western reserve writers conference Archives

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2024

Introduction

I attended the 39th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference 2024 on March 23, 2024. They held the Conference at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the William N. Skirball writer’s center at the branch. It was a one-day event with an introduction, a keynote speaker, three breakout sessions, and one first-page critique panel.

This is the link to the Cuyahoga County Library.

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org

This is the link to the writer’s center at the library branch.

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Services/William-N-Skirball-Writers-Center.aspx

Summary

Saturday, March 23rd at 9:30 AM

Welcome and Conference Overview

Deanna R. Adams is the conference coordinator and Laurie Kincer is the librarian in charge of the writer’s center.

Laurie explained how they set up the library, where the three meeting rooms were located, and about the door prizes available at 4 PM. Deanna introduced the keynote speaker, Brandi Larsen.

They held the welcome and conference overview in the meeting room A/B/C with about 100 attendees.

Saturday, March 23rd at 9:45 AM

Keynote Speaker: What’s Best for Your Writing Right Now.

The keynote speaker was Brandi Larsen, the 2024 Cuyahoga County Public Library Writer in Residence. She is a writer, speaker, and a writing coach.

She talked about sharing how to weave in the threads of community, craft, and commerce to bring more joy and inspiration into your writing (and encourage you to approach the writing desk with confidence).

Craft: The big questions. Can you get to the page? Figure out your writing style alignment. What is your why? Can you communicate what you wish? Can you finish what you start?
Community: The world needs your work. We need each other. Find your people. Showing up matters. Books are loved into life.
Commerce: What do you want for your writing? Are you ready for your writing to become a product?

They held the talk in the meeting room A/B/C with about 100 attendees.

Saturday, March 23rd at 11:30 AM

Breakout Session: Self-Editing Tips for Writers of all kinds.

The presenter was Rebecca Ferlotti. She is an editor.

You must self-edit your work first before you even consider sending your work to an editor. So, why do you hate editing? Whatever you do, don’t stop writing to read between the lines. Read the story out loud to change your headspace. Print out the story and cut it to edit it. When you read, keep in mind detail deficits and places to pare down your writing. Also consider continuity issues, word choices and grammatical errors. Final advice: complete your first draft before your first edit.

You can find Rebecca Ferlotti at the following website.

The Content Cornerstone

They held the talk in the writer’s center meeting room with about 45 attendees.

Recommendation – Conclusion

I enjoyed attending the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2024. I also attended the conference in 2019, 2022, and 2023 (they canceled the conference in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19). My Star of the Con was Rebecca Ferlotti. She had some brilliant advice for writers who want to self-edit their work.

Links

This is my Recap for the Western Reserve Writers Conference on March 26, 2022, where I attended the introduction, a keynote speaker, and two breakout sessions. The Cuyahoga County Public Library held the conference at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch.

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2022

I attended the 36^th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on April 27, 2019. They held the Conference at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the William N. Skirball writer’s center at the branch. It was a one-day event with an introduction, a keynote speaker, three breakout sessions, and one first-page critique panel. I attended the introduction, a keynote speaker, and two breakout sessions. I thought The Western Reserve Writers Conference was well run, diverse in the presentations offered, and informative. My Star of the Con was Bree Barton. Her presentation was fun, the exercises were useful, and I liked her personality.

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2019

I attended the 34^th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on September 23, 2017. I could not attend last year. This is a link to my review of the 2017 conference.

The Western Reserve Writers Conference

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2022

Introduction

I attended the 37^th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on March 26, 2022. They held the Conference at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the William N. Skirball writer’s center at the branch. It was a one-day event with an introduction, a keynote speaker, three breakout sessions, and one first-page critique panel.

This is the link to the Cuyahoga County Library.

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/

This is the link to the writer’s center at the library branch.

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Services/William-N-Skirball-Writers-Center.aspx

Summary

Saturday, March 26th at 9:30 AM

Welcome and Conference Overview

Deanna R. Adams is the conference coordinator and Laurie Kincer is the librarian in charge of the writer’s center.

Laurie explained how they set up the library, where the three meeting rooms were located, and about the door prizes available at 4 PM. Deanna introduced the keynote speaker, Erin Hosier.

They held the welcome and conference overview in the meeting room A/B/C with about 90 attendees.

Saturday, March 26th at 9:40 AM

Keynote Speaker: The Who, What, When, Where, and Why of Literary Agents.

