In Buried Book by DM Pulley, nine-year-old Jasper Leary finds his missing mother’s childhood diary in 1952. He searches for her using the clues in the diary, but faces encounters he never knew existed. His travels take him from his uncle’s farm in Michigan to downtown Detroit and to an Indian Reservation. Will he find her alive or dead?
Summary
The Buried Book by DM Pulley starts with Jasper Leary’s mom taking him to his Uncle’s farm. Jasper is nine-years-old and lives with his mom, Althea, in Detroit, Michigan. Uncle Leo’s farm is in Burtchville, Michigan. It’s 1952. She leaves Jasper at the farm and promises to return after she takes care of some important things. Althea doesn’t trust her husband Wendell to watch after Jasper.
The farmhouse is small. Jasper shares a bed with his twelve-year-old cousin Wayne. Uncle Leo and Aunt Velma have their bedroom. Jasper learns the farm life, does his chores, and goes to school. He has issues with Wayne. As the days go by, he wanders around the farm, looking for answers about his mom’s disappearance. He finds the burned-out family house of Althea and Leo. Inside a drawer, he finds young Althea’s diary.
Jasper uses clues from the diary to search for his mother. He travels to a rough neighborhood in Detroit and an Indian Reservation. What he discovers surprises him.
Recommendation
I liked The Buried Book by DM Pulley. Jasper is an interesting viewpoint character, and I thought the mystery surrounding his mother fits together well. The life on the farm sections was detailed and exciting. I wondered about the age of Jasper. His thoughts read to me like an older child. I don’t see a nine-year-old being as independent and resilient as depicted in the novel. The bus driver’s scene surprised me. It didn’t seem to fit with the story to me. The mob connection to the Indian Reservation seemed to cliché to me. I felt that the strengths of the story overweighed my concerns.
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page of Buried Book by DM Pulley.
In No One’s Home by DM Pulley, the Spielman family buys a mansion named Rawlingswood in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in this ghost suspense thriller. Will the Spielman’s survive the mansion, unlike the four families that preceded them?
Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley connects the stories of Ethel from March 1938 and Kris from April 1999 through the Torso Killer of Cleveland. They are targets. Can they survive? Link to review.
They normally hold the Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. This year they presented a virtual event using Zoom between July 11, 2021, to July 25, 2021, for the Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference 2021. Over the two weeks, they presented forty-two workshops, panels, and special events. I attended two panels, one craft talk, and one workshop (which was held over two days).
Literary Cleveland sponsored the event. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio. The group sponsors writing workshops, author interviews, and a monthly group meeting mixer.
I attended two panels, one craft talk, and one workshop (which was held over two days). I will summarize the four events I attended in the next four sections.
Workshop with D.M. Pulley
They split this workshop into two days, Wednesday, July 14, 2021, from 4 PM to 5 PM, and Wednesday, July 21, 2021, from 4 PM to 5 PM. The topic was Writing Multiple Storylines. She taught the workshop using a PowerPoint presentation. The conference coordinator distributed a copy of the presentation to the participants after the workshop. I have noted the four most important ideas I learned in the workshop in the following paragraphs.
She talked about five structures used in multiple storyline novels and gave an example for each. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr uses a Dual Narrative Structure. It features two protagonists on the same timeline. The Girls by Emma Cline uses a Dual Timeline Structure. It features a single protagonist with an early and later timeline.
The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis uses a Dual Narrative and Dual Timeline Structure. It features two protagonists each with an early and later timeline. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan uses a linked Short Story or Novella Structure. It features many characters and many timelines with linked narratives. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut uses a Gestalt Timeline. It features one protagonist with many scattered timelines. There are other examples.
Writing Exercise #1 was to describe what your story is about. Writing Exercise #2 was to figure out whose story your work is about.
She gave examples of the guideposts, transitions, and plotting from the five novels listed above.
Writing Exercise #4 was to draw a three-point plot arc for your story. Writing Exercise #4 was to storyboard your story.
D.M. Pulley is a historical mystery writer with four published novels. No One’s Home is her most recently published novel. I linked the Goodreads page to No One’s Home below.
This craft talk was on Wednesday, July 14, from 7 PM to 8:30 PM. The topic was So You Wrote a Short Story-Now What? She presented her talk using a PowerPoint presentation. The conference coordinator distributed a copy of the presentation to the participants after the talk. I have noted the three most important ideas I learned in the talk in the following paragraphs.
