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Writing conferences can be inspirational for writers attending and also for famous authors, agents and editors presenting workshops or lectures.

Here’s a funny video about a conference director inviting a famous author to speak at his conference!

Saturday’s Critique Workshops continued Sunday morning and ended with rave reviews by writers. Sunday afternoon’s E-Publishing Seminar was a big hit and 30 additional writers came to the conference for that workshop.

Sandra McDonald's Friday Workshop about dialgoue.

Frances Keiser & Jane Wood

Kristin Harmel

John Boles' Screenwriting Critique Group

Currently the NOAA website indicates there is only 10% chance of winds up to 39 m.p.h. in the Jacksonville area. That may change, but unless we are threatened with a hurricane, the conference will launch on Friday, August 5. Check-in begins at 7:30 a.m., with Orientation and Welcome Remarks at 8:30. Friday Workshops start promptly at 9:00 a.m.

We have many talented writers attending and bright faculty members teaching this year. All registration has closed, with the exception of the E-Publishing Seminar on Sunday afternoon. If you would like to know more about how to take control of your writing career and publish your own e-books, join us…Sunday, August 7, 1:00-4:30 p.m., University Center, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL.

We’ll see you at the conference, rain or shine!

2011 UNF Writers Conference, University Center, Banquet Hall

If you registered for the full three-day conference, the E-Publishing Seminar is part
of your schedule.

• E-Author = E-Publisher
• Short History of E-Publishing
• Tony Timbol’s E-Book Primer
• Editing Your E-Book
• Designing Your E-Book Cover
• E-Books from a Barnes & Noble Perspective
• Manuscript Conversion
• Marketing Your E-Book

Speakers: Sharon Y. Cobb, Victor DiGenti, Tony Timbol, Deborrah Hoag, Sonja Rocha,
Jamie Williams and John E. Simmons.

If you registered for Friday Only, you may still enroll in the E-Publishing Seminar. Ask a UNF
staff member at the REGISTRATION/INFORMATION TABLE. Learn about how to e-publish your own book – only $89.

Jennifer Nelson

Diane Faulkner

Here’s the info:

Want to have your query letter reviewed and critiqued by professional writers? Writers Diane Faulkner and Jennifer Nelson, who will be presenting a panel on “Writing an Irresistible Query Letter” on Friday will be available to meet with attendees one on one for an evaluation/critique and tips on one 1-2 page query letter after their workshop ends at 10:15 a.m. Cost is $20 ($25 the day of the conference). Cash only please. Sign up directly via email below for a 15-minute consultation Friday, August 5th.

Please have a query letter ready to email at time of sign up, or printed out if you sign up the day of the conference. You’ll meet with Faulkner or Nelson one on one, get a written and verbal critique of your query letter including format, content, writing style, ideas, syntax and clarity. Get your query questions answered
and ask for tips. Invaluable for new writers or those looking to get an opinion before sending out queries!

Email: nelsonje@bellsouth.net for more information, to register and get a time slot.

Carol O'Dell

All the marketing experts tell you that you need to blog, but you can’t quite bring yourself to start. You don’t know the ins and outs and besides, are blogs really necessary? Will it drive thousands to buy your book or get your name out there (whereever “there” happens to be)?

Blogs are only one of the online tools a writer needs in his marketing arsenal. Blogs can be an effective way to reach the public, but they take time and consistency and a quite a bit of both. Blogs have actually generated book deals, such as Julie and Julia, S**t My Dad Says and The Happiness Project, so yes, blogs can find an audience. Others (myself included) are paid to blog on professional sites, and more and more businesses—large and small—are utilizing blogs to offer their clients ongoing and updated information.

If you decide to blog, you should treat it as an integral part of your writer/speaker platform. You wouldn’t show up at work whenever you happen to feel like it, and you can’t just blog when you feel like it either, not if you want to build an audience. Blogs are a great way to build readership, but it’s important to know what your readers want. Entertainment? Information? Connection to others who share their interests?

Blog readers (and search engines such as Google and Yahoo) require commitment, so plan to blog three to four times a week for about a year before you expect to see any major results. Most SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialists recommend blogging three to four times during the workweek, so if you start blogging don’t check your stats like you’re off your OCD meds. You won’t see results for a while. In the words of Nike (not the Greek god, the shoe god) just do it.

How to blog? Take a class, get a book, or look online for blogging basics. A blog is just an internet word for article or essay, so decide which category your blog is most like and if you haven’t written an essay since college, do a little research and brush up on your skills. Blogs typically run about 500 words (that’s two double-spaced pages at 12-point font) and they should be about one keyword—that’s blog world talk for theme or idea. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Dogpile index and classify information by their keywords and keyword phrases.

