Wow - that's awesome. Congratulations on the opportunity to share!
Angela <><
The event was awesome and well-attended. There were nine authors and I sat in on three of the talks. The list of authors included Mary Burton, John J. Lamp, Faye Ringel, Austin S. Camacho, Linda Goodman, Kathleen Mix, Karen Jones, Ron Smith, and Joanne Liggan.
Mary Burton spoke about creating characters readers won't forget. She spoke about the emotional hook that you need within the first paragraph or two. She said that is a must to please the editors. The emotional hook is what drives the character. She gave examples from not only books but movies and television shows.
Linda Goodman spoke about making stories from fragments. She is a storyteller. She collected great lines and scenarios for years but couldn't make a story out of them but then she learned the art of storytelling and explained how to weave all the elements or fragments into a story. I did purchase her book with six short stories.
Karen Jones talked about how to begin your writing life. She gave tips about poster board, clustering, using index cards to break a block. While she was talking a first grader was sitting next to me. She was with her grandmother who was a volunteer and introduced the speaker. She doodled for awhile and wrote her story in pictures. Then when she got the poster board, she tried her hand at clustering. She was cute as a button. Ms. Jones is working on a book about death - beating the high cost of funerals. She mentioned a site that sells furniture that converts to a coffin. The first grader told me that her story was about a monster who crossed the street and was hit by a car and killed. She must have been listening to the speaker while she was doodling.
Ms. Jones is the one who challenged everyone to writing at least five minutes every day for the first week and then increasing it to ten the following week and then increasing it thereafter. She said to place totems next to our writing space when we begin. That is the signal that it is time to write. She said in the beginning, we might only be able to come up with three words but that would be OK.