Wendy on Writing

Hey folks! This summer I’m going to be giving some talks and conducting workshops around the Tristate, if you’d like to catch me without signing up for a multi-week class. Check out these great opportunities to hear me!

June 1: Women Writing for (a) Change

For intermediate writers (and those who have taken any of my other introductory writing courses), I offer the next step along your journey to publish your writing. In “Writing for Publication” we will examine fiction and nonfiction genres/subgenres in depth; learn how to prepare query letters, synopses and proposals; and evaluate where to find the markets to publish your work. Suggested text: The Everything® Guide to Writing a Book Proposal. Open to women and men. The cost is $125 for this all-day workshop. Register at Women Writing for (a) Change.

June 4: Reading at the Wild Fig

Some of you know that while I have been happily earning money with my freelance writing and authoring five books of nonfiction, I have been working on a novel for years. I will now come clean publicly: I’ve been working on this book for 20 years. I have good reasons and bad reasons for the delay.

Fiction doesn’t make money until you finish it and sell it, so every time I got a nonfiction project I put the novel manuscript aside. OK, call me short-sighted. Another reason is that I workshopped it too much. I let too many people have opinions on it. One professor, in particular, had way too much influence on me, and before I knew it four tertiary characters had become primary characters with sex scenes and everything. I never intended anyone to have sex in the book in the first place. It was no longer my book; it was her book.

So I put the manuscript under my bed and let it sit there for three years. I took it out, dusted it off, and took five pages to the Antioch Writers’ Workshop where Katrina Kittle read it and loved it. She asked for more, but I said all I wanted was just a sanity check to see if the book was still worth pursuing after all that time.

But I digress.

My novel, River City Talent Showcase, is finally nearing completion after two complete rewrites in the last two years. I don’t know if it’s ready for prime time, but I’ll never know until I give it a shot. So I will be reading from my novel, and I will be joined by two friends of mine: Tina Neyer and Mary Beth King.

The Wild Fig Bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky, is a bookstore that sells gently used books and hosts readers and literature lovers. It is owned by artist Ron Davis and his partner, the lovely Crystal Wilkinson. Ron had a recent health scare, so I am lifting him up as I write this and sending him healing light from the River City.

September 15: Sisters in Crime of Columbus Ohio (SiCCO)

This event is in the planning stages and (I believe) you will need to be a SiCCO member to attend. (I know lots of sickos, but they’re not card-carrying mystery writers.

For this cool event, I’ll be receiving participants’ manuscripts ahead of time, editing them, and then giving each participant the results of my critique. Many of the members have never worked with a professional freelance editor before, so this will be an opportunity for them to get the beginning of their manuscripts edited before pitching them at Bouchercon 2012 a month later. Keep checking my blog or the SiCCO website for more details.