Fall Conference 2006

Session III Classes: Fall Conference 2006

Saturday, November 11, 2:30-4:00 pm

SCREENWRITING - Writing a Successful Screenplay and Getting it to the Right People, with Bill Arnold, Sidney Ryan King, and David Sontag
Join the head of the NC Film Office, a successful independent filmmaker, and a longtime Hollywood scriptwriter and producer in a discussion of what makes for success at every stage of the process of writing and selling a screenplay, then producing and marketing a film.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE - Panel: Writing and Publishing Children's Literature, with Moderator Stephanie Greene, Frances O'Roark Dowell, and Joy Neaves
Are you an aspiring J. K. Rowling or Maurice Sendak? Are you writing for young children, middle schoolers, or young adults? Do you wonder sometimes how this field works differently from writing and publishing for adults? Join the Regional Advisor of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, an Edgar-award-winning children's author, and the editor of Front Street Books, a children's publishing firm, for a lively discussion of the ins and outs of successful writing and publishing for young people. Bring your questions! This is an extraordinary opportunity to meet some very successful people in the field.

CREATIVE NONFICTION - The Healing Power of Words, with MariJo Moore
There is an American-Indian oral tradition in which words function as a part of the healing process by transformation and restoration. This tradition can be practiced through the written as well as the spoken word. This class includes the following revelations: inspiration is a breath of fresh air; intuition is to know the wind intimately; creative writing can be a spiritual experience, opening one to a deeper understanding of one's connection to the whole. Everything has a voice if one will listen. Our individual lives are a story unfolding, day-by-day, revelation-by-revelation, and creation-by-creation. This experiential way of writing will allow participants to write from a different perspective, which includes imagery, purpose, and exploration.
* Writing exercises

CREATIVE NONFICTION - Travel Writing: Getting the Story, Getting It Published, with Marvin Hunt
This course will introduce students to the world of travel writing, one of the most accessible professional writing venues. It will cover ways of generating ideas, strategies for pitching ideas to editors, practical advice on reaching destinations, effective (and ineffective) writing techniques, and important issues that concern all travel writers, such as the relation between fact and fiction, the use of sources, the perils and rewards of freelancing, and tax issues. Students are asked to bring their first (lead) paragraph of a story from a recent trip.
* Workshop: Bring first paragraph of a travel story

FICTION - Publishing Fiction: The Journey from Submitting to Selling, with Valerie Ann Leff
How do I submit stories to journals? How do I find an agent for my book-length work? What happens from the time a book deal is made until its publication? What can I expect from my publisher? How is a book sold to TV or film? Come hear about the ins, outs, ups, and downs of publishing fiction from an author who has had a single story rejected 156 times before it found its way into print and who now has a two-book publishing contract and a major network TV deal.

FICTION - From the Inside Out: Tapping Your Subconscious Mind to Create Rich, 3D Characters, with Diane Chamberlain
Whether you simply long to write fiction or are well into a work-in-progress, this experiential workshop can help you breathe life into your story through the creation of rich, three-dimensional characters. Using innovative techniques, we'll explore ways to tap into our "subconscious minds" to turn our characters into people readers will care about. Bring a notepad, pen, and your imagination.
* Writing exercises

POETRY - Poetry and Accessibility: Striking the Right Balance, with Michael McFee and Michael Chitwood
Poets, essayists, and longtime friends Michael McFee and Michael Chitwood will discuss the issue of accessibility in poetry. They will read and talk about poems that lead to such questions as: Is poetry by its very nature inaccessible to most readers, or should it be written so that it's accessible to any audience? Is there a desirable middle ground between the obscure and the undemanding, the challenging and the too-reader-friendly, the inaccessible and the overaccessible? How can you write in "the language really spoken by men," as Wordsworth called it several centuries ago, without lapsing into mere prose?

POETRY - Re-Form School: New Forms in Poetry, with Alan Michael Parker
In this course, we will consider the ways in which "form" has changed, how writing a poem is no longer exclusively a question of rhyme/meter versus free verse. The approach will be hands-on, with an exercise or two planned (bring pen and paper!), and the session will be discussion-oriented.
* Writing exercises