Happy Friday! Hope you all have had a good week. I have had an amazing couple weeks. At the beginning of October we spent eleven days in Maui relaxing on the beach then last weekend I spent in Whistler enjoying the Writers Festival.
This was my first writer’s festival and I didn’t really know what to expect, but I had my notebook ready in my hand and my mind open to learn. I started at 6am Friday morning driving up the treacherous Sea to Sky Highway. It was pitch black dark and pouring rain the whole drive up, but slowly I made it. My first seminar was The A to Z of Self Publishing with Martin Crosbie. After having his book turned down over one hundred and thirty times, he self-published his first novel and subsequently became an Amazon bestseller. The seminar was all about Crosbie sharing his tips and tricks on self publishing. He shared a lot of the things that he did wrong when he first went to self published his first novel; basically the what to do and not to do’s of self publishing. It was all day seminar which he mentioned he normally teaches in a weekend, so my head was overrun with great information. He provided great tips on using Amazon as your distributor. I’m still not sure if I’m going the self publishing route when I complete my novel but I definitely feel like I have a great head start on how to do it if I decide to.
On the Saturday my first seminar was writing descriptive prose with Steven Galloway, the director of the University of BC’s Creative Writing Program. He captured my attention with whole two hours with his advice on writing prose. He was funny, interesting and according to many people in the audience a brilliant writer. I, myself, haven’t read his work, but I did send one of his book’s to my Kindle to find out. My second seminar was ‘Good Writing is Rewriting’ with Charles Foran and I was looking forward to tips on editing and maybe some advice on how to appreciate it because I loathe doing it. (That’s a blog for another day.) I didn’t really get what I was hoping to from his lecture which was disappointing, but the one thing I took away from the class was I’m not the only one starts editing only to get frustrated and then quickly ends the editing session.
The last seminar for the day was a reading by four Canadian authors: Vincent Lam, Denise Roig, Kim Moritsugu, Ian Weir. They all read from their currents book and I have to say Vincent Lam was my favorite. His book, “The Headmaster’s Wager” really grabbed my attention and I actually downloaded the book because he left me wanting more. I really enjoyed hearing the stories from the authors themselves because they brought the story to life with their love for the characters as they read it aloud.
Overall I had an amazing experience in Whistler. I have renewed inspiration to keep going with my writing. Maybe one day they’ll ask me to read from my story. One can only dream. Somehow listening to what everyone had to say over the weekend really concreted the fact that I am on the right track and now all I need to do is finish this book. And I will.
Thanks for taking time to read my words again. I hope you find inspiration during this weekend to encourage you to write or do whatever makes you happy. Until next week.
Stay tuned for my next book review next week and more detail blogs about the inspiration I got from the Whistler Writer’s Festival.
❤ Melissa
*To find out more about any of the people I wrote about today, click on their names to visit their websites.
Confessions of a Busy Soul 