HNS conference: I’m on my way … almost. And big news for Android users.

This past week has been even more crazed than usual. (If such a thing is possible in Art and Words land.) But much of my busy-ness was in preparation for this weekend’s Historical Novel Society conference, which I’m attending for the first time. Now that I’m deep into revision land for THE LILY MAID, the timing couldn’t be better in some ways. I’m excited to see friends such as Mary Sharratt and Chris Gortner in person. I’m also thrilled that I’ll have the opportunity to meet authors such as Michelle Moran and Margaret George. (I’ll do my best not to go all fan girl.) As well, I’ll be signing DOOMED QUEENS during a group book signing.

I’ll do my best to post an update on the conference upon my return next week. But in the meantime, I have some big news for Android users: the Goddess Tarot app will soon be available for your phones and tablets. We’re doing our best to keep the app as similar as possible to the iPhone version. I hope that it will be on the market in July. This is a very major undertaking of resources, so I’m hoping it will be well-received! On a related note, the iPad version is still under development. I hope to have concrete news about that soon.

There’s lots more stuff going on—novel-writing workshops, travel planning, kindergarten graduations, and more. While I’m away, the gallery will be closed to the public and all that. But first things first: I still need to pack clothes and print out chapters and pack books. So to be continued next week!

• Filed under The Novel, art and words, creativity, iPhone apps, studio and gallery, travels | 2 Responses

Gallery events this weekend: Creative Women’s Salon and Children’s Art Show closing

This is a busy weekend at my studio gallery! We have two great events planned. If you live in the NYC area, I hope you’ll join us!

Friday, June 10, 7-9:30 pm
CREATIVE WOMEN’S NETWORKING SALON
Suggested donation for refreshments: $5.

As featured on Brooklyn Independent Television! Are you an artist, writer, or creative entrepreneur and practioner? Come out and meet other like-minded women for conversation, inspiration, and wine. At our previous gatherings, we were joined by photographers, crafters, publishing people, designers, artists, writers, and illustrators. Watch a television clip about this event.

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Sunday, June 12, 1-4 pm
CLOSING RECEPTION:
THE ART OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS:
Inspiration to Illustration
free admission – children welcome

Please join us for the closing of this wonderful exhibit. We’ll have cookies and other kid-friendly goodies. Also available: autographed books and prints for sale!

About this exhibit: Everyone has a favorite picture book from their childhood. But have you ever wondered at how the art for these gorgeous books are created? The Art of Children’s Books: Inspiration to Illustration offers a behind-the-scenes look at the art, design, and production of illustrated books. It presents a wide variety of art techniques and styles—from the witty digital art of Sara Varon to the soft classicism of Donna Diamond, and beyond.

Butterfly Inkblot art: © Margaret Peot.

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Creativity Friday: Breakout novel-writing with Donald Maass

As I wrote in Monday’s post, this past weekend I attended the Backspace Writers’ conference. The conference was split into three days with the first devoted to workshopping our novel queries and first pages with literary agents. The second day offered panels about various aspects of publishing—from novel genres to self-publishing and beyond. As wonderful as the conference was so far, Backspace saved the best for last: the final day was a WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL intensive with literary agent and novel-writing guru Donald Maass.

True confession time: I’m unable to resist most novel-writing “how to” books, no matter how sublime or silly their premises sound. While most don’t live up to their promises, I’m happy as long as I walk away with one new insight. That written, of all those I’ve read, Donald Maass’s guides are among the créme de la créme. I especially love THE FIRE IN FICTION—his section on microtension has been deeply helpful to me as I revise my novel. So you imagine how thrilled I was to have the opportunity to workshop my novel with him in person.

The full day workshop was a transformative experience. I loved it! I know The Novel (aka THE LILY MAID) is going to be so much richer for all the techniques and ideas I’ve gained during that whirlwind of a day. I now have tons of new ideas for pushing my writing to the next level.

Donald Maass was very different in person than I expected. For some reason, I expected him to have a rather serious and intimidating demeanor. Instead, he was lively, hilarious, and rather mischievous—elven almost—as he pushed the hundred or so writers in his workshop through eight solid hours of writing prompts, revision techniques, and other creativity-inspiring exercises to deepen our novel. By the end of the day, my hand was sore from so much writing. (Though I could have used a laptop, I like to write notes by hand in my journal and then transcribe them, editing as I go.) As a plus, he kindly autographed copies of his books for myself and my critique partner. Mine was inscribed “Tension on every page!”—a quote from THE FIRE IN FICTION. I was thrilled.

I took in so much inspiration that I hope you’ll forgive me for bullet-pointing some highlights of the workshop—I can’t possibly include everything here.

~ In brief, the morning was devoted to character development—developing our protagonist, antagonist, and secondary characters. The afternoon was centered around story levels, plot development, and developing microtension. He told us, “It is very rare that a story takes us someplace we didn’t expect. Push your story further than you think. Torture your characters, your protagonist.” Then he added, “Think you’re being mean? Don’t worry: They’re not real.” Everyone laughed.

~ Protagonists: One point Maass emphasized over and over: Most successful protagonists are highly conflicted. Building inner conflict, or microtension, helps to create highly memorable characters. Enacting duality gets the reader involved by making them yearn to resolve the protagonist’s inner conflict. To see them find happiness.

