Community Connection / Writeaway
by Terri Barnes
Much of the hard work of writing is solitary. Writing workshops give wordsmiths an opportunity to gather in a community of writers to hone their craft through guided instruction, peer feedback, and spending time simply writing. Depending on the workshop format, writers prepare by setting goals, submitting finished work or work in progress, and distancing themselves from normal daily distractions so they can fully engage in this vulnerable, rewarding experience. […]
Turn the Page
by Meagan Frank
Pitching story ideas to literary agents can happen in a tweet, a face-to-face conversation, or a three-paragraph email. The exercise of condensing 80-100,000 words of a manuscript down to a hundred characters, a few minutes of explanation, or a well-crafted query letter can challenge writers. In order to hone pitching skills, writers attend pitch conferences geared toward equipping them to better navigate the road toward representation. Perfecting the pitch is worthwhile but writers gain the most when they maintain perspective about the journey toward publication. […]
Community Connection
by Naomi Krueger
There is a place, created from three 100-year-old buildings, where writers, book artists, and publishers work, create, and collaborate together. It’s a place where books can literally go from the mind to the page, to the bookshelf. A spiral staircase with long, narrow pages of brilliant white paper covered in faintly inscribed poems leads upstairs to pockets of people reading books and pages of manuscripts. […]
