Nimrod Conference

I'm going to deviate from my usual format for this post because it has to do with writing and I'm excited about it.

I went to the Nimrod Conference in Tulsa on Saturday. It was so much fun! I was in two different writing workshops. One with David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, who taught about design techniques and about how a story has a lot of work to do because it has to grab and keep the attention of the reader all by its self.

After a great lunch, I headed to another workshop taught by Eilis O'Neal, author of The False Princess, which comes out in January 2011. She explained about how to write a good query letter to an agent. So in going to those two lectures I learned about the creative and the technical sides of creating a novel.

Next up was a 15 minute editing session with Mary Cantrell, an English professor at Tulsa Community College. I had previously sent in four pages of my current novel, The Bond of Terra, and she edited for grammar as well as content. My favorite thing she said about my writing is that I have the ability to show instead of tell. In literature, it's very important to show that a character is stubborn through her actions and words rather than come right out and say "Shirley is stubborn." in the narration. She also encouraged me to participate in a creative writing class because that often gives you the necessary motivation to keep working on writing.

It was so beneficial to get to meet writers and teachers and learn from them and I'm definitely hoping to return to the conference next year.