Novel Writers' SOS at the Saratoga Inn

Photo: Late hydrangeas grow in the front garden at the Saratoga Inn, Langley WA

Writer of thrillers and non-fiction Bob Mayer, with numerous novels currently in print, hosted the Novel Writing Workshop today and will lead the Warrior Writer Workshop tomorrow.

Mystery writer Elizabeth George will come by for an hour or so to talk about her writing process and answer questions.

Today was loaded with practical information about creating the novel; we worked on expressing a story ideas in a single brief sentence, as well as on plot, characters, setting, story arc, point of view and more.

Tomorrow we talk about the business of writing and publishing; today Bob commented on how fast the industry is changing.

Sobered to hear that the past year has brought more changes to publishing than the previous twenty, I was simultaneously encouraged to learn of Bob's optimism about these changes, which he believes are harbingers of opportunity for writers.

Definitely, with the wealth of information available to would-be writers here this weekend, the Saratoga Inn is a great place to be.

After a spectacular sunrise that displayed an even series of white peaks across the water on the mainland, we had a little rain today, and the weather is cloudy. But the rhododendrons are still blooming around the library and the temperatures are balmy in this charming sheltered seaside town.

Experiencing Whidbey Island

Photo: Charming old houses of Coupeville, WA

Yesterday afternoon I crossed the border from BC into Washington in brilliant sunny weather. My google map instructions, spread on the front seat, directed me to leave the I5 at Exit 192 near Everett and take the Mukilteo Ferry to my destination in Langley, WA. At Burlington I noticed a sign for Anacortes and Whidbey Island. This wonderful route meandered along a secondary highway and brought me to the high double bridge onto Whidbey just as the steeply slanting sun lit the sea and islets with late light.

I drove along the winding highway south, past sea views, farms, forests, gardens and a busy You-pick pumpkin patch doing a booming pre-Hallowe'en trade.

I passed Oak Harbour, Coupeville and Freeland as dusk faded. By the time I came upon the sign marked "Langley," I was beginning to think I'd missed missed my turn. It was night when I drove into town.

Even in the dark, this colony of artists looked lovely, and I was delighted when checking in to note that my room faced the front, and the sea. Now all I had to do was catch up on a bit of pre-reading to be ready for the novel workshop I came for. I look forward to working with Bob Mayer again.

Gingerbread Dogs

Photo by Yasemin Tulpar

Remember gingerbread men? Well, at some point we gave up making them. Maybe it was just too hard to eat human-shaped cookies. Whatever the reason, for the past few years now, gingerbread dogs have been our tradition.

Though it's hard to eat something so cute, they're easy to make. I've been doing it so long. It's one of those seasonal markers that takes root when children are young and becomes an important family ritual of the winter season.

This year the cookies were needed a bit early, to illustrate an article that is coming out in the Christmas issue of West Coast Editor.

So there I was, late at night as usual, rolling out the dough and decorating the doggies with shiny sugar beads as eyes and collars. This touch of early Christmas filled the house with seasonal warmth and infused the dreams of my sleeping family with the fragrance of cinnamon.

Orange lilies coming into bloom

The lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Guildford is dotted with striped overstuffed sofas with cushions. They're all too easy to sink into. Among the few armchairs of the same design, some are conveniently located near tables.

During the Surrey International Writers' Conference, there was one such armchair I sat in on the first day and kept coming back to.

It was positioned by a large round table with a glass top. Plenty of space to set down a coffee cup and spread out papers while sitting in comfort. If I'd wanted to, I could even have used that surface for my netbook with its external mouse.

At the back of this table were two seasonably appropriate flower arrangements in tall square glass vases.

One was filled with a wintry group of shapely bare branches with a single dried orange flower among them. The other contained a large arrangement of live orange lilies, mostly still in bud.

On the first day of the conference, only one flower was in bloom; by the end, the a whole group of buds on each stem had opened and more were about to burst.

