The Rogue Workshop

The Rogue Workshop

This past weekend I attended the 2015 Southern California Writer’s Conference at the Crown Plaza Conference Center in San Diego. The conference was a blast as well as instructional and productive. I met some great authors and authors-to-be.

This is the second writer’s conference I’ve attended. The first was the La Jolla conference in November at the Paradise Point Resort last year. There are many similarities in the two conferences, including workshops, lectures, read and critiques, advance submissions for readers, guest speakers, and late night marathons for the hardy. The Friday night no-host cocktail reception and the Saturday night banquet are also staples of both.

One immediate difference in the two conferences is the venue. Last year's Paradise Point Resort is a far better choice than the Crown Plaza by a wide margin. The meeting rooms at the Paradise Point Resort are smaller and more intimate, nestled together with short, outdoor pathways through beautiful landscaping. Inside the meeting rooms, the U-shaped or squared table arrangements encouraged conversation and participation.  By contrast, the Crown Plaza meeting rooms are large, high ceiling chambers that echoed and made it hard to hear. We sat at large round tables intended for dining, not meeting. Unless you were able to grab one of the 8-10 seats at the teacher’s table, it was a challenge to hear and participate. Second, the meet and greet socials were right outside the meeting rooms and our conference wasn’t the only group using it. Since we were encouraged to move freely between different meeting rooms, doors were routinely opening and closing, flooding the room with noise each time.  Third, the conference seemed to be put together at the last minute. We were encouraged to go to the conference website to review and select the many sessions available, which I did. Yet, right up to the day of the conference, a good percentage of the sessions listed only a title with no description of any kind as to what was being taught.

On the very positive side, there were some great sessions and excellent teachers.  I also learned a lot just by talking and listening with those like me who are still learning, and share the same dream of being a writer. The best presentation of the conference was by Ara Grigorian, a commercial fiction writer who has only recently written his first novel. He taught me a lot about the pacing of a novel, and he did it in a very entertaining way that I will remember long after the conference is over. Ara took clips from several movies, primarily ‘Notting Hill,’ and used scenes from the movies to show the ebb and flow of act one to act three that must exist to keep the readers attention to the end.

I also want to acknowledge two more people who impressed me. I sent a request to the conference for an advance read and critique from author Matt Pallamary, and met with him on Saturday afternoon to go over the fifteen pages I submitted from the first chapter of my novel, The Majik of Spark. I was excited to see that there were lots of red ink spilling across those pages. To me, it meant that I would be learning a lot as we went through it. I did, and that short session is going to drive the self editing phase of the novel. I also want to acknowledge author Bethany Lopez. I had never met her before, but we have an affinity in that both of us served and retired from the military while still pursuing our dream of writing. In addition to being an inspiring guest speaker, she led a number of classes which I attended. During a session about secondary characters, we got into a spirited back and forth about happy endings and untimely deaths. Bethany, being the true optimist, roots for happy endings, and her fine novels deliver just that. I looked more for high drama, killing off a key player so that a secondary character would have to rise to the challenge. When she pointed out that I done similar deadly deeds twice more, I realized that maybe I should take a more serious look at “happily ever after.”  Uh, not. Seriously, the debate made me think, and I will be reviewing the romantic angle that is present but somewhat buried in the book.

Finally, I come to the Rogue Workshop. I’m not quite sure how to describe it. On the surface, the workshop is a group read and critique where anyone can ask to read their work (or have their work read). After the reading everyone else in the room gets to critique the work.  The only rule is that the critique must be about craft, not content. I’ve never been to one of these, and I was pretty nervous about it. Not only was I expected to have my own work critiqued, I was expected to critique the work of others as well. It’s not a format that I am comfortable with, but something Bethany said during her speech on Friday helped me get over my jitters.  I don’t remember the specific quote, but it was something like “attack what you fear, and believe that good will come of it.” By the way, did I mention that Bethany is a very positive minded person?

Back to the rogue workshop. I went to it. There were about fifteen people in the room, led by a young lady who I have unfortunately forgotten the name of. She is a fine reader and made everyone feel comfortable sharing our work and placing ourselves under the critical eye of our peers. The read and critique began at 9pm, and our last read and critique ended at 2:40am in the morning. Several of these sessions go on at the same time and there is a bit of a competition to see who grinds it out the longest. We outlasted them all. I was exhausted but pleased, and even a little exultant (that might have been the sleep deprivation). It was the highlight of the conference for me.

With the conference over but still fresh, my next task is a self edit of the novel to tighten up the prose and improve the pacing of the story. Matt Pallamary showed me in just 15 pages how much work that is going to be. Then, if I go the “traditional route” I am looking at having to find an agent, an editor, and a publisher. Each will evaluate whether to take a chance on me. If I get that far then I’ll need beta readers, formatters, cover artists, social network planning, and a growing list of things that must come together to actually become a published work. Finishing the novel is only the first step.

I’m a long way from the finish line, but I’m most definitely in the race.