Set your writing on fire with Bonnie Tittaferrante's workshop

Collaborative Creative Sparks

Looking for ideas for your writing? Tired of staring at a blank page? Why not spark your creative side and have fun doing it?

Come to Collaborative Creative Sparks, an impromptu, informal evening of writing play, sponsored by Northern Ontario Writer’s Workshop.

Completely interactive. You will leave with an idea, or two, for a new piece of writing. Bring materials to write, write, write. Led by writer Bonnie Tittaferrante.

April 13th, 2011 Wednesday,

7:00-9:00pm Waverly Library Auditorium

Writer Bonnie Tittaferrante

Shameless Self Promotion

Terry Fallis couldn't find a publisher for his novel, The Best Laid Plans, so he self published, broadcast it as a podcast and then won the Stephen Leacock Medal for humour in 2008. Only then did he land an agent and a publisher.

At the start of his workshop, Fallis emphasized that the promotion starts only when the book is well and truly finished.

He encourages writers to blog and tag the posts so Google can find them. His weekly pod casts were a hit. He was basically giving away his book for free.  He assured us that pod casting is easy and relatively cheap, showing us the microphone he uses and his up scale digital recorder.  He likes face book and showed us his YouTube video.  Twitter rounded out this arsenal of new media to spread the word.

But more than that, he encouraged confidence.  Look for speaking and reading gigs, send your stuff out to contests, a cheery Fallis urges.  You can do it. It's easy.

Miriam Toews Says...

Miriam Toews' workshop was titled Advanced Fiction. Here are my notes from an excellent and informative session.
1) "A novel is a messy form.  There is rhythm.  There is pacing but there are no rules.  A good novel is  life affirming but each writer creates in her/his own way."  She has never written a short story (although she has done some short non-fiction) -too constricting.

2) She starts off with a query, a question in her mind.  "I think and think before I write. Often I do not know the answer to my query until the end." She obsesses  over the questions she is asking herself.

3) She dreams herself into her characters.  She knows all about them before she starts.  "I am my characters."  The characters  haunt her dreams and she tries to learn from her dreams.

4) Everything in the novel comes from her own experience. 'I have no imagination." It is all biographical. "Conceiving the novel is the best part of the process. Everything is possible.  But once you start, you are presented with your own limitations, your inability to get the scene on the page."

5) Before starting, she takes pages and pages of notes.  As she is writing she makes note after note.  She keeps these notes - written in capital letters - at the end of the document.  "There are pages and pages of notes in capitals". She goes over them and often, in them, sees new patterns or new ideas. Then when she is absolutely finished, she erases them.  She keeps notebooks and every couple of weeks types the notes into the note section of the document.

6) The worst part of the process is dealing with the changes required by an editor.  Her first editor at Turnstone Press in Winnipeg strangled her manuscript with red pencil. She felt she had been kicked in the gut.  As a newbie, she felt she could not fight back but now, as an established writer, she will refuse changes.  She says she has an excellent relationship with her present editor.

7) The structure of a novel is important. "I obsess about structure, pacing. I want those solid underpinnings, the framework", so that she cam get the novel to flow around them.

8)  "I don't write for money.  I don't write for fame.  I take my own life and chop it up.  I try to write intensely and quickly. Everything I hear or see is potential material. It is a wonderful feeling to create.  Writing keeps me alive. it puts 'me'on the page.  it is a necessity for me."

Ontario Arts Council Supports Northern Writers

Great news for four Thunder Bay (and region) best writers. A jury has chosen four local published writers, John Pringle of Atikokan, and Thunder Bay residents Marion Agnew, Heather McLeod and Joan Baril, to receive Writers' Works In Progress Grants. Writers in Fort Albany, Goulais River, Thessalon and Sudbury have also been chosen.

My project is a book of short stories to be called Snowshoe Baseball and Other Stories. Each story will have a northern theme. The title story, Snowshoe Baseball will deal with a FAS teen and others will explore Thunder Bay past and present,including a ghost story based on an incident involving the famous local NHL hockey player Lorne Chabot.

I know I speak for all supporters of literary activity when I say thank you to OAC. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.