Pages

Friday, June 24, 2016

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 1}

This year, I have had the amazing opportunity to attend the Chuckanut Writer's Conference, which is happening today and tomorrow here in Bellingham. 

Here is a quick recap of the events of today, and the sessions I went to:

First off was the keynote: The Necessary Ingredients: Intimacy and Risk by author Claire Dederer.

She talked about some of the risks we take when we write: we risk being bad, we risk being good, we risk offending people, we risk a lot of things. The main take away for me was this. To be a writer is to take risks. You can't not take risks. The important thing is how to handle those fears and concerns and how you shape them to your advantage. You are going to offend people, but likely not those you were worried about. You're going to be bad, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from it and make your next thing better. 

For the first breakout session, I went to Try Essays by David Laskin.

This was my favorite session of the day. He began by trying to define the essay. It quickly became clear that that is a very hard thing to do. Essays can be memoir, report, science based, travel stories, opinion, or really basically anything. What I was left with was this: An essay begins with a question and takes you on a journey to new places, facts, or ideas that you didn't know or hadn't thought about before. Most importantly, the thing that separates an essay from a new report is voice. An essay should always let you show through and let your voice be know. Most of the rest of his talk focused on the mechanics of selling essays.

 Tips: Write for an audience that you assume will be easily distracted and bored. You don't have much space, every word counts. You can have a topic and a thesis and they don't have to be the same thing. Pitch the topic, but write the thesis.

He also gave some suggestions of essays to read including:

"Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me" by Kate Bowler from The New York Times
"O-Rings" by Sarah Stewart Johnson from The Best American Science and Nature Journal 
"The Siege of Miami" by Elizabeth Kohlbert from The New Yorker

Next was the all conference session, My Secret Weapon: Or How to Cheat the Devil by Erik Larson. 

He mostly talked about his own path to becoming a successful writer, and gave some tips. Some useful things I got from this talk were:

-Physically cut up your writing and put it back together. I actually already do this, and I think it is incredibly valuable for finding a good flow in your writing.

-Quit when you're ahead: Don't binge write. Stop in the middle of a paragraph so that you have momentum the next day.

-Set guidelines with the people you let read your work. Make sure you let them know what kind of feedback you want and how you want it. This will keep feeling from being hurt.

Finally, the second breakout session, How to Interview Anyone by Bharti Kirchner 

There was so much good advice in this session. a few highlights:

-Before an interview, do pre-research so you can make sure to ask valuable and intelligent questions, and make a list of questions before you go in, to save time and to make sure you stay on track. 

-During an interview, be sure to ask open ended questions, and be careful to only ask one question at a time. Avoid "why" questions that might sound accusing. Avoid leading language, and try to speak and present yourself neutrally to ensure you don't bias your interviewee. 

-After the interview, immediately jot down thought and feelings about it: What went well? What do you wish you had asked that you didn't? What immediately struck you as useful/important? Is this someone you might want to contact again?

Those were the sessions I went to today. I'm looking forward to going back again tomorrow! 

No comments:

Post a Comment