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Your Willamette Writers Dispatch
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| Feeling lonely? Overwhelmed? We hear you. Sometimes that draft seems to take over. Don't worry -- we're here to help! This week, we've got revision strategies, a poet to spark your imagination, and a fantastic Director's Panel that will knock your socks off. Read on for more. |
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Revision Strategies
I just wrote "The End" on the first draft of a manuscript I've been picking at for months. My normal M.O. is to write a very fast, very bad first draft. But my revision strategies have been changing lately. You see, this book was slow, slow, slow in coming. It was also very squirrely. Every time I wrote an outline for the book, the characters turned left, not right, and my outline went out the window.
Some writers might be discouraged by this tangled mess of a draft, but not me...
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Crossing the Threshold | Portland Meeting
On Tuesday, March 1st, at the Old Church in downtown Portland, Oregon Book Award winner David Biespiel, joins the Willamette Writers to talk about the journey every writer takes, the sequence of thoughts and even actions that occur in your imagination when you write. David will lead us in a special, intimate talk that will introduce you to a blueprint about how you can depart into your imagination, access and cross thresholds of discovery through the trials you encounter there, and finally how you return with writing that connects to your readers who exist in the modern world.
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FilmLab Director's Panel | Workshop
Join us at the Post 5 Theater on Saturday, March 5th for our FiLMLaB Directors Panel. Free to Willamette Writers members ($10 non-member paid at the door) this event features all of our FiLMLaB directors from the past four years and a chance to have your questions answered!
Join these three directors: Christopher Alley of Ampersand Productions (2012 and 2013), Martin Vavra of Galaxy Sailor Productions (2014) and Michael Parisien of Going Street Films (2015).
Moderated by executive producer and screenwriter Randall Jahnson, this is a unique opportunity for writers and screenwriters to query these talented directors and filmmakers about filmmaking. They will discuss the FiLMLaB Contest, collaborative experience, and will answer other cinematic questions, from script to screen. Alley, Vavra, and Parisien are multitalented individuals who wear many different hats on many different sets. We are excited to have such a wealth of knowledge on the stage. Get your questions ready!
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Janet Fisher | Member Announcement
WW member Janet Fisher's The Shifting Winds comes out March 1, a historical novel set in and around the area Portland eventually grew up. It's the story of reluctant pioneer Jennie Haviland, whose father takes the family west over the Oregon Trail in 1842, tearing Jennie from her prestigious academy in New York to face a wilderness across the continent. In Oregon she meets two men, handsome Hudson's Bay Company clerk Alan Radford and brash American mountain man Jake Johnston. The two vie for her as their nations vie for this rich contested territory, but Jennie wants her own choices.
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Elisa Klein | Member Announcement
Would you like to earn money writing blog posts? What if the organizations you'd write about were local nonprofits? Sound good? Keep reading. Our past coordinator for literary agents and editors, Elisa Klein, is looking for writers. A former KOIN-TV reporter and nationally published author, Elisa started a website for nonprofit news called PortlandSocietyPage.com and over the last four years has published 1,080 stories. Now her company, Society Page LLC is launching a new venture to provide high-quality original content that nonprofits can use to raise their visibility on-line. To get this enterprise up and running Elisa is seeking writers who are excited about creating lively blog posts for local nonprofits. Think you've got what it takes? Email your cover letter and resume to Elisa Klein at elisa@societypage.net. Upward and onward!
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Bill Johnson | Member Announcement
Bill Johnson is reading and reviewing manuscripts as part of the Write on the River conference May 13-15th in Wenatchee, WA. Bob Dugoni is a workshop leader and literary agent Rachel Letofsky teaches workshops and offers feedback on attendee query letters. Jason Brick, 2015 WW conference program director, is also a workshop leader.
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Patricia Brooks | Member Announcement
Patricia L. Brooks, author of newly released Three husbands and a Thousand Boyfriends spoke on Saturday the 20th with two other women authors at the annual fundraiser Authors and Appetites in Sun City, AZ. The event was sold out at 225 attendees. She sold a lot of books! Patricia shared her personal stories of trauma and recovery, surviving and thriving that are part of her new book, as well as why she writes memoir and what motivates her to tell her truth about love, addiction, domestic violence and post traumatic stress. Patricia also read from her book and talked about her community involvement with speaking for those who still suffer in silence.
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