This Weekend I Shall Wear Makeup, because, DFWCon!

Posted by pooks on June 5, 2018 in Pooks Appearances, What Pooks is Reading, Writing With Passion | 2 comments

Be a writer they said. You don’t have to wash your hair, put on makeup, and leave your dogs, they said. But they didn’t say anything about writers’ conferences.

I’m not complaining. In fact, I can’t wait. DFWCon is an amazing conference for writers at every stage of their career, from just beginning to best seller.

I will be at DFWCon speaking on these topics:

Writing With Passion is More than Opening a Vein

Forget opening a vein—this is a workshop about bleeding emotion from your pores. About putting a tight turniquet on emotion. About analyzing the blood-spatter of emotion and learning from it. About stealing emotion like the blood-sucking thing you are. This is a workshop about why and how and where and when and who, and how all of these things will impact your reader the way you want them to be impacted, whether you’re writing poetry or prose, screenplays or nonfiction. The key to writing with emotion Is in your willingness and ability to make your readers bleed with you. If that doesn’t scare you off, this is the workshop for you.

Finding Your Writing Voices

What is this nebulous concept of ‘voice’ we hear so much about? Voice is the distinct personality, style, or point of view of a piece of writing, which can be based on your character as shaped by you or is your own way of expressing thoughts for publication. The best voice flows so naturally it seems effortless, even though you may have worked hard to develop it and tweak it and fine-tune it before publication. But engaging and impactful writers discover they have more than one voice, sometimes many voices. Join us in this workshop to define and expand your understanding of voice and pick up skills and tips on how to develop your own multiple voices for different types of writing.

But that is not the big news. The big news is this year’s Guest of Honor!

Yes, Scott Westerfeld. That Scott Westerfeld. Scott. Freaking. Westerfeld.

He is known for so many fabulous series. Uglies was the first I read. It was one of those rare-for-me instances of getting caught up in a contemporary science fiction fantasy instead of something historical.

The Leviathan Series has one of my favorite female characters in literature, Deryn Sharp, in a kickass tale of an alternate history World War One. Bonus Points! At the end of each book is an author’s note that reveals that some of the most fantastical subplots are about things that really happened. Things I was sure were just made up because they were so farfetched. Awesome!

Scott Westerfeld rocks and I look forward to hearing him speak and getting my books signed.

And I can’t wait to be with other writers in all stages of their careers, and hopefully help a few of you along! I’ll also be signing copies of This Crumbling Pageant and The Dead Shall Live.

I hope to see you there!