What exactly is a keyword? A keyword is the main idea or theme. Photos and videos aren’t technically sorted, which means only their titles are, so don’t think photos get you off the blogging hook. For example, if your novel is about a boy who jumps trains in the 1930s and winds up in Alaska and runs the Iditarod, then your keywords might be: 1930s, Great Depression, Alaska, Iditarod, dogs, coming of age novels, trains, etc. Your blogs might range from how the Great Depression compares with the economic downturn of 2008. Another blog might be the bond between man and dog, or why we love coming of age stories, or how to see the Iditarod. Brainstorm and get creative on the various slants that relate to your book and you, as an author.

What’s the hardest part about blogging? Not spending so much time on your blog that you quit writing books—that and expecting too much too soon. Blogs are popular, which means there are plenty for a reader to choose from, so learn how to use keywords and write with style. Write on target and keep it tight. Write consistently, and whatever you do, get in, get out, and don’t dawdle. Online promoting is a time sucker and burnout is rampant.

There are a few perks to writing a blog—you’ll become an expert in your field and connect with folks who are as fascinated with your subject matter as you are.

To blog or not to blog? Blog, baby blog.

Want to know more about blogging?
Carol O’Dell will offer a one-day blogging workshop Friday, September 23, 2011. Contact Carol at writecarolodell@gmail.com for more information.

Author Biography:
Carol D. O’Dell is the author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir. She is the family advisor at Caring.com and her short stories and essays have been published in Short Story International, The Writer, Atlanta Magazine, and Glossolalia Literary Review. Carol is a professional blogger and the founder of the Chat Noir Writer’s Circles. Visit Carol’s website at www.caroldodell.com.

Since teens are not required to submit work for critique, they do not have to register until the end of the month.

This will be an exciting workshop for teen writers (ages 13-19) and, we believe, will launch many young writers careers in creative writing.

If you have a teen in your family who is interested in fiction writing,

Adrian Fogelin

Carol O'Dell

We Write Like We Live

I write like I live, tough to admit but oh so true. All my faults stare back at me from the page. And that’s understandable. It’s not like we can suddenly become someone else when our fingers curl into that familiar, ready-to-pound on the keyboard mode, or when we grip our favorite and familiar pen. We become more ourselves, not less, when the ideas flow.

It’s embarrassing, but only when we’re aware of who we are — on and off the page —can we either embrace our idiosyncrasies, or ditch them like unwanted sink scraps. I confess that I have a few doozies I’m still trying to shed and I bet you do, too.

Run-on sentences:
Time challenged, I like to call it, instead of chronically (if only by a few minutes) late or getting so into my idea that I can’t seem to break away and just leave it alone. I suggest to my writing workshop participants that some people write like they attend a party: they show up before the action is in full swing and they stay way too late; long after the host (a.k.a. reader) wishes they’d just go home, already. Run-ons worked for the likes of Faulkner, but if you don’t know how or when to wield them, then it’s best to keep your sentences (like a good party-guest) short and sweet.

My propensity to repeat myself:
A writer friend and I named this little habit “dueling” sentences. Side-by-side, or at least in the same paragraph, I tend to repeat ideas and descriptions. I say it one way, then second-guess myself and state it again. At least when I do this in a conversation I will eventually notice my listener’s eyes roll back in their heads or absentmindedly check their cell-phones. On the page we can’t see when we’re about to aggravate the fool out of our reader. Readers like to play an active role in the storytelling and no one likes to sort through too much of the same thing. They prefer to use their intuition or be left alone to enjoy the mystery of the moment. Readers want the freedom to judge a character, not by what they say but by what they don’t say; not by what they do but what they would never do — but of course wind up doing without even realizing that they’re breaking their own moral code. That’s the fun of reading: discovery.

And last, a nasty habit I call being cutesy:
Sometimes it comes out a feeble attempt to be witty, funny or sarcastic. It’s not that being witty or funny or sarcastic is a bad thing when done well, but if the writer falls short, then it’s just cutesy. Cutesy gets annoying —fast. In my personal life I have a merciless family who will not let me get away with feigning cute for long. The chiding I get for going too far just isn’t worth it and for this, I’m grateful. Writers use this tool to fill up the page and avoid the hard work of writing well, which includes a heck of a lot of restraint. Who knows all the reasons why we make like a precocious child, but what I do know is that it’s easily recognizable in someone else’s writing but rarely in our own. That’s why I’ve found that it’s vital to have a writing partner or critique group to, as Hemmingway put it, be my very own bullshit detector. I can’t smell my own and that’s why I need the no nonsense advice of others to keep me from trying to please or impress when the real job of a writer to mean what I say and to say it in a way that’s clear and concise.

It’s difficult to face ourselves in the mirror and on the page, but as much as we wince, I like to think it’s for our own literary good. There’s nothing like reading a story that sweeps you along with vivid imagery, characters with complex motives that reveal something about us along the way, particularly the aspects we cringe to face. It takes a brave writer to meet herself on the page — to refuse to bolt or deny — and to take a deep breath and learn, but it’s worth the relentless perseverance it takes to get there.