When submitting a short story, follow the submission guidelines posted on each website of the magazine where the submission is going. Each magazine has specific requirements, if not followed will diminish the possibility of a sale. Submissions should follow the Shunn format rules linked here. https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/
She presented a live demonstration of submitting a story. She tracks her submissions at the Submission Grinder website. https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/ Each author has a password-protected account. The website is a submission tracker and a market database. The website search engine helps the author find suitable markets to submit each unique story. She submitted one of her completed but unsold stories to the Clarkesworld Magazine in the demonstration. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/
She says to expect a lot of rejections. On Submission Grinder she has tracked her submissions for the last six years. She has over 900 submissions with 73 accepted stories. The highest number of rejections for her for a story before it sold was 42. She is an accomplished author, and it was instructive to see her record of submissions.
Marie Vibbert is a science fiction short story writer. On the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (isfdb.org) she has 43 short stories listed. They published her first novel Galactic Hellcats this year. I linked the Goodreads page for Galactic Hellcats below.
From Dream to Reality: A Panel with Four Debut Authors
They held this panel from 10 AM to 11:30 AM on Saturday, July 17, 2001. The four authors in the panel published their debut novels in early 2021. The novels were The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson, Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah, On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu, and Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter. Laura Maylene Walter was the moderator and posed questions for the panel to answer. Each author started by repeating the elevator pitch for her novel. I have included one question and answer I thought insightful from each author.
What was the most challenging part of writing your novel? E. Lily Yu answered learning Persian was necessary to complete the novel.
Explain your experience of the agent side of publishing. Nancy Johnson answered the key was an excellent query letter. She used the phase Hook-Book-Cook to describe what you need in your query. The Hook is your elevator pitch; the Book is a brief summary of your book (only add your most interesting points), and the Cook is adding any works published and workshops attended.
Explain how you write a novel with a day job, and how do you keep your motivation up? Laura Maylene Walter answered she gets up before work to write, she takes unpaid weeks off work to write. She doesn’t have kids, so that helps. Her goal is 1000 words per day, or she uses a time goal like a certain number of words per half hour.
What surprises you about the writing and publication business? Eman Quotah answered pay attention to the small successes you achieve. A handwritten card from a beta reader can be the best validation you can receive. Don’t get caught up in other writers’ successes.
Eyes of the Editor: A Panel with Four Editors
They held this panel from 7 PM to 8:30 PM on Wednesday, July 21, 2021. The four editors on the panel were Angela Kim (Berkley, romance), Kate Napolitano (Dey Street, non-fiction), Nadxieli Nieto (Flatiron Books, cross-genre), and Shannon Jamison-Vazquez (Little, Brown, mystery/thriller/suspense). The moderator was Brandi Larson. After the panelists introduced themselves, the moderator posed questions to the panel. I have included one question and answer I thought insightful from each editor.
What is your impression of someone trying to get a job in publishing today? Kate Napolitano answered that publishing is an apprenticeship industry. Earning an MFA is not the only way to get in.
What is a must-have for a query (fiction) or a proposal (Non-fiction)? Nadxieli Nieto answered that for commercial fiction, understand your placement in the marketplace and the relation of your work to the current trends.
What are the hot trends? Shannon Jamison-Vazquez answered you can’t write to trends. The most important thing is to use your voice. That is what is unique about you and will sell your novel.
What do you look for in the opening paragraphs? Angela Kim answered momentum is important. Don’t put too much info in at once. Be active with witty dialog. Use an active voice and a distinctive voice.
Before the panel, attendees volunteered to send in the first paragraphs of their novels. They picked six author paragraphs at random, and the panel read and discussed each.
The panel ended with final thoughts and advice.
Conclusion
I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference 2021 and plan to attend in person in 2022. My highlights were D.M. Pulley’s Writing Multiple Stories Workshop and Marie Vibbert’s talk about submitting short stories. I thought using Zoom worked well. At the in-person conference, you must pick one of four talks in three different time slots on the Saturday of the conference. Being spread over two weeks enabled me to pick the talks that I wanted to see. I appreciated the flexibility but will like to go back to the in-person conference next year.
