Just updated my calendar, so all these events that I’m taking part in are included there if you’re interested and want a reminder.

First off, tonight I’ll be talking to Rick Walton’s BYU class on children’s publishing again. The class is about breaking into the business, and having one book out for roughly nine months I’m sure qualifies me. I really enjoyed the last time I visited the class, and expect to do so again tonight.

Next up, I’ll be taking part in a pair of events next week. The first will be a visit to East Sandy Elementary school on Thursday, March 4th. I’ll do an assembly for 3rd-6th grades at 1:30 p.m. Should be fun, as always.

The next day, Friday, March 5th, I’ll be presenting at UELMA’s Spring Conference (the Utah Educational Library Media Association), which is being held at Mountain View High School (665 West Center Street, Orem, UT). I’m slated to present at noon (as is James Dashner, who somehow always seems to follow me around. I will need to think of a particularly biting joke about him to use in my presentation to teach him a lesson). The presentation is called Goosebumps, Great Expectations? Tomato, Tomaeto, Potato, Potaeto…: Why the only poor story is a story not read. I’ve put together what should be a really fun workshop on archetypes in narrative, why they exist, and how they undergird the importance of libraries as a place where children can develop narrative literacy without the impositions on reading that come from other areas of their lives. We’ll talk about archetypal theory and see it in action in a wide variety of texts, learn who fills the Darth Vader role in Pride and Prejudice, and stuff like that. Any school librarians considering me for a visit to their school are encouraged to attend the breakout session. It will give you a good idea of what I have to offer as a teacher and presenter.

Finally, a pair of events on May 15th. In the morning I’ll be conducting a two-hour workshop on characterization and triple-duty writing (come to the workshop to see what that is) for the League of Utah Writers’ Spring Workshop. I’ll be holding the workshop from 9 – 11:00 in the morning. The event is free for League members, though I promise the experience will be worthwhile even if you have to pay. (Joining the League for $24 a year is cheaper, and well worth it for any local writer.) I’ll give more information about venue and other contributors when I learn more.

After the workshop, I’m driving to Provo to take part in the Provo Library’s Annual Provo Children’s Book Festival. I believe that I will be reading from Green Dragon Codex in the afternoon, but I’m not sure when. Of course, I’ll let you know as soon as I do. This is a great—and FREE—event, so anyone interested in children’s literature really should be there. The list of participants is just fantastic. When you start with names like Brandon Mull and Shannon Hale and don’t go down much at all from there, you know it’s going to be a quality experience. Also, those who know me are aware that I don’t do many readings, especially of my work for children. (Though I’m not too shabby at it, if you’re worried about that.) If you want to hear me read from GDC, this may be your only chance in the near future.

Finally, I try to announce other writing events in my local area when I hear about them (and when I remember to pass along the message). I’m not participating in this one this year, but the 2010 Teen Writers Conference is being held on Saturday, June 5th, at Weber State University. This is a really cool conference focused on encouraging teenage writers between the ages of 13 to 19. Josi Kilpack is kind of the driving force behind this conference, and she and other organizers have lined up a fantastic list of presenters and instructors, many of whom are good friends I respect a lot. If you’re a teen who writes or is interested in writing, or if you know such a person, please let them know about this event. It’s really a great opportunity for professional level instruction very early in a person’s development as a writer.

Vivia wrote the following:

I plan to attend the workshop each month. Do you attend regularly? I am willing to learn, and would welcome any advice you can give me.

If you mean the Oquirrh chapter meeting of the League of Utah Writers, I attend as often as I can. It was the first writers organization of any kind I ever became involved with, and through the people I met there a lot of important things have happened in my career. Also, I’ve made a lot of friends in the group, as well as throughout the other chapters of the League. So I go as often as I can.

Back to Vivia:

What does LTUE stand for?

Life, the Universe, and Everything: The Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium on Science Fiction & Fantasy. No, I’m not making that up. 2010 is the 28th annual holding of the conference. Er, um, symposium. I believe one’s nose must be slightly elevated in a snooty way to pronounce that word properly, by the way. That’s why I call it a conference. I can do snooty, but not very well.

Vivia (a name I am going to “borrow” for a character at some point) concludes with:

Hope to someday read one of your books. I will get one as soon as possible.

As things hoped for go, this is about the grandest of them all. World peace is almost as good.

Now to practice my assembly presentation a few times before visiting Farnsworth Elementary later today. Not that I’m complaining, not at all, but I’m still a little perplexed at how intelligent, responsible adults can knowingly and willingly expose large numbers of children to me. I’m pretty sure my odd breed of madness is catching. Oh well. Who doesn’t appreciate 300 tetched elementary students?