~ Antogonists: Maass pushed us to develop our antagonists—the force/s in opposition to our protagonist. He suggested writing what he called an antagonist outline. To do so, you assume your novel is the antagonist’s story: What is their central problem? What does your antagonist want? What do they want to change? What do they do? What is their arc? Inner conflict? What are their larger-than-life moments? How do things comes to a head for them? How do things turn around?

~ Narrative trends: Maass has noticed a narrative trend in publishing where the author marries literary fiction values with commercial fiction plot. This encourages great storytelling with beautiful writing. Surprise, surprise: Most of the bestsellers on the New York Times list are books with literary overtones—not potboilers where THE DaVINCI CODE meets John Grisham.

~ Plot layers: We spent a lot of time discussing how to add plot layers to our novels—not subplots, which usually involve secondary characters interacting with your protagonist. Plot layers add subtext and richness to your novel since they invite emotional complexity and microtension, which keeps readers turning the page. They usually introduce another conflict, or problem, which complicated the main plotline of your novel for your protagonist.

~ Secondary emotions: He also suggested adding secondary emotions to action, violence, or sex scenes. Maass said that usually readers tune out during these high drama scenes since they tend to be by-the-numbers in terms of emotions described. For example, arousal during sex; anger during violence. To help push our scenes to the next level, he asked us to choose four moments during an action sequence. We broke these down into snapshots, finding the unexpected image or emotional reaction within it. To focus on those instead. For example, one writer described having difficulties deciding on a secondary emotion for a scene in which his protagonist discovers his wife with another man. “I can’t think of anything beyond anger and disappointment.” Maass conjectured, “Perhaps he also feels relief because he’s suspected her of infidelity.”

I can’t wait to bring these techniques into my own writing!

• Filed under The Novel, creativity, publishing | 3 Responses

Creativity Friday: The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW)

One my favorite things about living here in Brooklyn is the community—I’m surrounding by so many intensely creative and lovely people who inspire me on a daily basis. Two of my neighbors are the well-known comic artists Tom Hart and Leela Corman. I was sad to learn that they’re leaving our tree-strewn neighborhood of Ditmas Park for the southern charms of Gainesville, Florida. However, they have good cause: Tom and Leela are opening an art school, The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW).

SAW will be a informal, intensive school dedicated to cartooning and sequential art. Tom Hart has ten years teaching experience at New York City’s School of Visual Arts and has been nominated for the Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz Awards. Leela Corman has illustrated for dozens of clients and illustrated a dozen books. Her graphic novel Unterzakhn will be coming out from Pantheon in Spring 2012.

To help SAW surmount the initial big hurdle of securing a space for their school and other legalities, they’ve announced a fundraiser with some amazing thank you gifts starting at five dollars—a great way to get that warm and fuzzy feeling of supporting arts education while scoring something cool. All donations are tax-deductible.

For more about the school in depth, visit SAW’s official website at SequentialArtistsWorkshop.org. Prefer social media? SAW is also on Facebook and Twitter.

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Creative Women Salon update: Your work on television?

Big news: The Creative Women’s Networking Salon is going to be featured on Brooklyn Independent Television for a feature about our lovely neighborhood. They’re seeking to interview creative women from the Flatbush area. If you’re interested in having your work featured on television, please arrive at 6:45 pm to be interviewed by the crew. Feel free to bring samples to show!

Here are the details:

Friday, May 6th, 7 to 9:30pm
Creative Women’s Networking Salon

Are you an artist, writer, creative entrepreneur or practioner? Come out and meet other like-minded women for conversation, inspiration, and wine. At previous salons, we were joined by photographers, crafters, editors, designers, artists, writers, and illustrators. Suggested donation: $5 for refreshments.

This event takes place at:
Kris Waldherr Art and Words studio-gallery
1501 Newkirk Avenue
entrance on Marlborough Road across from Rite Aid
Brooklyn, NY 11226
347-406-5811

More info: http://www.artandwords.com/events.html

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In other news, I’m hunkered down rewriting and revising my novel opening in preparation for the Backspace Writer’s Conference. I’m excited that I’ve already received my workshop group assignment — historical and commercial fiction — and am really looking forward to meeting the other authors. So far, my novel bible is really helping me clarify my characters’ motivations and relationship. That written, this new level of information is bringing up new questions as I write. It’s good in a somewhat nerve wracking way as I’m being forced to go deeper and truer.

I’ve also started running in Prospect Park with my friend illustrator Amy Saidens. And I’ve already injured myself. I feel like such a rube since I committed a classic newbie mistake: I didn’t get my running shoes checked out even though they were bothering me. Frankly, I didn’t want to spare the time or the money to shop for a new pair. Plus I figured my shoes were good enough for a beginning runner. So bad running shoes = lack of support in ankle =  intense knee pain.

I spent most of yesterday with my knee packed in ice and feeling deeply humbled. The good news is that my knee is already healing. And I’ve learned an important lesson: Don’t skint on time or money. This is a lesson I already know when it comes to my creative work, so I should have known better.

• Filed under The Novel, be-mused, creativity, friends and colleagues, studio and gallery | No Comments