Day One of Writers of the Future

Day one of my Writers of the Future adventure has come and gone, and I'm feeling pretty great. Well, technically day one is today I guess, so I should say that Day Zero of my Writers of the Future adventure has come and gone, and I'm feeling pretty great. When I call it day zero it makes me think that there's going to be something uber-exciting like a typhoid Mary or a zombie apocalypse.  But mostly, all the winners arrived and we had our orientation.

Brandon, Scott Parkin and I were the first to arrive. I'd been warned ahead of time by a previous year's winner to expect cameras. Holy cow, they weren't lying! They filmed us driving up in the car. They filmed my feet as I walked into the hotel. They snapped pictures as we checked in and said our first hello's to the other winners. It felt a little like I'd stepped onto the set of a reality show. Only without having to vote anybody off the island by the end of the week. Which is good. Because I really like everyone I've met. :)

We spent the entire day hanging out in the lobby of the hotel, so we could say hello to everyone as they arrived. At about 7 last night, we were taken upstairs for a run down of the week by Dave Wolverton and Tim Powers. They'll be the main two instructors through the first part of the week. It was really intimidating to be told that we'll be expected to write a completed short story in just 24 hours. Dave is an excellent teacher, I've taken a workshop from him before. Tim seems like he's also going to be a great teacher, and they actually managed to present the idea in a way that took the edge off the fear.

I hope I can hold onto that in the coming days.

We were also handed a beautiful hard cover book about L Ron Hubbard's writing career and his thoughts on how to be a professional writer (our text book for the week), and a magnetic name badge that has our name, the year we won, and the name of our winning story engraved on it.

I have to say, seeing the name of my story, engraved in gold, and absolutely real, actually made me want to cry a little bit. Even though I've been through this process, and I've seen the galleys and I've known for awhile that this was coming, seeing my name and the title of my story actually written down like that, made it all suddenly become very real. That surprised me.

It felt pretty awesome.

LTUE 2013

This weekend I had the chance to go to LTUE. It's a Sci-fi/Fantasy writers conference that happens every year here in Utah. I had such an awesome time. I'm not sure if I've gotten better at picking classes, or if this years classes really were better than last year but either way, I'm currently suffering from a very serious case of overloaded brain melt.

In a very good way.

The last night of the conference they had a dinner. Tracy Hickman was the guest speaker and I was excited at the prospect of maybe meeting him. Turns out I got more than just the chance to shake his hand. I'd casually made friends with a woman earlier in the day and when she and her husband were choosing a table, she chose mine. And they brought Tracy Hickman with them.

I got about an hour to talk with him. I got to ask how he became a writer in the first place and tell him a little bit about what I'm working on now. I wish I could say I was brilliant but the truth of it is that when he asked me what I was writing, instead of giving him my pitch (which I'm rather proud of) my mind blanked out and all I could think to say was, "It's a fantasy". Me and my missed opportunities. Still, there's always another chance later. I hope?

I'm planning on finishing my novel Haven's Reach this year, complete with rewrites. This being my first, it may very realistically end up being a practice novel. My real hope is that I can limit the number of practice novels to as few as I can. The writing has never been difficult for me. It's the story itself that bogs me down. With what I learned this weekend at the conference I think I may now know how to solve that. At the very least, I'm further than I was.

I'm thinking I might do a few posts over the next few weeks about some of the classes that I attended. Sandra Tayler did an amazing class on finding the time in life for creativity. She offered ten points that went far beyond just 'carving out some time' in your schedule. It's one of the classes I may find myself going over several times through the coming year. It was that good. From that point on in the conference, I attended every panel she was part of.

I got to sing with Megan Whalen Turner. I ate dinner with Tracy Hickman. I met and befriended three separate editors and many other authors, both aspiring and published. I have enough class notes to keep me studying for weeks. But best of all, I have the most solid first half outline for my novel that I've developed yet. The last half of the outline is the easy part. Figuring out how to start is what kills me.

It was a pretty awesome weekend. Can't wait till next year!