The keynote speaker was Erin Hosier. She is a veteran agent and author.

Erin specializes in representing non-fiction biographies, memoirs, and contemporary fiction. She gave an example of one of the books that she sold from submission to publication. Self Care by Leigh Stein is a contemporary fiction novel. It was pitched to 25 editors in March 2019. 23 responded and they held an auction three weeks later. The winner was Penguin books which published the novel on June 30, 2020.

In a Query Letter, it is important to get the comp titles correct and make them recently published.

She went over the steps for a book proposal for non-fiction works.

An editor accepted her proposal for her memoir, Don’t Let me Down: A Memoir. It took her seven years to write it.

She gets about 50 proposals a month and accepts about five per year.

They held the talk in the meeting room A/B/C with about 90 attendees.

Saturday, March 26th at 10:30 AM

Breakout Session: What Authors Should Know About the Law: Publishing Law 101.

The presenter was Jacqueline Lipton. She is a literary attorney and literary agent.

Jacqui wanted to write a book about explaining legal matters simply for writers because that book was not on the market.

She went over copywriting basics.

Trademarks are a tricky concept. She explained it this way. Trademarks (commercial) versus patent (ideas) versus Copywrite (also ideas).

Goodreads link to Jacqui’s book: Law and Authors: A Legal Handbook for Writers

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51852533-law-and-authors

Jacqui is the founder of the Raven Quill Agency found at this web address.

Home

They held the talk in the meeting room A/B/C with about 40 attendees.

Saturday, March 26th at 3:00 PM

Breakout Session: Writing and Submitting Short Stories.

The presenter was Marie Vibbert. She has sold over 70 short stories and her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats.

What is a short story? She describes it this way. It is a complete story of about one thousand to eight thousand words. A short story is enjoyable and impacts the reader emotionally. It has at least four ideas covering character, place, a problem, and a theme.

Her advice is to know and read in your genre. Every genre has its own conventions which you learn by reading. She writes science fiction almost exclusively. Fantasy doesn’t work for her.

Beginnings are crucial. Figure out the beginning of the story to fit with the ending.

So, you have a draft. What now? Here are three ways to find markets to sell.

For Science Fiction stories, you can submit them to any of the SFWA qualifying markets.

https://www.sfwa.org/?s=market+report

Qualified markets pay a professional rate.

Use the submission grinder to track your submissions.

https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/ Use an open call in a Facebook Group.

This is the link to the Goodreads page for Galactic Hellcats.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53388150-galactic-hellcats

They held the talk at the Homework Center with about 30 attendees.

Recommendation – Conclusion

The Western Reserve Writers Conference 2022 returned well. I attended the conference in 2019, but they canceled the conference in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19. I’m glad they held the conference, and it seems as well attended as before the pandemic. My Star of the Con was Marie Vibbert. She had some brilliant advice for aspiring short story writers. I saw her speak at the virtual conference, Cleveland Inkubator 2021 and her presentation was great then too.

Links

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2019

I attended the 34^th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on September 23, 2017. I could not attend last year. This is a link to my review of the 2017 conference.

The Western Reserve Writers Conference

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2019

Western Reserve Writers Conference

Introduction

This is the link to the Cuyahoga County Library.

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/

This is the link to the writer’s center at the library branch.

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Services/William-N-Skirball-Writers-Center.aspx

Summary

Saturday, April 27th at 9:30 AM

Welcome and Conference Overview

Deanna R. Adams is the conference coordinator and Laurie Kincer is the librarian in charge of the writer’s center.

Laurie explained how the library was set up, where the three meeting rooms were located, and about the door prizes available at 4 PM. Deanna gave an inspiring quote to the attendees. “This is the first day in the rest of your writing lives.” Deanna introduced the keynote speaker, David Giffels.

They held the welcome and conference overview in the meeting room A/B/C with about 150 attendees.

Saturday, April 27th at 9:40 AM

Keynote Speaker: On writing when you think you have no ideas.

The keynote speaker was David Giffels. He is the writer in residence at the writing center.

David is the author of five books, a magazine author, and a professor of English at Akron University. He began his writing career as a columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal where he wrote three columns a week, every week.

He related three anecdotes about times he thought he had no ideas. On clean out your refrigerator day one time, he went to an Akron University fraternity and came up with a humorous story involving the student he encountered there. One December he walked in downtown Akron. The only place open had an appropriate Christmas display in the windows. It was an Adult store. He asked the clerk if the display was ironic and David wrote a column about his experience. The day of the big East Coast Blackout of 2003, he knew he couldn’t do a big perspective story, so he went out in the street. He found that people chose to make order out of the chaos and wrote a column on that.

