It’s not every day you get to eat pizza and shoot the breeze with a bestselling author
Get used to being critiqued. Writing is a performance art. – David Farland
Today, I attended the first day of a week-long workshop taught by award-winning, bestselling author David Farland. Fourteen of us students showed up in a hotel conference room by the SLC airport to learn from an author who has mentored other bestselling authors like James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, and Stephenie Meyer, among others.
I’ve heard some people express their wish that they could attend this workshop, or that “someday,” they would attend it. For me, I finally crossed the line in the sand several weeks ago. I had been wanting to improve myself as a writer through classes. When this workshop showed up on my Facebook feed, I signed up before I could change my mind or fuss about the fee. It’s a chunk of change, more than I’ve ever spent on any one conference.
But I love it, focusing once again on the craft of writing. If I lived nearer to BYU, I would take a college-level creative writing class, so this is the next best thing without disrupting my life too much.
I suspect all 14 of us are serious and committed about improving as writers, all willing to do the work involved. We certainly have a diverse background, in various stages of the publishing journey. It was a foreign feeling for me to introduce myself as a published author. I realized I’ve not attended a conference since I launched Ghost Moon Night in 2014.
In fairness to David, I will not share my notes here. I may highlight a few things here and there. But let me tell you one thing that definitely happened today. After a morning’s worth of learning, we did a writing exercise, which was to use all senses. I’ve always tried that in my writing. But for some reason, I never could pull it off successfully. It could be that I have become rather lazy in my writing, where I don’t have a compelling reason to step up to the plate.
Believe me, when you are in a roomful of serious fellow writers, and you are supposed to share, you put on your game-face. 🙂
My biggest challenge with the present draft of The Spanish Exile is, even after rewriting, some passages are thin on setting and there is an intrusive narrative voice. Today, I got feedback that I successfully introduced the main character by immersing the reader in the scene, cued the reader about the time period and place, and intrigued them with key details like a case of pistols under the carriage seat. I already had a good framework for my story. Now I am deepening the scenes.
At the end of the day, David treated us all to pizza from the Pie (which came in jumbo-humongous boxes – a-ma-zing), so nice of him, and which gave us another chance to talk to him about his writing journey.
I am super excited for what tomorrow brings.
Next: Day 2
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