Links
I attended the Cleveland Inkubator on August 4, 2018, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. Literary Cleveland sponsored the event. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio. I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator and plan to attend next year.
They held the Cleveland Inkubator on July 29, 2017, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. Literary Cleveland sponsored the event. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio. I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator and plan to attend next year.
No Ones Home by DM Pulley is about the five families that have owned a mansion named Rawlingswood in Shaker Heights, Ohio. The novel switches points of view from 1922 to 2019. The house has a reputation for males losing their lives and females losing their sanity. In April 2018, Myron and Margot Spielman arrive from Boston and buy the mansion cheaply. Will the Spielman’s survive the mansion, unlike the four families that preceded them?
Summary
No Ones Home by DM Pulley features the five families that have owned a mansion named Rawlingswood. It was built on land originally owned by the Shaker religious group. The Shaker colony thrived in the area from 1822 to 1889 when it closed. Shaker Heights was established in 1909, and the mansion was built in 1922 by Walter Rawlings.
The Rawlings Family owned the mansion from 1922 to 1931. Walter Rawlings had the mansion built. Georgina is his wife and his son is little Walter. Their section in the novel starts on October 26, 1929, the day the stock market crashed. Bootlegging and The Great Depression are important events for their section. The fates of the Rawlings family begin the terrible reputation of the house.
The Bell family owned the mansion from 1936 to 1972. Their family does not have a point of view in the novel, though members of the family have input in the plot of the other families.
The Klussman family owned the mansion from 1972 to 1990. Benny is autistic and his mother Frannie cares for him. His father left them years earlier. Their section of the novel starts on June 18, 1980. Benny faces a dilemma he cannot resolve because of his limitations of thinking and conversing.
Summary Continued
The Martin family owned the mansion from 1994 to 2016. Ava and her brother Toby are governed by Papa Martin (Clyde Martin). Their section of the novel starts on March 1, 2009. Ava notices writing on the walls, including something about Benny. She feels a presence in the mansion that other people do not.
The Speilman family bought the mansion on April 7, 2018. They are from Boston. Myron is a doctor and Margot is a yoga instructor. The mansion is distressed, so they remodel the house. The remodel does not go smoothly. Their high school age son is named Hunter. They arrive on July 18, 2018, before school starts. Hunter learns about the history of the mansion and must decide what he will do with his knowledge.
Recommendation
No Ones Home by DM Pulley is a well thought out ghost suspense thriller. The four threads of the story separated in time come together. The secrets that Hunter’s family kept are revealed and the mansion’s secrets are discovered. I like how the story is resolved. I live near and have been in Shaker Heights, so this novel was interesting to me. The mix of mystery, history, and thriller works.
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page of No Ones Home by DM Pulley.
Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley connects the stories of Ethel from March 1938 and Kris from April 1999 through the Torso Killer of Cleveland. They are targets. Can they survive? Link to review.
Unclaimed Victim by DM Pulley is a story about two women, separated by time, but connected by the Torso Killer of Cleveland, Ohio. In April 1999, the police call Kris Wiley back to her hometown to identify the butchered remains of her father, Alfred. The clues she finds at her father’s house leads her back to Cleveland following the legacy of the Torso Killer. In March 1938, Ethel Harding finds herself in the middle of the Torso Killer’s rampage against the destitute brought down by the depression. She is a prostitute who loses her home and is desperate to find shelter. Kris and Ethel must solve the mystery of the Torso Killer or face their deaths.
Summary
In March 1938, Ethel
Harding, a prostitute, finds herself homeless. It scares her. The Torso Killer
has been killing destitute people from the hobo village at Kingsbury Run in
Cleveland since 1935. Some victims are people she knows; Edward Andrassy, Flo
Polillo, and Rose Wallace. Ethel is worried that she could be the killer’s next
target. She finds sanctuary with the Harmony Mission. They run the Harmony
Mission Press, a printing press that makes Bibles, but they are not what they seem.
The Tremont Place Lofts inspired the Harmony Mission Press Building on West 7th
Street. Sister Mary Alice Eberly and a mysterious girl help Ethel. Ethel suspects
Brother Milton. She also becomes the target of the Silver Shirt Legion, a Nazi-sympathizing
group organized to overthrow the government. Ethel pretends to be someone else
to uncover the truth.
