Showing posts with label Traci McDonald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Traci McDonald. Show all posts

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Southern Utah Writing Boot Camp

Do You Want to be an Author or a Writer

Heritage Writers Guild, the Southern Utah Chapter of the League of Utah Writers is sponsoring a Writing Boot Camp on May 18, 2013, from 8:00 am to 5:30 pm.

~Keynote Speaker~

Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer and  novelist. In 2012, Coffeetown Press published the first two volumes of Jack’s California Quartet series, The Deification and Valley Boy. The final two volumes will be released in 2013: The Book of Changes and Trio of Lost Souls. Blood, A Novel was published by Camel Press, an imprint of Coffeetown Press, in 2011. You can find Jack Remick online at http://bobandjackswritingblog.com/  or http://jackremick.com



Workshop 1: The Three S’s Story—Archetypes and core story: Myth base and story arc.
                Stories are told with action and image
                Archetypes: Dressing the Archetype— Time, Place.
Structure—Scene and Narration
                Narration compresses time
                Scene stops time
                Scene and Plot tracks
                               Scene Structure
                               Scene template
Style— Image and Action
                Breaking down the Paragraph
              Verbs: Generic versus Style verbs
               Nouns : Concrete versus Abstract Nouns


Workshop 2: Firsts and Lasts—Characters and Their Objects
The First time X appears, the next time X appears, the Last time X appears…
List of Characters with associated objects.

One: Bring a one page passage from your current Work in Progress. That's about 250-300 words. If you don't have a work in progress, we'll provide an example from an anonymous source.

Two: There will be a writing exercise based on a character or an object in the work in progress. If no work in progress, we will develop one with in the workshop beginning with this sequence: 
    I want to write a story about;
    I'm writing a story about a character who wants; 
    I'm writing a scene about this character in which she or he...

Here's an example from Gabriela and The Widow of the First Time, The Next Time, The Last Time:
·  The first time we see Gabriela, she buys a real dress with blue and red flowers on it and she buys a pair of real shoes with laces. What we don’t see is that she has no idea how to tie laces.
·  Next we see Gabriela she is dressed in Levis and a chambray shirt. She wears Nike running shoes like the shoes las NorteƱas wear when they came to the shop where she worked.
·  The Last time we see Gabriela she is dressed all in red. This is the Revenge scene back in Tepenixtlahuaca.  

Three: We will run a third exercise using the work in progress or the provided page as a start. In this exercise writers will list the characters in their WIP or the provided page, and they will then associate each character with an emblematic object.

The thrust of this workshop is to develop the notion of structure based on either character or an object.



Additional training sessions by Heritage Writers Guild members include: Your Brain is a Playground – Creative Thinking, by Barbara Funke; Shadowing – Developing Living Characters, by Traci McDonald; and Making Stories Come to Life, by Jon Thompson.



Registration fees include lunch:

LUW/HWG Members $30

Non-members $40


There is an early bird registration discount of $10 off the LUW/HWG member, and Non-member fee for registering before April 20, 2013.


High/College Students $15 (with student ID) in advance or at the door the day of the workshop



For more information about this event, to register and for other Heritage Writers Guild events, visit http://heritagewriters.tripod.com/spring-workshop.html
 

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Guest Post with Author Traci McDonald - Inspiration is a Fickle Mistress



The Inspiration I need To Get Myself Writing by Traci McDonald

Inspiration is a fleeting and fickle mistress. There are days when I cannot find the inspiration to do anything but take a shower. While she is an unreliable mistress, work is her solid partner. He is not as pretty or as charming as she is, but he never lets you down. When inspiration is off playing with the fall colors in the orchard, work is harvesting the apples. While inspiration sings her melody, work is playing the music. During inspiration’s pouting tantrums, refusing to cooperate, work is soothing her hurt and anger until she comes to her senses.

I get most of my story ideas from those pure flashes of inspiration that come when the mistress is content, peaceful and whispering in my mind. I write the best I can when she is fed, appeased and lounging beside me; but I get nothing when work does not accompany her.

I find her in music, lyrics, stanza’s voices and instrumentation. I chase her when I read books, blogs, articles and research. I fight her when I am plotting novels, out-lines, short stories and blog posts. I have discovered though that no matter my relationship with inspiration; I can only make dreams come true with work.

The inspiration I need to get myself writing is just a flash of pure imagination. That flash creates a spark in my mind and an idea begins to form. The more the idea turns to something real, the more my fingers ache to sit down and write. She gets my mind and heart flowing, but he puts my hands up on the keyboard and convinces me to give her a voice.



About Traci McDonald: 
Debut author Traci McDonald has been a writer since she figured out how to make words on a page. Traci wrote for English classes like most people, but she wrote everything else in between. Traci won minor competitions with short stories, poetry and lyrics before becoming visually impaired. That is just a political correct way of saying Traci McDonald is blind. Traci lost her eyesight 17 years ago, but it never stopped her from living life and following her dreams. She has struggled with her health and raising kids, prior to the publication of her first novel. Traci is very excited to see her dream in life coming true. She lives in a small cozy town in the Mojave Desert, less than 150 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Traci McDonald has four other books in the process of becoming published and a whole list of others she plans to write.

You can find out more about Traci McDonald and her debut romance novel during her World of Ink Author/Book Tour at http://tinyurl.com/8nejedq