The bottom line is to go out into the world to find ideas. Ideas don’t come to us, we get to them.

He talked about the writing prompts he gives to his students at Akron University.

Writing is a transaction from the writer to the reader. The writer gets ideas from the world, mixes the ideas in the writer’s mind, and returns the written word to the world.

Link to his website.

https://www.davidgiffels.com/

They held the talk in the meeting room A/B/C with about 150 attendees.

Saturday, April 27th at 10:30 AM

Breakout Session

Kiss, Marry, Kill: How to create compelling characters, a presentation by Bree Barton

First drafts are character drafts. The writer must figure out who they are, what they want, and what they’ll do to get it. She divided her presentation into six sections with writing exercises attached to help writers understand their characters.

Put some flesh on their bones–Give your characters a job interview. Exercise: Haters gonna hate. What does your character hate?
Give them secrets–Exercise: What secret is your character keeping?
Free their natural voice–Each character needs a unique voice. Exercise: Finish this statement. I wish you would give me…
Shut them up–Exercise: cut dialog so the reader can fill in the gaps.
Describe–Exercise: Describe your characters.
Hats off to you–Exercise: write a scene between two characters who do not meet in the story. It will help to understand the characters.

We did the first three exercises but did not do the other three because of limited time. The techniques were useful for learning about characters.

Link to her website.

http://www.breebarton.com/

They held the talk in the Writer’s Center Meeting Room with 54 attendees. Every seat was full.

Saturday, April 27th at 3:00 PM

Breakout Session

The Art of the Short Story, a presentation by Scott Lax

Scott started with a Q and A session first so he could cover questions attendees had as he progressed through the presentation. Then he explained his path to writing. He stressed that every writer has to find their own journey. Take your route to become a writer by your way, however it works for you. He was a salesman who at 39 decided to do what he had always wanted to do, be a writer. He wrote a novel, wrote a memoir, wrote a screenplay, and many short stories. Then he became a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art by teaching writing. A short story has story truth, and a memoir has happening truth, that is the difference.

There are three structural elements of a short story.

Unity of action. Place the story in a single space.
Unity of time. The story should take place over a short period of time.
Unity of plot. The story has an organization of events

The story’s conflict comes from something; characters, internal struggle, society, or nature. Start the conflict at once. Set your characters into motion. Create conflict through dialog. Give each of your characters different scripts and motivations. You make short stories with scenes. State the conflict. No time for exposition, get to the point. The climax is when the tension is highest. Objects have emotions, be sure to add them into your stories. Don’t give too much explanation to the reader, be sure to write for smart people.

Link to his website.

http://www.scottlax.com/

They held the talk in the Writer’s Center Meeting Room with 45 attendees.

Recommendation – Conclusion

The Western Reserve Writers Conference was well run, diverse in the presentations offered, and informative. At 4 PM they gave out door prizes. They drew ticket 159 which I had, and I took my choice of prizes. I chose a signed copy of Dawn by J. Thorn and Zak Bohannon. I missed J. Thorn’s presentation, but I have seen him talk before at science fiction conventions, so I wanted to check out his book. My Star of the Con was Bree Barton. Her presentation was fun, the exercises were useful, and I liked her personality. I plan to attend this event next year.

This is a link for the Goodreads page for Dawn, the door prize I won at the conference.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35007716-dawn

Links

I attended the 34^th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on September 23, 2017. I could not attend last year. This is a link to my review of the 2017 conference.

The Western Reserve Writers Conference

The most recent SF conference I attended was Cleveland ConCoction 2019 at 600 North Aurora Road Aurora, Ohio at the Bertram Inn and Conference Center from March 1 to 3, 2019. This is a link to my conference recap.

Conference Recap Cleveland ConCoction 2019

The Western Reserve Writers Conference

Western Reserve Writers Conference 2017

Introduction

I attended the 34^th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on September 23, 2017. It was located at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the 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 first page critique panel.