Author Biography:
Carol D. O’Dell is the author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir. She is the family advisor at Caring.com and her short stories and essays have been published in Short Story International, The Writer, Atlanta Magazine, and Glossolalia Literary Review. Carol is the founder of the Chat Noir Writer’s Circles and offers writing workshops in Northeast Florida. Visit Carol’s website at http:\\www.caroldodell.com

Writers Pitch Book connects writers with agents, editors and Hollywood producers. This year, we opened the Pitch Book to writers who do not attend the conference, although conference attendees receive a discount off the regular per pitch rate.

If you would like to know more about the Writers Pitch Book, you don’t have to wait for the UNF Writers Conference workshop set for August 5, you may learn everything you need to know on the new website (www.WritersPitchBook.com).

Writers who attend all three days of the 2011 UNF Writers Conference receive a SUBSTANTIAL DISCOUNT on their pitches…50%. So instead of the regular price of $50 per pitch, you pay only $25 per pitch.

Writers who attend Friday Workshops on August 5 and/or the E-Publishing Seminar on Sunday, August 7, receive a $10 per pitch discount.

Everyone registered for the 2011 UNF Writers Conference should have received an email from sharon.y.cobb@unf.edu (that’s me, conference director) on June 30 with a link to your special discount page and the password to pay for pitches with your discounts.

If you have not received your email with discount instructions, just email me (sharon.y.cobb@unf.edu) and I’ll send info to you.

For writers not attending the 2011 UNF Writers Conference, just visit the Writers Pitch Book website for details about the Pitch Book and how to submit your pitch/es.

FALL 2011 WRITERS PITCH BOOK
Writers’ Submission Deadline: Wednesday, August 31, 2011, midnight
Distribution to Agents, Editors and Film Producers: Week of September 12, 2011

Will you be one of the talented writers invited to submit their work to agents, editors and Hollywood through the Writers Pitch Book this fall? We really hope so.

A reader once said to me, “I read your book. I enjoyed it. You can obviously write, so why don’t you write something important instead of just romance?” That question has been put to me in one form or another by workshop leaders, reporters, other readers, and even writers of other genres throughout my career. Romance is often, despite it literally paying the bills at most publishers for the past thirty years, considered something non-serious writers do. Romance may not be the trendiest genre any longer but we still own the largest slice of the genre pie. Why do I write romance? Because I enjoy working out the puzzle of what will make a relationship work.  Love is a timeless, universal human emotion as necessary to happiness as good health, food, clothing and shelter. The reader who picks up a book with a strong romantic relationship expects a telling, interesting, unique and compelling love story to unfold. I suppose I could write about blowing things up, or murder, but I think writing about love is healthier, for me.

So what can I tell you about why you might cock an ear and an eye to the genre, even if you don’t write it? Every year or so there is a new hot, “In” topic, genre, or setting for Romance.  Recently, it’s involved sexy vampires, werewolves, and/or lots of explicit sex. For those of us who’ve been in the business a minute, or two, it can be a challenge to stay fresh and original.  Many a writer has had a wonderful idea only to walk into a bookstore or attend a conference or talk to another writer to learn that someone has just used ‘our’ idea in her/his latest novel. If you’re like me this has happened, a lot.

So how does a writer, in my case, published for 31 years with thirty-nine published titles to her credit, find that new story, again and again? We write what comes from the heart.

Back to that business about the author who ‘stole’ my idea. When I talk to the author or read the book, guess what? It just sounded like my idea. But the author took the story in an entirely different direction. So my idea is still unique.

From my very first book, “Silks and Sabers” to my latest “Love On The Line,” I started with a strong interesting heroine and then wondered, “Who is the man that’s going to make her heart beat a little faster?” My heroines are never weak or feel sorry for themselves, at least not for long. They have problems but they don’t blame others. The men, come and gone, just haven’t had what/or all that she needs. She will do without rather than settle. She’s the kind of person who can make her world work by herself. She’s not looking for perfection. She’d simply like to have someone to share her world who appreciates it, and her. Like the Jill Scott song says,

“I can pay my own light bill, baby
Pump my own gas in my own car
I can buy my own shoe collection
I’ve been blessed thus far…”

And even though I can do all these things…
I need you!”

I like to write about the men who can make my heroines sing that song.

Every time, the answer is a little bit different. That’s what every writer should strive for.

I’m so looking forward to meeting each and every one of you, and all the fabulous and talented authors scheduled to join us in Jacksonville. If you’ve never been to a romance workshop, sign up, challenge yourself. If you have a romantic relationship in your SF, police procedural, mystery, or any story you won’t be disappointed.