In April 1999, Kris
Wiley goes to the Auglaize County Sherriff’s Office in Wapakoneta, Ohio to identify
the remains of her father. They found a
headless body along the river with her father’s identification. She doesn’t
want to believe the body is her father’s. Her father was a medically discharged
police officer. Ben was his partner with the police and best friend. Ben tries
to console Kris and takes her to her hometown of Cridersville. Kris searches
the house and finds her father had information about the Torso Killer and had
been in contact with someone in Cleveland. She lives in Cleveland and goes back
to investigate what her father knew. The clues lead to the abandoned Harmony Mission
taken over by the homeless. Jimmy, who is living at the mission, helps Kris. As
they get closer to the truth, their lives get in more danger.
Recommendation
Unclaimed Victim by Pulley connects two stories in this historical mystery. Ethel and Kris overcome their fears and face human demons. There are many theories about the identity of the Torso Killer and the author presents an interesting one here. I liked the author’s use of real newspaper articles from the 1930s to show the feelings of the people of that time. Of the six books referenced in the Author Notes, I have copies of three. I plan to find copies of the other three books.
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page of The Unclaimed Victim by DM Pulley
The Cleveland Inkubator was held on August 4, 2018, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115.
The event was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in North East Ohio. The group sponsors writing workshops, author interviews, and a monthly group meeting mixer.
Registration was on the second floor of the Louis Stokes Wing. Events were held on the second floor in four rooms and in the first-floor auditorium.
There were fifteen talks divided into three sessions with three workshops and two craft talks per session. A poetry reading was held during lunch at the Eastman Reading Garden. The day ended with a keynote reading and an interview with Benjamin Percy.
First Session
In the first session, I attended D. M. Pulley’s workshop on What happens after the end? Reworking and revising your first draft. She is a mystery writer who writes mysteries involving two protagonists in two storylines separated by decades but connected by the mystery. DM Pulley has published three novels The Dead Key, The Buried Book, and The Unclaimed Victim. She is working on her fourth novel now. She handed out a PowerPoint presentation on her topic. DM Pulley went over her experiences in creating the first draft of her first novel, The Dead Key.
This is the link to the Goodreads page of the Dead Key by DM Pulley.
DM Pulley cut over 80,000 words from the first draft of the novel including the beginning chapters where her main character Iris’s workplace was detailed. She suggests writing the first draft for you to discover what you want to write about and then write the second draft for your audience. DM Pulley has an eight-step process to create that second draft.
Step one: celebrate. Completing the first draft of a novel is an accomplishment.
Step two: wait at least two weeks or better yet a month before you start the rewrites because you need distance from your work.
Step three: Identify your audience. She paused for us to do a five-minute exercise to describe your ideal reader.
Step four: Identify the kind of story you are trying to tell. A five-minute exercise followed to describe your story in one sentence, a. k. a. the pitch.
Step five: Review of story structure including the three-act structure, outlining your first draft, tracking plot holes, using storyboards, and doing a plot check.
Step six: Character development including the hero’s journey. A five-minute exercise followed by describing the protagonist’s character arc including the beginning, obstacles, and how the protagonist is different at the ending of the story.
Step seven: Choose a rewrite strategy. You can self-edit and use beta readers and/or writing groups and/or hired editors.
Step eight: Rewrite. Each session at the conference was one and a half hours and she ran out of time here. There were 12 more slides to the presentation, so I think this PowerPoint presentation was designed to be presented in two hours.
This was a good presentation and topical for me since I recently finished the first draft of my first novel. It was useful for me to do the exercises to help me do my rewrite.
Second Session
In the second session, I attended Crafting a Killer Plot: what makes your mystery or novel a bestseller, presented by Amanda Flower.
She is a mystery writer who specializes in Amish cozy mysteries. She thinks that the elements of the plot that are necessary are; start with a bang in your first words and first page, make the reader care for your characters, raise the stakes, put in all the fields, make room for magic by looking for the surprise, create a false high, and then have a dark moment, before the climax and the resolution.
Rewrite and repeat. Her first draft is 40,000 words where she puts down the basic plot. In the second draft, she adds subplots and red herrings to build the novel to a total of 80,000 words. She suggests authors should write every day, and she is motivated by deadlines.
I thought her writing process was interesting.
This is the link to the Goodreads page of Assaulted Caramel by Amanda Flower.
