Conference registration is open.
Heather Bell Adams is the author of Maranatha Road (West Virginia University Press 2017), which won the IPPY gold medal for the Southeast, and The Good Luck Stone (Haywire Books 2020), which won Best Historical in the Next Generation Book Awards. A recipient of the Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Award, Carrie McCray Literary Award, and James Still Fiction Prize, Heather’s work appears in Still: The Journal, Atticus Review, The Thomas Wolfe Review, The Petigru Review, Pembroke Magazine, Broad River Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Raleigh where she works as a lawyer.
This year, NCWN is asking authors for “one good piece of advice,” either something they were once told that they never forgot, or something they wished they could go back and tell their younger selves.
“If I could offer one piece of advice to a new writer, it would be: you do you,” Heather says. “The path to happiness as a writer isn’t paved with chasing trends or turning yourself into someone you’re not. There’s little point in struggling to force a particular routine or genre to fit simply because it works for another writer. Be unflinchingly honest about the stories that flicker in your mind’s eye. What prompts you to pick up your pen? What pulls you to the page? Your essential self is yearning to say something unique and wonderful.”
Maybe your creativity has suffered during the past year. Or you used to eagerly anticipate picking up your pen, but now you dread it. Perhaps you’re trying to decide what to write next. Let’s re-connect to your authentic writer self and find the spark that will ignite your manuscript. In “Getting Back into the Writing Groove,” we’ll explore ways to identify the heart and soul of your project and develop strategies for setting goals and confronting obstacles. After our time together, my hope is that you’ll emerge anew—unstuck and re-oriented, and maybe even excited about writing again.
“Getting Back into the Writing Groove” (fiction) is sponsored by Freedom.to.
Fall Conference attracts hundreds of writers from around the country and provides a weekend full of activities that include lunch and dinner banquets with readings, keynotes, tracks in several genres, open mic sessions, and the opportunity for one-on-one manuscript critiques with editors or agents. North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green will give the Keynote Address. Additional sessions that might be of interest to fiction writers include “How to Give Your Characters Voice” with Barbara Claypole White; “The Art of Work” with L.C. Fiore; and “Conjuring Magic in Fiction” with Karen Tucker.
Register here.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to all writers, in all genres, at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.