When you work at a college and travel in academic circles you come across quite a few people for whom teaching is a distant plan B from plan A (writing), some of whom—not many, thankfully—make perfectly clear that their fondness for plan B is no greater than plan Q.  I find this genuinely sad.  While storytelling is my prime passion and writing my medium for expression, and I consider these my profession, in many ways the opportunities I have to teach are just as important to me.  In some ways, certainly more important. 

Thursday night I was reminded of this when I spoke to a chapter of the League of Utah Writers.  I talked about networking, and people participated by asking questions, sharing stories, and making comments and recommendations.  Like just about every instructional event I do, it was constructive and fun for me, as I hope it was others.  I don’t have to try very hard to hope that, though, because of the expressions of appreciation and gratitude that followed the presentation, that night, here on my blog, and elsewhere.  It’s very easy to convince yourself you’ve done something helpful when other people tell you so.  And I can’t recall a single workshop or panel I’ve ever participated in that people haven’t thanked me for.  I share this not merely to acknowledge the many kind people I get to meet, but to admit I’m just beginning to see how important this all is to my advancement as a writer.  I don’t mean by broadening my name recognition and interest in my writing, though that is certainly true as well; for me, teaching others is a large part of what makes the writer’s life—my life—happy.

There are pitfalls for writers, like any artist, some darker and deeper than others.  Addiction to self-destructive vehicles of distraction is always nearer than we think.  Every good story goes places that no healthy person would ever want to travel emotionally; to get the story there, the writer has to go  as well, if only in their mind.  It’s no wonder that individuals who emotionally confront the darker aspects of human experience rather than retreat from them sometimes cope unhealthily.  But not every pit is so insidious.  Some, like feelings of rejection and loneliness, are common to all humans.  It’s just that, for writers, these pits are so broad it’s incredibly difficult—if not impossible—to avoid them for much of your life. 

Writing is, mostly, a solitary art.  So is the contemplation it involves, the ruminating and daydreaming and asking yourself innumerable questions to which you have no answers.  Success doesn’t change that.  In a way, it only makes it worse.  There is a special kind of loneliness in fame (a supposition of mine, as I’m as far from famous as one can get); in being marked and noted by mobs of people, none of whom know you at all beyond the brand you’ve come to embody.  There is no escape, not completely.  When you decide to become a writer, to do it full-hearted and regardless of cost or condition, you reconcile yourself to being a lonesome kind of person.  Rejection is just as inescapable.  In a flux so great as that of written story, where every person has the potent birthrights of language and narrative affinity; where these potentials tie together into a unique, subjective, and lovely snarl that we call a person;  where mastery is so impossible you may write your whole life and send your skill not a jot higher but only sideways—in such a place, how can any of us expect to write and not be rejected, under appreciated, and misunderstood?  It’s a great and terrible truth that every person is a mystery, even to one’s self.  When we bump against each other in passing there is zero chance that our rough edges will always fit together.  The best work we will ever do—could ever do—will not please all people.  Sometimes when it does not, we will hear about it.  We will hear. 

Agents, editors, those who publish our work to world, they don’t want to reject us.  But they will.  Many, many times, they will.  

We don’t desire to be away from people, alone and apart, to make our stories breathe.  But we will be.  For too much of our lives, we will be.

We can’t help but feel these things.  I certainly can’t.  Which is why, as much as any other reason, I love to teach.  It fills my writer’s life with those things it so desperately lacks: society instead of solitude; mutual edification rather than private refinement; gratitude and immediate returns rather than form letters, criticisms, and the hollow ticking of the clock.  If you are like me, a writer and storyteller for better and worse, then I offer one heartfelt suggestion: share that.  Teach.  Find something you know and do well and help others to know and do it too, still their way, only a little better than before.  I have no doubts that your career, your quality of life, and your entirety of person will all improve if you do.

Just finalized today: I’ll be conducting a full two-hour version of my most popular workshop, Conflict and the Mechanism of Story, next Monday at 7:00 pm in the Layton Barnes and Noble (1780 North Woodland Park Drive, Layton, UT).  The event is being held by the Wasatch Writers chapter of the League of Utah Writers and is free to all who would like to attend. 