In the third session, I attended Kevin Keating’s workshop on Chapter One:how to hook readers, agents, and editors. He presented a slide presentation that illustrated his points through still photos from movies that applied to the theme of the topic for each slide. He says that agents and editors have an eight-line rule. If they don’t read a unique voice that commands their attention in the first eight lines then they will move on to the next manuscript because they always have a pile of them to go through. So it is imperative to make sure the first page is excellent.
The presenter stated that there are three important aspects to writing, setting, character, and plot.
First, establish the setting. Don’t be vague, be precise and declare your time and location. The setting is interrelated with plot and character and is just as essential.
Characters must have a goal. The protagonist must be active and not passive. They must overcome obstacles. The obstacles can be external, internal, or psychological.
Many plots follow the hero’s journey which is the path of home, voyage, and return. The protagonist begins in their home, travels to another world, discovers the nature of that other world, and is transformed by their experiences in that other world. The protagonist is scarred in some way and returns to relay their new knowledge to the people of home.
I liked that he referenced movie tie-ins to illustrate his points on writing.
This is a link to the Goodreads page for the Natural Order of Things by Kevin Keating.
The keynote reading was given by Benjamin Percy in the downstairs auditorium. It was the last activity of the conference. He read from his most recent novel, The Dark Net. He read the prologue about Hannah. She has retinitis pigmentosa and receives a science fictional augmented treatment for the disease. The rest of the novel involves the darknet, cyber-crime, and demons. He is an engaging reader who has a deep voice and his reading was dramatic and interesting.
The next part of the presentation was an interview conducted by Brad Ricca. He asked the author about his experiences in college as a literary fiction major, writing comic books, and his process for writing novels. The last part of the presentation was a Q and A with the audience. The keynote reading and an interview was a fitting end for this conference about the writing process.
This is a link to the Goodreads page for The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy.
I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018 and plan to attend next year. My highlights were D. M. Pulley’s eight steps for writing a second draft, Amanda Flower’s short first draft to get the plot down, Kevin Keating’s point about how critical the first eight lines are in selling a novel to agents and editors, and Benjamin Percy’s dramatic reading of the prologue to the novel named The Dark Net.
Links
Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018
I also attended the Marcon Conference from May 11 to May 13, 2018, at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, Ohio. It is an SF conference, while Inkubator is a literary conference. My review of Marcon is linked below.
The Dead Key by D M Pulley is a story about two women separated by time but connected by a secret involving an abandoned safe deposit box. In 1978, Beatrice Baker interviews for a job at the First Bank of Cleveland. In 1998, Iris Latch is an architect who is examining the First Bank of Cleveland building for a redevelopment project. The Bank was closed twenty years before and has been abandoned for all those years. The safe deposit boxes are still locked from the day the bank closed. Iris must figure out what happened at the bank in 1978.
Summary
The chapters alternate between the two viewpoint characters. Beatrice gets an interview with Mr. Thompson at the bank with the help of her Aunt Doris. Beatrice is young and naïve but gets a job in the secretarial pool. Max, who is another secretary, takes Beatrice under her wing. Mr. Thompson, Aunt Doris, and Max all have secrets and Beatrice must discover the truth, or someone will end up killing her. Iris has been doing menial work for her architectural firm. She is assigned to assist Brad in drawing floor plans for the old First Bank of Cleveland building so that the building could be redeveloped.
Iris sees the locked safe deposit boxes in the building’s basement and is curious about their contents. She is involved with her coworker Nick both romantically and work-related. This complicates Iris’s life. Beatrice and Iris’s stories are connected through one man, Ramone. He was a janitor in 1978 and has served as the lone security person for the entire building from 1978 to 1998. His knowledge is important to both women.
Recommendation
There is a lot to like about this novel. The background is interesting. The writing is clear. The mystery is complicated. I find that the protagonists keep this novel from being great. Beatrice is sympathetic because she is young and thrown out of her element. She should have grown more as a character because of all the stressful events that occurred during the story. Iris is simply unlikeable. She smokes, has a superficial relationship with Nick, and is frankly dumb. Iris does risky and foolish things in this novel. She stumbles onto the truth despite her shortcomings. I wasn’t rooting for her to succeed and thought that she ended up where she should have.
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page of The Dead Key by D M Pulley.
