Into a Writer's Head: The Fire in Fiction...

Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Fire in Fiction...

Yesterday morning I woke up bright and early to meet fellow writers Serena and Dona for a ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island for the Fire in Fiction Conference. At the ferry we joined Kelli and Christina for our ride. Shannon planned to meet us on the island.
The ride over was foggy, but we made up for the lack of view with plenty of chatter. Plus, there would always be the ride home.
The conference itself was wonderful. The Fire in Fiction was presented by Donald

Maass of the Maass Literary Agency in New York. We've been hearing for years from other writers that if we ever have the opportunity to hear him speak, to jump for it. Let me tell you, they weren't wrong. Maass is a well known agent, as well as a prolific writer. He's the author of Writing the Breakout Novel, one of the most talked about craft books around.
Yesterday he brought us something new. The topic? Continuing to find the passion in your writing, and how to make each book the best it can be...even when it's your 50th. His writing exercises for adding unexpected details and unexpected emotions certainly helped to make some of the scenes in my current WiP richer, and I can fully see how I can incorporate these techniques in my next book. Mr. Maass was a very dynamic speaker, interspersing anecdotes and advice with opportunities for the audience to practice what he presented. In teaching, we call this the optimal learning model, moving from modeling to guided practice, to independent practice. I left the conference with much more concrete ideas of what I need to do to make these revisions more worthwhile, and

also what might need to be done in order for me to move forward with the revisions.

Serena, Dona and I took the next ferry home, giving us time to debrief the conference as well as other random discussion topics. Don't they look like they're having fun? And thankfully the sun