Anyone interested in storytelling (even if you aren’t a writer) who hasn’t attended this workshop really should consider it.  It’s quite different from most other workshops on writing or story that you’ll ever attend in that it tackles how components and facets of narrative work together in a systematic way for effect.  If the system isn’t right, the story isn’t right, and too often we talk about and teach writing by addressing facets or elements in isolation.  Every single time I’ve given this workshop at least one person has come up to me afterward to say that I either helped them solve a problem in the story they’re working on or helped them improve the story by taking it someplace they never would have reached alone.

I’m firmly convinced that anyone, regardless of natural talent, can write great stories; I’m just as convinced that the way to do so can be taught.  For those who are interested in learning—for free—drop in next Monday.  If anyone wants, I’ll also sign copies of GDC if you bring them or buy them that night.

When GDC came out a few months ago, I thought I’d get some copies in the SLCC bookstore.  It isn’t often–or ever, to my knowledge–that employees of the college have had nationally published novels to their name.  I assumed the bookstore would be ebullient to sell a homegrown masterpiece.  Instead, I found them… what’s a mix between indifferent and disdainful?  Well, whatever the word, it described them fairly well.  Eventually, they gave me the standard arrangement for self-published authors: twenty books bought on consignment for sixty days.  Basically, they were covering themselves in anticipation of selling no copies, and after sixty days of indulging me would tell me to take my wares elsewhere.

After two months, they were out of copies.  That changed things. 

So, I just got back from the bookstore, which bought ten more copies—this time not on consignment.  Apparently, they are no longer worried about being able to sell copies.  Can you tell this post has been written in a little bit of smug mode?

I just can’t help it.  I found out today that people have been stealing my book from the bookstore!  While this may not exactly be ethical, I find that really cool.  Now, it’s cool whenever people read my book; it still stuns me a bit that this is so.  It’s even better when people think enough of the book to buy it.  Best of all is when people tell me, in that special shallow-breathed enthusiasm, that they loved the book.  But there’s something special about knowing that people out there consider my book important enough to break the law to attain.  There’s something very charming about the thought of dashing thieves willing to live on the lam for the sake of great literature—or bizarre kids stories about dragons colliding with cows, however you characterize GDC. 

Anyway, I thought it was cool, and it made me happy.

My report:

The LUW’s Annual Roundup was, as always, well worth participating in.  The best part—other than seeing old friends and meeting some new ones—was the location.  It was the first time I’ve been to the Homestead in Midway, Utah, and it was the most pleasant conference setting yet.  The Homestead’s rooms are located in lodges and largish cabins scattered about the grounds, which gives the place a distinctly European feel.  They even have a natural hot spring ninety feet deep inside a stone chimney, which I think was called the Crater (very cool), though I didn’t do more than view it.  (Other guests went swimming.)  My room was large and comfortable, and the meals were of unusual quality.  The best attribute of the Homestead, however, was it’s natural setting.  Every outdoors glance was rewarded with peaked mountains with forested sides dappled in yellows and reds from the onset of autumn.  The drive to and from the conference was thus an unexpected highlight of my weekend.  I’d forgotten how magnificent fall leaves can be.

As for the conference itself, my workshop went about as I expect, which means I am pleased with the results.  People thanked me heartily for teaching it and asked many questions afterward, which is always a good sign.  I think we sold out the bookstore’s stock of Green Dragon Codex as well.  (No complaints there.)  I spent much of my free time with some friends, including Eric Swedin (writer and professor at Weber), James Dashner (children’s and YA author, whose The Maze Runneris coming out on Oct. 6th, so buy it because it’ll be great—and who is neither particularly dashing nor a Jane Austin character, despite the misleading nature of his name), and Heather Moore (LDS fiction writer and professional editor).  I also met some great people for the first time, including a woman named Taffy, which configuration was a first for me (for the record, a man named Taffy would also have been a first).  Got some marketing pointers from Richard Paul Evans and learned the Sandra Dallas is a very smart and very funny woman, which is always a great combination.

So, I’m glad I went and I am glad that it is over.  And anyone who attended my workshop, if you enjoyed it, I would greatly appreciate a short recommendation.  Thanks!

Oh, an interview I gave to akgmag.com (a free site for and about writers) should be available soon.  When I know when, you’ll know.

I’m feeling much better, thanks, though I’m still a bit congested and a dealing with the occasional spontaneous cough.  Other than that, all hearty and hale and ready for Fall semester at SLCC.  Good thing, too, as I’m back at the Writing Center tomorrow. 

But you know, there’s something about this whole back to work thing that feels odd.  Doesn’t back to work suggest, even presuppose, some leaving behind of work initially?  That doesn’t fit me very well.  It would be more accurate to say that I redistributed my time and efforts from many areas of work to slightly fewer, and I am now expanding the menu back to its original spectrum. 

