Optional Break-Out Sections
9:00 Registration and Breakfast Starts
9:15 Hand stretching – Main Conference room (10-minute)
Improve blood flow to your hands, warming the muscles and ligaments. Increase the oxygen and nutrients that circulate through the joint's membranes, triggering the process of removing cell debris from joints. Improve flexibility. Improve range of motion. Helps in the prevention of carpal tunnel, tendinitis, and fatigue. This is a short 10-minute stretch to get the day started off writing.
10:00 The Craft of Revision
Lacking confidence in what you wrote? That’s exactly what revision is for: Revision can turn a piece of ordinary writing into art. Join us for this affirmative workshop where we apply the concept and tools of revision to a “modified” published work and then to one of your own pieces. Please come with a piece of about 250 words (or about a paragraph) that you would like to practice revising on your own or with a group.
11:00 Making $1000 a Month Self-Publishing Fiction
Starting out as an indie author can be daunting, especially if you don't have much money to invest in marketing. Have you published one or more books, but are struggling to get sales? In this session, USA TODAY bestselling mystery author Paul Austin Ardoin will show you the strategy that helped him build an audience and grow his self-published fiction business to $1,000 a month within two years. Increasing your sales requires the right books, mindset, and marketing — many new authors lack one or more of these pillars. This book helps identify the gaps and mistakes that are holding you back. These guidelines are repeatable, proven, inexpensive, and attainable—and will help get your self-published fiction business off the ground.
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Know Your Characters - beyond Character Sheets
Characters- How well do you know them? You have a great idea. It is all going along so well in your story. Then your characters take over and the best outlines go out the window. How well you know the characters, their attributes, goals, motivations, and personalities will determine how relatable they are. Good characters move the plot along and add an emotional connection for the reader. Go beyond the sheets of paper with a list of traits and get into their heads.
2:15 Memento - the practice of Memoir as a form of remembrance
It’s all about the memories! Memoir is a unique perspective on a moment in time that unfolds to reveal universal truths about what it means to be human. A question one might ask is, what is our fascination with being immortalized through memory? In this workshop, we will discuss the unique elements that differentiate memoir from other forms, experience different examples of mini memoir, and practice skills to help our own memoir pieces entrance our readers. The goal is to leave with a few mini memoirs that can exist as is or become longer works.
