The Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2017
Introduction
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.