Crud, I’m busy.

And things may get a touch out of hand this semester.  For one thing, I’m working a less balanced schedule at the college than ever before, as I’ll only work Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.  I’ll make up for those two days “off” by working extra late, until 7:00 on Monday and Tuesday and until 6:00 on Friday.  This will make my days this semester longer than any I’ve consistently put in before, and I’m not sure how that will affect me. 

Additionally, while my school touring has been pushed back until later this year and early next year, I’m still frightfully busy the next few weeks.  I’ve got two conferences in the next month.  The first, the League of Utah Writers’ Annual Roundup (this year in Midway, Utah) shouldn’t take much preparation.  I am teaching a two-hour workshop, but it’s one I’ve done so many times it takes nothing but a little refreshing of the material the  morning of the workshop. 

The second conference is demanding much, much more of my time and effort in preparation.  At the beginning of Oct (either the first or the second, I believe) I’ll be at a statewide literacy conference for educators in Idaho.  It’ll be my first event in Idaho, thus my first chance to make an impression, so I decided to go with both barrels blazing—literally (about the both, not barrels blazing).  I’ll be presenting not one but two sessions as the conference.  The first will be on Narrative as the Civilizing Agent, meaning how narrative is the mechanism and primary teaching method of moral, ethical, and all behavioral regulation.  The second session will be on Teaching Metacognition through Writing Fiction.  That one should be fun, and a bit less contingent upon theory than the first.

Don’t know how these’ll turn out, and it’s taking a lot more research into sometimes dry, theoretical sources than the reading I do researching my stories.  But it’s interesting to do something this academic again.  It’s a good chance to flex some different intellectual and creative muscles.  If I didn’t have to create these workshops on top of everything else I’m doing and work starting tomorrow, it might even be fun.

I’ll let you know how things go, and get you more specific information on the Idaho event when I have it.

As mentioned in my calendar, on March 21st I will be one of several writers conducting a unique event for the League of Utah Writers Northern Spring Workshop. I’ve just found out the details, and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. The event will spend the entire six hours (less lunch) in forum format, meaning a great deal of audience participation. It will involve writing exercises and hands-on interaction between attendees and presenters, including myself. In fact, if you tell me you read about the event on this blog, I promise to look at your work one-on-one during the day, even if I have to take a few minutes afterward to do so. (Pass this promise along to friends, family, pen pals, enemies, pets, etc. Tell them to come here, read this, and demand their due from me.)

Here are the details: The Spring Workshop will be on March 21st at Bella’s Restaurant in Ogden/Farr West, Utah (2651 North 1850 West) from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The event is free for League members, though they will need to purchase a lunch from Bella’s for $12. Non-members can either pay $30 plus buy a lunch, or they can join the League for one year for $24 (plus lunch). I am a member, as are many professional local writers, and for $2 a month I suggest the investment is well worth the workshops, conferences, and society membership can give. There will be three of us guiding and moderating the forum: myself, LDS writer Josi Kilpack, and non-fiction writer and tax specialist Walter Eddy Jr.

The subjects for the day, combined with the forum format, should produce a truly unique event. I’ll never conduct a workshop exactly like this one again, so anyone who is interested, do everything you can to be there. The time will be spent addressing three overarching topics (though in any forum, the audience dictates to a large degree what happens): 1) How to “get in the mood” to write productively; 2) Understanding and dealing with writer’s block; and 3) How to move on to another project when you’ve finished something (frequently that one-and-only-next-great-American novel that’s more precious than all your children, your spouse, and several of your less important limbs, and so moving on is the grossest form of infidelity).

If you want a little taste of what you’ll learn (or, at least, what I’ll endeavor to teach), take a gander at this…

How to train yourself to ALWAYS be in the mood to write well.

How to NEVER suffer writer’s block again. EVER.

How to develop more fantastic ideas for stories than you could use in twelve lifetimes. Maybe in twenty-four.

Sound helpful (and boastful)? Come call my bluff, and see for yourself. Hope to meet you there.

Next time: The Pied Piper of Vulnerable Minds (evil cackle here)

No publishing success starts at a genuine beginning, at least that any of us can recognize. The changes, happenstance, and twists of fortune that eventually accrete into a sale are too odd, random, and difficult to identify to trace back to a true origin. So I’ll start with LTUE 2007.

Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE) is a speculative fiction conference held every February at BYU in Provo, Utah. It’s a great conference (in which I participate yearly) so you should make plans to go if you’re in the area. (Did I mention it’s free?) Stacy Whitman, then the editor for Mirrorstone in charge of the Codices, was one of the guests at the conference that year. The Dragon Codices were just getting started with the first book in the line, the Red entry, still eleven months away from release. It just so happened that Rebecca Shelley, a good friend now and pleasant acquaintance then, was the author of said Red Codex. She was also a contributing guest at LTUE. When I learned Rebecca and Stacy would both be at the conference, I knew it was too good a chance to pass up and asked Rebecca to introduce me.

It all made sense. Rebecca knew me from local writers groups and circles and had seen me win several statewide awards from the League of Utah Writers, including a first place for full-length novel. She knew I could write and that I was serious about the business. Stacy was her editor, so to make a pitch to Ms. Whitman there was no better contact than the foundational author of the first book in the Codices line. It was all perfectly logical.

Except I had never written a children’s book. Yeah, that part I didn’t tell Rebecca. At that point I had already completed six novels, but they were all for adults (with a kind of YA thrown in). None were shorter than 150,000 words. The Dragon Codices were middle grade books with a target of no more than 50,000 words. I’ll do the math for you: that’s 1/3 the length of the shortest thing I’d ever written that wasn’t a short form, like short story or essay. Without knowing if I could even write for kids (or produce a book that wouldn’t demand a wad of paper thick enough with which to beat seals to death), I brazenly asked Rebecca to introduce me to Stacy, and if she felt it appropriate, maybe put in a good word or two.

Rebecca agreed very cheerfully, and was good as her word and better than gold. She recommended me to Stacy after a panel and Stacy invited me to send her a pitch. I then proceeded to write my first ever children’s novel. Now, to clarify: I didn’t write the whole novel, just three sample chapters, a synopsis (two, actually, one short and one more detailed, as is my method), and a cover letter. And it may surprise some people to know that I didn’t actually make a pitch for any of the Codices. Originally, I proposed a trilogy of my own. Still in the Dragonlance shared-world, but beyond that my own creation. At this point I wasn’t even aware that they were looking for authors for further Codices in the future.

So, I sent out my package and a few months later got an email from Stacy. She told me she didn’t have a spot for my trilogy (rend hair and clothing) but that she liked my sample chapters so much she wondered if I could adapt them for the Green Dragon Codex (as my original story involved a green dragon). So I did. I took my original three books and turned them into one book incorporating editorial suggestions Stacy had given me, wrote a synopsis of that, and submitted it.

Then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Hint: If you intend to publish, get some training into the virtue of patience. It will serve you well in the absence of a really great stress reliever, such as rugby or free climbing or, if you wait too long and turn away from the constructive, some type of dramatic spree of violence that will earn you both five minutes of the evening news and a shiny new headstone. However you cope, if you write to publish, you will spend a great deal of your life waiting for something you really, really want but suspect you probably won’t get. How to deal with this? To each her own, but I have a modest suggestion: try writing something new.

Anyway, a lifetime later (in this case being six or seven months), I get an email from Stacy saying they are offering me a contract. She’d tried to call me, but, honestly, I’m glad we never connected. I wouldn’t have wanted to ruin my ultra-manly reputation by bursting into tears over the phone.

Um, yes, I cried. Sobbed like a baby. In my defense, you should realize that the very fact that I write for a living is a strange mix of cosmic joke and divine mercy. Whatever the mix, it became a kind of salvation. I never wrote growing up and never wanted to (though I loved reading from fourth grade on). Never enjoyed it as a boy or teen, never enjoyed it at school. By the time I turned twenty I had never written anything longer than five pages in my life, and cannot remember a single written piece in which I invested myself. What I had done was endure a number of difficult experiences as a teen that resulted in my leaving school and work and, in a peculiar way, the world of the living (I might share more on this if someone asks, but probably not otherwise). My writing, to be completely honest, was a desperate outlet from a really dark time and place in my life, and to this day I don’t understand how it all happened or why. What I do know is that separated from school and all my friends, apart from the vibrancy of society, and unable to see any possible future distinctive from my purposeless present, I started writing. No training or education, no acquired skill, not even a genuine desire or understanding of why I started. But I did.

Some five years and more than a million words later I was offered my first contract. It was a wonderful moment that grew directly out of that darkest time in my life when I couldn’t imagine wonderful moments coming again. The five years in between I had nothing to encourage me but what I taught myself, my love of story, and my desire to achieve something, and with every rejection letter I received that seemed less and less likely.

So maybe you’ll forgive me my tears.

Tomorrow: The difference between getting GDC accepted for publication and publishing it. Oh, yeah, there’s a difference.