WIFYR attendance options

Registration is now open for the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference, or WIFYR. The week-long event occurs in Sandy, UT of the week of June 15-19.

This is a super writing conference and this year there are several options to fit varying budgets and time constraints. The prices listed below are the early-bird cost which will go up after March 15.

If you’ve only got one afternoon, make it Friday, June 19. Jennifer Nielsen (The False Prince series) delivers the keynote speech. For $18, you can join the book signing, sit in on an agent/editor panel, and can attend the end-of-conference party.

You can choose the afternoon sessions package that gets you in to all the craft presentations throughout the week, including Jennifer Nielsen’s keynote. It is going for $99..

If you’ve only got one day, you could do the mini-workshop package. These four-hour sessions take place in the morning with a different topic and instructor each day. These also list at $99 and will get you in that day’s afternoon session. You can do one or you can do them all. This is the schedule:

Monday, June 15 -  Guy Francis - illustration class

Tuesday, June 16 - Emily Wing Smith - memoir writing

Wednesday, June 17 - Sarah M Eden - YA romance writing

Thursday, June 18 - Matthew J. Kirby - mystery writing

Friday, June 19 - Cheri Pray Earl - writing a series

The heart of the conference is the hands-on, interactive morning workshops. In these sessions, participants spend the week critiquing each others’ works under the guidance of a published faculty member. Most classes are $495 with the boot camp class going for $695 and the full novel class running at $995. We’ll go into more detail next week with these classes, but if you want a quick peek now follow the link.

If you compare writing conferences, you see that you really get a lot of bang for the buck with WIFYR. James Dashner is giving back to the writing community by offering registration for five writers to attend. Applications for the James Dashener Scholarship for Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers end March 9^th. There is also the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Fellowship Award which can help defray the cost for a lucky writer.

There are several ways to take advantage of this wonderful conference. Dubbed a mini-MFA (Master of Fine Arts) for a fraction of the cost, there are options to meet many writer’s budget and schedule.

(This article also posted at http://utahchildrenswriters.blogspot.com)

Not loving it

A couple weeks back I shared Peter Stenson's ideas about creating a compelling story. Part of it is just forcing you to sit down at the keyboard and write. Nothing tough about that, assuming you have no other life, no other people in that life, and none of those people with demands on your time.

I've been good. Except for a few occasions, I've been writing every day. Been keeping a writing log, too, so I can prove it. With Carol Williams' marathon starting tomorrow, I set a 90-minute writing goal for one project and just to get off on the write foot, I've met or exceeded it.

The other part of Stenson's savvy words is harder to achieve. He said to give yourself over to your novel. You should live, breathe, drink you story all day long. Talk to your characters, allow yourself to think like them.

That's the place I'm not yet at. I dutifully do my 90 minutes then put them away until the next day. I've compartmentalized. These little chores around the house are stored in this box, my relationship with this person in that one, and my novel neatly packaged away over there. It's good for the rest of my life but not for my writing.

Some things I've written as Stenson suggests. The story rattles around in the brain long after the computer has been shut down. I miss that.

I was talking to Ann Dee Ellis and Cheri Pray Earl about this one time. Ann Dee loves the revision part and is not keen on the original story. I told her I felt the opposite. I like the initial laying down of the story and only put up with the revision. At least it used to. On the current project, I miss that, too.