This is the link to my review of The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley. Ethel from March 1938 and Kris from April 1999 are connected through the Torso Killer of Cleveland. They are targets. Can they survive?
The Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2017 was held on July 29, 2017, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library in Cleveland, Ohio.
The event was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in North East Ohio. The group sponsors writing workshops, author interviews, and a monthly group meeting mixer.
Registration was on the second floor of the Louis Stokes Wing. Events were held on the second floor in five rooms and at one podium surrounded by chairs on the second floor.
Summary – Dan Chaon Interview
The events started with an interview in the downstairs auditorium. D. M. Pulley interviewed the author, Dan Chaon. Dan Chaon first read from his novel Ill Will. It was an engaging section describing when a drug-addled junkie goes into an ex-funeral parlor crack house looking for his lost friend. After the reading, D. M. Pulley asked Dan Choan about growing up in Nebraska, mixing literary and genre fiction, and his childhood correspondence with Ray Bradbury.
There were three sessions scheduled for the day. Conference participants could attend a workshop, a craft talk, or a reading in each session. None of the activities were repeated. There were a total of ten workshops, six craft talks, and five readings. I chose a workshop for each of the sessions that I attended because I was most interested in working on my writing skills.
Summary – D. M. Pulley
In session one I attended D. M. Pulley’s workshop on Facing the Blank Page. She presented this workshop using a PowerPoint presentation. It was effective. She had been a freelance forensic engineer but found herself in a case where she felt compelled to write a novel about her imaginings. There was an abandoned safety deposit room with many locked boxes that had been locked for thirty years. She came up with a story and wrote her first novel called The Dead Key. She won the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for the novel.
In this workshop, she ran the participants through a series of exercises designed to help the writer to discover the background of their novel. First, answer ten questions about your protagonist. Second, take seven minutes to write a scene using that information. Third, determine what the protagonist wants to know the most. Fourth, take seven minutes to write a scene where the protagonist overhears a conversation. Fifth, determine what is standing in the way from the protagonist in getting what they want. Sixth, write a scene where the protagonist has an argument with a family member.
Summary – Lance Parkin
In session two I attended Lance Parkin’s Workshop on The First Page of Your Novel. Lance gave the workshop attendees a handout with three sections. The first section is a page with his advice about the importance of creating a superior first page to your novel. He thinks that the first page must have a hook to get the reader to turn the page, must be bold, and must show the protagonist’s goal. He says do not waste a word on that first page. The second section is an article from the penguin random house website on what our editors look for on an opening page. They want a powerful opener, a unique perspective, a well-realized world, an authentic voice, and attention-grabbing characters.
The third section was copies of the first page of six different novels. The book titles were not noted and I recognized the four that I had read previously. In the workshop, Lance talked about the first two sections and then had two different workshop attendees read one of the first pages. The workshop discussed why those first pages worked. Lance then gave the workshop attendees thirty minutes to write the first page. At the end of that time, three workshop attendees read their work and fielded comments from the workshop.
Summary – Hillary Rettig
In session three I attended Hillary Rettig’s workshop on Values-Based Time Management for Writers. The first thing that she asked us to do was to think about what your dream schedule would look like. She said that most people would need 150 to 200 hours a week to accomplish everything that they would like to do. The problem is that with sleeping 8 hours a night, then you only have about 112 waking hours per week to accomplish the tasks that you want to do. There is a gap, so you must decide which tasks you most want to accomplish.
She had a handout called time reclamation exercise. It was used to brainstorm how the desired change could be implemented. Another handout described the five principles of good time management. They are; time is valuable, invest time and do not spend it, invest time in the things for which you most want to make progress, the purpose of time management is to eliminate the unimportant stuff, and all time is managed so choose what you want to do.
Conclusion
I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator and plan to attend next year. My highlights were Dan Choan’s compelling reading, the insightful brainstorming techniques from D. M. Pulley, realizing the importance of the first page in a novel from Lance Parkin, and the benefit of choosing to spend my time on the things that I want to accomplish from Hillary Rettig. See you next year.
Links
Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2017 is held at the Cleveland Public Library while the Cuyahoga County Public Library sponsors a similar event called the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2016.
Recap for the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2016 on September 24, 2016. It was located at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the new William N. Skirball writer’s center which is located at the branch. It was a one-day event with an introduction, a keynote speaker, three breakout sessions, and one Q & A panel.