Who knows? Maybe by next October, the work of a crop of the writers who attended the conference will also flower and bear fruit.

New edition now in colour

At the SIWC I was looking at a trade table with a lot of dictionaries when a title struck my eye: English-Portuguese Dictionary: New edition now in colour.

This I had to see, so I flipped it open. Turned out it was the text on the individual entries that was in colour: a nice bold turquoise blue.

Whew! I had been afraid that this dictionary would be full of colour pictures.

There are times when I worry about the loss of our ability to read a sustained piece of unillustrated text, and this time I had almost let the paranoia overwhelm me.

There are consolations. Even if we are less able to focus on reading for long periods, we are more visually literate than ever before. Some say we are also much more savvy and better-informed and it would be hard to argue against that view.

It's just that each generation is formed by the environment in which it thrives, and I grew up surrounded by written words. When I left home at 18, my parents still had no TV.

I know, that makes me sound about a thousand years old, but really, I'm not. Lots of us with such memories are still living. No coloured entry word dictionaries for us, thanks. We don't need them. The pix are all in the imagination.

Surrey International Writers' Conference: from Forensics to Romance

Traditionally, there are night owl sessions at the SIWC, and this year is no exception. Friday was Third Annual Shock Theatre hosted by Vancouver mystery writer Michael Slade. Michael's show revisited old horror stories. The star-studded cast included Diana Gabaldon, Anne Perry, and Jack Whyte.

The stars dramatized two unrehearsed scripts. The sound effects come from the laptop of kc dyer; every time a glitch happened, and they did so frequently, the audience laughed indulgently.

In the first skit, a man has miniature human heads growing out of his skin. He cuts them off with a straight razor, but he dies anyway. In the second story a rapidly growing chicken heart absorbs a city, and the protagonists fail in their attempt to escape in an airplane.

The pumpkin that was to be smashed for a sound effect cracked but did not break, so Sam the sound man had to throw it down again.

This evening, Saturday, those still energetic enough to attend evening offerings had to choose between a forensics presentation by the Vancouver Police Museum and a cocktail reception by the Romance Writers of America.

The SIWC has something for every taste, indeed.

18th Annual Surrey International Writers' Conference

Attending the SIWC is a wonderful ritual of autumn. Glimpsed through various windows, the blushing maples remind me of conferences past.

In this hall I talked to poet George McWhirter. The light was thus when I heard Jack Whyte's Scottish burr, virtually unchanged by forty years in Canada. Here I discovered the prodigious works of Diana Gabaldon. In this doorway, I met novelist Anne Perry face to face.

For me, the conference began on Thursday morning, in a wonderful master class where Elizabeth Engstrom discussed the architecture of fiction, as well as the normal and predictable moods that accompany the building phases of each novel.

Friday was the official opening. After the welcoming speeches and the keynote speaker, I'm off to a workshop on short story writing.

Every year it's the same. By lunch time on Friday, I feel filled and satisfied: the conference has already given me so much that even if it ended now, it would still have been worth coming.

A lot of the lessons offered by fellow-writers are reminders -- things we have to hear again and again, in different forms and from different people. We know them, but we don't own that knowledge until we put it to use.

After lunch at a large table that includes an agent as well as a writer from my home town, met at a previous conference, I step out of my comfort zone. This is where the real learning takes place.

I know nothing about Robert McCammon. In his workshop, Page 1, he describes how a book's first line must raise compelling questions. We each write a first line and read it out. He listens and talks about how it pulls in the reader, drives the story forward.

Robert's eyes are lit from within. "This is fun," he says, encouraging us to practice writing first lines, just to exercise the imagination. "A lot of this is just a mystery. How do we do this?" He reminds us that each one of us has a unique story to tell.

"You have to believe in your work in a big way," he says. He sees each work in progress as a child that deserves to be born. Nobody else can tell our stories, give life to that metaphorical child.