Link to Cuyahoga County Library website

https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/

Summary – Keynote Speaker

The day began in the large meeting room which had space for over 100 attendees and the tables for the presenter’s book sale. We were first welcomed by Laurie Kincer, the librarian for the writer’s center, and then by Deanna R. Adams, the conference coordinator. They detailed how the Western Reserve Writers Conference would proceed. The keynote speaker, Brian A. Klems, was introduced. He is a senior online editor for WritersDigest.com. Brian wrote the parenting guide for fathers called Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl. He had ten suggestions for all aspiring writers from the experience of an editor.

Write a great typo-free story with a protagonist with well-defined goals, a believable setting, and use the active voice.
Get to know the editors and agents before you pitch them.
Follow specific submission guidelines for each submission completed.
Write a great query letter.
Have a well-established author’s platform with a website, a twitter account, and a Facebook account.
Network with others with the primary objective to be useful and helpful.
Embrace any feedback that you receive and don’t let criticism get to you.
Strive to be the easiest person to work with.
Have more than one idea going into a pitch. You never know which idea will be the one that is successful
Stay positive and be excited about your story.

He was humorous and engaging. He stalked the stage and had to hurry to finish his ten points because he was running out of time since there was too much to cover in the time allotted.

This is the Goodreads link to Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl by Brian Klems.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16219954-oh-boy-you-re-having-a-girl

Summary – Public Speaking for Writers

The first session that I attended was given by Ray McNiece called Public Speaking for Writers. The presentation seeks to teach the attendees about simple techniques to improve reading your work to a live audience. He is a poet, performer, educator, speaker, actor, musician, singer, and writer. He first asked everyone in the audience why they choose to come to this talk and what they wanted to get out of the talk.

The first thing to do as a performer is to find a sweet spot for speaking where the audience is accessible and your voice can project throughout the area. Confidence is important because if you believe in yourself then the audience will believe you. Projecting your voice is important because you want the audience to hear and understand you. Take a full deep breath from your belly button to help in projecting your voice. Gestures are important because it helps the audience to understand what you are saying and what is important. This was an interactive presentation.

My contribution was to demonstrate gestures by repeating “howdy folks” and using gestures. Memorization of the material helps in engaging the audience. The whole group participated in memorizing and reciting a poem. We incorporated all the techniques described. The Poem was by Langston Hughes.

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There is nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began—

I loved my friend.

Ray McNiece is an engaging teacher and performer. I enjoyed his presentation and was glad that I was a participant.

This is the Goodreads link to Our Way of Life by Ray McNiece.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3205163-our-way-of-life

Summary – Agents

The second presentation I attended was Agents: When you need one When you don’t by Deanna R. Adams. To answer the question of do you need an agent, you should first ask what do you want to do with your book. Self-publishing authors do not need agents. Many publishers do not accept unsolicited submissions so if your goal is to be traditionally published then you need an agent to present your work to the publishers.

Agents bring credibility and are able to negotiate a better contract for rights and for more money. Agents must be pitched your work by using a great query letter. She gave examples from the Writer’s Market from 2013. The query letter has four parts. Start with stating your book title, your genre, and your word count. Next, give examples of similar books and why yours is different than any other book. Repeat your title. End with a simple closing.

She gave the audience ten minutes to write an example query letter and a few audience members read their efforts out loud.

It is important to define the genre of the book. It must be a specific story to be sold accordingly. The voice and tone of the query letter should match the novel pitched. The query letter sells the novel so only put in your biographical material if it is relevant. The main thing in writing a query letter is that the agents want to know what the book is about.

This is the Goodreads link to The Writer’s GPS by Deanna Adams.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27810622-the-writer-s-gps

Summary – First Page Critique

Next was a First Page Critique by panelists Brian A. Klems, Denna R. Adams, and Claire McMillan. At check-in, the conference attendees could submit the first page of their work in progress. The paper had a title and genre but no name attached. Pages were randomly chosen, read aloud, and the panelists raised their hand to stop the reading. They gave their reasons at that time. Twelve pages were read but only four of the pages were completely read. The comments were interesting for all the writes in the audience. The panelists ended with their dos and don’ts.

Do bring a strong hook, have the main character named, use the five senses, know the era of the story or setting, begin the story problem or conflict, and end the page with a moment of intrigue.

Don’t start with dialogue, don’t start with the setting before the character, don’t open without action, Don’t start with a prologue, and don’t use flashbacks.

