 26 – Nov. 30, 2009

$149 WLT members / $209 nonmembers

Just in time for National Novel Writing Month! Whether you’re thinking about writing a novel or mired in the middle of your work in progress, this is the class for you. The intensive course of study reviews Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey’s three-act structure and Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation, and Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction, and breaks these concepts down into a manageable, 30-day writing regimen, with particular emphasis on those all-important first five pages and middle-of-the-story conflict.

The Book in a Month Tool Kit includes:

• PowerPoint Videos of Class Instruction
• Personal Goal Tracker Calendar
• Character Worksheets
• Character Goal, Motivation & Conflict Sheets
• Story Board Worksheets
• Time Tracker Worksheets

Instructor Kit Frazier will provide daily encouragement to students and host Friday online brainstorming chats. Students will also have the opportunity to share work in small online groups. Bonus! Students who complete their novel by November 30 will receive a discount on an entry in the 2010 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest.The Manuscript Contest has nine categories, and each category winner receives a complimentary consultation with an agent at the 2010 Writers’ League of Texas Agents Conference on June 26.

The Craft of Writing

Kathleen Allen-Weber

Ann McCutchan

Choosing the Writing Life: Art and Practice with Kathleen Allen-Weber & Ann McCutchan

Saturday, September 12, 10a.m. – 5p.m.

Whether you are thinking about becoming a writer or living the writer’s life but desperate for a booster shot, this six-hour intensive workshop offers the ideas, tools and inspiration for turning desire into flow, and flow into finished manuscripts. Team-taught by essayist, journalist and three-book author Ann McCutchan, a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas, and licensed therapist and writer Kathleen Allen-Weber, Ph.D., “Choosing the Writing Life” addresses the three critical components of the writer’s way: awareness, commitment, and practice.

Topics include:

• developing self-knowledge
• building technique
• seizing ripe opportunities

Don’t miss out on this workshop. To register for, click here!

Summer Writing Retreat Submission: Gerald Warfield

Itwas Adark and Stor Mynight

by Gerald Warfield

Itwas Adark and Stor Mynight lounged at the edge of the purple pool. Stor raised her crystal glass, delicately, in her pincer claw. “Itwas,” she said, “there may be no gods to bless you, but you bless yourself with this act of kindness and compassion.”

Itwas raised her crystal, too, though not as high, and spread her third pair of legs in a sign of deprecation. “My dear, no one is more deserving than you. The accident that destroyed your eggs last season was tragic in the extreme. The least I can do for so unfortunate a friend is to provide a nest pool.”

“But the silver it must have cost …”

“Nonsense. My barnacle was already here. I only had to have the pool itself carved, and the entrance channels.”

Stor raised her eye stalks and looked out onto the blue ocean. Great waves broke upon the rocks only a few spans from

The Business of Writing

ResumeRX to the Rescue with Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon

2 pm – 5 pm, Saturdays, April 4 and 18

Writers’ League Office, 611 S. Congress Ave., Ste. 130, Austin

“ResumeRX” is back by popular demand! Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon is expanding “ResumeRX” into an interactive two-part session that will assist anyone writing or revising a resume in search of a new job, including writers and publishing professionals seeking to develop their own platform or pitch their books in the new economy.

Registration is still open! $99 members; $159 nonmebers.

Opinionated: The Art and Craft of Op-Ed Commentary

A Master Class with Journalist, Evelyn C. White

9am – 1pm, Saturday, March 14

Writers’ League of Texas, 611 S. Congress Ave., Suite 130, Austin

Registration is still open!

Commentary is a perfect microcosm for exploring nonfiction writing. Journalist, Evelyn C. White, will lead students in producing a 600- to 700-word op-ed that can be submitted to newspapers following the class. Students are encouraged to bring an idea and a self-addressed, stamped envelope addressed to a newspaper. $99 WLT members; $159 nonmembers.

Don’t miss Evelyn’s other Austin appearances:

• International Women’s Day Lecture at UT, 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, Main Building, Room 212 (free)
• Talk on Alice Walker’s life and impact and book signing at BookWoman at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15