SIWC 2009 - the aftermath, Nanowrimo and other such writerly things =>

Okay, so due to a certain subject in school *cough Physics 11 cough* I have been unable to post as much as I wish. But I'm here now and here it goes.

The Surrey International Writer's Conference was unbelievable and once again surpassed any of my high expectations. In fact, if it's possible, it was even better than I remember it being last year. Probably because I got to go all 3 days and go Thursday afternoon for Donald Mass's "Writing the Irresistible Novel". That, along with every workshop I went to see through out the course of the conference, was brilliant! Donald Mass's master class really resonated with me more than anything though. Probably because of the point I was at in the process of writing my latest manuscript Auburn Queen. I am finished my rough first draft and I'm in the middle of making larger changes. Moving, cutting, and adding scenes and chapters mostly. When my friend Sophia and I arrived at 3:30 Thursday afternoon I was stuck. It had been a little over a year since I began Auburn Queen (I remember because it was right before SIWC 2008) and I hadn't written anything else for that long because I can only work one big project at a time. I was out of ideas and resistant to working on the ones that were staring me in the face. But after three hours listening to the genius that is Donald Mass I had a fresh perspective, a new character to save and a new character to kill, lots of questions to ask myself about my manuscript and EVEN the answers to some of those questions (gasp I know!). The conference was off to a good start. Friday was just as brilliant (although standing on stage receiving my Young Writer's Scholarship Award with Sophia was a little awkward I'm just not used to having peoples attention on me. Plus, coffee likes to spill where it's not supposed to, like all over our awards right before the ceremony. => Thanks to Lisa Rector-Mass's quick thinking it all worked out and we walked up on stage replacements in hand ). Saturday and Sunday I volunteered which turned out to be just as awesome as attending the conference itself. I still got to sit in on a couple of the key workshops I wished to see and when i wasn't in a workshop I was helping were I could and meeting people. My most surreal moment came Saturday. Robert Dugoni, one of the writers speaking at the conference, walked by and recognized me. I'd been to two of his workshops, one Friday one Saturday, and I have nothing but good things to say about them. It was kind of him to take the time to say high to someone like me, and when one of the other volunteers told him I'd placed 3rd in Lisa Rector's scholarship he even congratulated me saying he wished he'd started when he was my age. It felt great. All in all SIWC is always the highlight of my year, and every time I go I learn more in a couple of days than I could in a classroom in a year. I want to end my segment on SIWC by congratulating Sophia Ma, a close friend of mine who won the Lisa Rector scholarship for the second time in a row this year, and Lin who Sophia and I met for the first time at the conference and who placed an impressive second. Finally, thank you to KC for the link to my blog on the SIWC website:    http://www.siwc.ca/

Another little tidbit...

NANOWRIMO

This international month of novel writing begins today. It is my second year taking part but I did not make it to 50 thousand words in November 2008 so we will have to see if I do better this month. for those of you who don't know what it is nanowrimo occurs every November and  your goal is to write a 50 000 word novel (or 1667 words a day) by the time you hit midnight on November 30th. if you want more info check out this link:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

happy writing!