Summary – Writing and the law

The third session that I attended was Don’t get fooled again with Steve Grant. Steve Grant is an intellectual property attorney. This talk was about how to deal with the traditional publishing world and how to safeguard yourself from unscrupulous companies in the self-publishing world. The copyright act of 1976 establishes that as soon as a work is fixed in a tangible medium then the work is copyrighted. Everything is owned by somebody. Your writing is owned by you unless it is a work for hire. A work for hire is when an employee writes something in the course of their work or when someone freelances a work. Remember that a contract is made to be broken so put language into the contract detailing consequences if the contract is broken.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I enjoyed all the presentations at the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2017. I thought that the first-page critique was a good concept and hope that it is used again at next year’s conference. I will be sure to attend next year.

Links

I attended the Indie Author Day on October 14, 2017, at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library in South Euclid, Ohio. This is the link to my recap.

Indie Author Day 2017

Western Reserve Writers Conference

Introduction

The Western Reserve Writers Conference was held on September 24, 2016, at Lyndhurst, Ohio

I attended the 33^rd annual Western Reserve Writers Conference 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 key note speaker, three breakout sessions and one Q & A panel.

The conference is sponsored by the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

https://cuyahogalibrary.org/

Summary – Keynote Speaker

The day began at the large meeting room which contained chairs for over 100 attendees and the tables for the presenters’ book sale. We were first welcomed by Laurie Kincer, the librarian for the writer’s center, and Deanna R. Adams, the conference coordinator. They detailed how the conference would proceed. The conference was previously located at Lakeland Community College located in Kirtland, Ohio. This is the first year that the conference has been held at this location. The keynote speaker, John Ettorre, was introduced. He spoke about his relationship with writer and editor William Zinsser. Zinsser was a mentor of his who had passed away last year. He described how Zinsser had encouraged him and many others in the craft of writing. Zinsser’s most famous book is On Writing Well.

Summary – Organizing Your Novel

At the first breakout session, I chose to listen to Julie Anne Lindsey who commented on organizing your novel. She writes young adult novels and cozy mysteries. She said that she finds that what helps in her writing is to create outlines. That way she knows that every writing day she has one chapter to write and what that chapter will contain. I thought that it was interesting that she mentioned Stephen King’s On Writing as a great resource since he advocates writing as you feel. George R. R. Martin comments on his Not a Blog that writers are either gardeners or architects. King and Martin are certainly gardeners while I would put Lindsey as an architect. Both are valid ways to write. Every writer has their own process and it was an invaluable insight to learn Lindsey’s process.

Summary – Query Letter

I listened to Deanna R. Adams at the second breakout session. Her presentation was about how to draft a winning query letter. She showed us examples straight from her book, The Writer’s GPS. In fiction writing, the author must finish and edit the work before sending out a query letter. The query letter goes to agents and not to publishers. The agent will submit the work to publishers. The query letter is a business letter, double spaced with four sections. Those sections are the lead (a hook), the body (a synopsis), the author’s credentials, and a short conclusion. Her information was clear and to the point.

Summary – Q and A

Next was a Q & A panel with three panelists. Steve FitzGerald handed out a list of upcoming Ohio writers retreats. His meet-up group is called Island Writers club found at http://www.meetup.com/Ohio-Writers-Retreats/ Deanna R. Adams talked about perfecting your first pages. Lastly, Diane Taylor talked about the benefits of belonging to a writers group.

Summary – Les Roberts

In the last breakout session, I chose to attend Les Roberts’s talk about “Using Red Herrings in Mystery Writing.” His thesis was that every character must be a suspect. All must be in some way corrupt. The reader must be surprised on every page. The writer needs to shock the reader. He advises writers to write what they want to write since he writes the books that he wants to read. He also believes that the most important writing that a writer does is the re-write. His latest novel is Speaking of Murder, the 19^th novel in his Milan Jacovich series. His session was fun with his anecdotes and informative on his thoughts about being a writer.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I was very much impressed with the content and variety that was found at this conference. I will be sure to attend next year.

Links

The Confluence 2016 Conference was a writing conference similar to the Western Reserve Writers Conference. I attended the Confluence 2016 Conference on July 30 and July 31, 2016. I drove from Cleveland, Ohio to the conference that was located at the Sheraton Pittsburgh Airport Hotel. The Parsec organization of Pittsburgh runs the conference. It is a literary science fiction, fantasy, and horror conference. The events included panels, readings, interviews, writing workshops, and filk concerts. I attended as many panels as I possibly could on Saturday and Sunday. I attended 15 panels and the U.S.S. Improvise improv sketch comedy routine.

Confluence 2016 Conference