Writing for Charity Conference at the Provo Library

Saturday, My Style!

Yes it was, on St Patrick's day, I got to attend a writer's conference with my friend Robin.  We both have a book or two in us, whether or not those books will ever be written, however, remains to be seen.

Robin and I were both English majors in College, and we both wrote for our respective college newspapers, we are both avid readers and believe it or not, we both enjoy classes on such things as:

Character Development.  This presenter put up a slide at the beginning of her lecture and when I noticed that it including both Pride and Prejudice and The Cat in the Hat, I knew I was going to enjoy her presentation, and I did.

As you can see, I was not the only one that enjoyed the presentation.  Because it was St. Patricks day, a lot of people wore green, that was kind of fun!

After the character development lecture, we broke up into small groups with a local published author and she critiqued a few pages of writing by each person in the group, while we ate box lunches.

After lunch Robin and I attended a panel of Fantasy Writers as they answered questions about publishing in general and the specifics of the genre.  Brandon Sanderson, who is finishing up Robert Jordan's series, was part of the panel.  Next we attended a lecture on rewriting by Dean and Shannon Hale, shown above, which was probably one of the most effective and concise treatments of the subject that I have ever experienced.

 After all the sitting it was great to get to go around and meet a few of the authors and have the books we had purchased signed.
This is Tess Hilmo and I had her sign her book, 'With a Name like Love', and I am looking forward to reading it.  I have loved youth
 fiction since taking a children's lit class from Marilou Sorensen at the U of U 25 years ago.  Robin and I had a chance to meet other nice budding writers while waiting.  Here we see Robin, telling one of her great stories to a current student at  BYU.  Of course the line to have books signed by the Hales was the longest line of all, but as you can see, I finally managed to get to the front of the line.  I am just glad that I wasn't behind the lady in the picture below, I might have missed my date with my dh that evening, because I definitely would have stayed the course, Shannon Hale is one of my favorite modern authors.

Robin and I both left the conference with a renewed determination to get our books out of our heads and onto paper ... wish us well!