Four Writing Resources

March 1, 2015March 1, 2015 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

It’s March 1, St. David’s day, patron saint of Wales. Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant. Here in Kawartha Lakes it’s a bit warmer than it has been. -6C rather than -25C, but we’re going to get a bit more snow. But it’s the first of March with twenty more days until Spring arrives, we hope.March, 2013March, 2013

Wild Turkeys at Elora, March, 2014(photo Anne Simpson)

And yet Spring still came each year.

I attended a workshop at University of Guelph on Friday, March 20, to hear Barbara Kyle talk about the writing process. She is a generous teacher and at the end of the workshop session gave each of us access to a tutorial series online that she recorded some years ago. It is an excellent review of everything from Style to Getting Published. I’ve been listening to one tutorial a day before beginning the day’s work of revision. Invaluable.

If you haven’t heard her speak or visited her website, I recommend it. Barbara Kyle.

Writing resources can be anything from excellent teachers to books on grammar, from programmes like Scrivener to a friend who’s willing to read revisions. Over the years, I’ve found all of these and more.

1. Writescape

2. Barbara Kyle

3. Writers Digest

4. Scrivener and Scapple at Literature and Latte.

And then there’s marketing. I’m still searching for reviewers and will send copies either e-book or trade paperback on request.

Check out my booklaunch page for information about The Child on the Terrace.

Marketing and Revising: Ways and Means and Help

February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Setenil de Las Bodegas, Spain, setting for The Child on the Terrace

I spent most of this week learning about marketing. Earlier, I received a series of e-mails from Nick Stephenson, writer and teacher of marketing about “Your First 10K readers“. He supplied 3 videos on the subject. Well worth the time spent, if only for the insight into how Amazon and other on-line retailers find books, but also for the methods of applying that insight to one’s own books. I haven’t applied his method as yet, mostly because, as I have a publishing contract, choosing such things as category and key words isn’t up to me. However, I shall put together a plan and suggest it to the publisher, Cambridge Books.

Laurence O’Bryan at Books Go Social offers a great service, connecting authors with each other and customers.

I’m revising my next book, working title Saving Fillide. One bit of advice that keeps popping up is to “kill your darlings”. and I did just that, moving the opening of the book to the third chapter. It has made for a more suspenseful opening, but in the process, I lost some back story and one subplot that needs to go back in but in a different place and manner.

Barbara Kyle, at a Turning Leaves, a Writescape retreat, suggested a book by her agent, Al Zuckerman, called Writing the Blockbuster Novel and it is immeasurably helpful in revision. I’m attending a workshop Barbara is giving on Friday, Feb. 20th at the University of Guelph Writers’ Workshop on Crafting the Bestseller; Your first 50 Pages and know I will learn more. She is an excellent teacher.

The Child on the Terrace is now available on major e-book sites. Connect through the link to my book launch page.

October 5, 2014 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Sent! Last Sunday I emailed the latest installment of Anne McPhail’s Dangerous Journeys to Arline Chase of Cambridge Books, Maryland. Working title is The Child on the Terrace and it’s set in Europe: Spain, the south of France and Liguria in Italy.
Writers write, but they also market, look for sources of income while waiting for the book to sell, and take courses to further their craft and to meet other writers.
Marketing The Child on the Terrace is next for me, but most of that waits until the book is actually available to buy. In the meantime, I’ve applied for a grant from the Ontario Arts Council for my work-in-progress. Applying is a time-consuming process, involving editing the first forty pages of the novel-to-be into the best it can be at this stage, printing 5 copies, and a synopsis and sending the lot to the office in Toronto. Novelists can also apply for Writers’ Reserve Grant: 10 pages but the applications go to recommenders(publishers) who support(or not) the application. http://www.arts.on.ca/site4.aspx

On October 17th, I’ll drive to Fern Resort for this year’s Turning Leaves writing retreat from Writescape. Always a fun and productive weekend. This year’s guest is Barbara Kyle, writer of historical fiction and crime novels.
Plans for the winter include rewriting several short stories that have yet to be sold or win prizes, work on the as yet untitled new novel, and proofreading The Child on the Terrace.
Recently I attended a tax seminar presented by Gwynn Scheltema of Writescape who, among other careers, was and is an accountant. Very useful and well worth attending when she next offers it through Writescape. Another visit to my own accountant coming up!
I’m off to Toronto for a few days next week to visit an old friend and perhaps the Alex Colville show at the AGO.
Happy Thanksgiving.

The Railway Trail, Lindsay, On.

October walk along the Railway Trail, Lindsay, On.

A Community of Writers

April 16, 2014 / ginny200 / 2 Comments

I spent three days at Elmhirst’s Resort on Rice Lake with the group attending Writescape’s Spring Thaw. The purpose of the retreat is to allow time for writing without the distractions of every-day life: no meals to make, laundry to do, groceries to buy, questions to answer. Peace and time. I wrote 3000 words of my next Anne McPhail, Dangerous Journeys adventure! Productive days for me.
But that isn’t why I go as often as I can to Writescape’s retreats. I find a community of writers there, women who are open, supportive, affectionate and non-judgemental. Writing is a solitary occupation, but anyone who has worked without a community as I did as a solo paediatrician in a small town, knows that support from others is invaluable.
Most of the women, except for one stalwart who flies in from the west, live and write in the communities to the south of mine—Ajax, Whitby, Pickering—but come together at the Writers Community of Durham Region. Time, perhaps for me to join them and grow my personal circle.

Below is a photo of a lovely morning on Rice Lake

Turning Leaves and other lovely things

November 26, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

Just got back from Writescape’s Turning Leaves retreat at Fern Resort. What a gift to spend a weekend with old friends and new, writers all, concentrating on projects and the writer’s craft. I learned valuable lessons in characterization, especially the Sunday morning session with Gwynn Scheltema and Ruth E. Walker.

Back home, it’s Monday, snow is falling and the carryover from the weekend had me spending it on my work-in-progress. The voices of my characters are distinct and clear in my head, less so on paper(or the computer screen).

I just started reading Russ King’s Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven. A giant Black Willow at the river’s edge, the black water, dotted with a gaggle of Canada Geese who seem to be practicing take-off and landing this morning while working on their group harmony, ice forming, and in the distance a row of white—seagulls resting on a half-submerged log— turn the view from my kitchen window into a Group of Seven landscape.

I’ve started “pinning” to a few boards on Pinterest, a process I didn’t understand until recently. Several writers I know are using it as a sort of giant white board, pinning portions of their wip or research or clippings, to private boards. I am using one for clippings, but the rest to collect and share books and paintings and photographs that I especially like. http://pinterest.com/virginiawinters.

A true tragedy this: the mayor brought down by his fatal flaw, his apparent inability to understand that the rules apply to him.

Writers’ Retreat: Spring Thaw

April 2, 2012April 2, 2012 / ginny200 / Leave a comment

I just spent a lovely, productive weekend at Spring Thaw, a retreat organized and facilitated by Ruth E. Walker and Gwyn Scheltema of Writescape.

The Venue: Elmhirst Resort on Rice Lake near Keene, Ontario. http://elmhirst.ca, a comfortable old resort complete with separate cottages, a salt-water pool, a work-out room and a masseuse with “magic fingers”( so I am reliably informed}

We had two dinners and a fabulous brunch, the latter worth the drive. Elmhirst has a deserved reputation for its expansive dessert table.

Ruth and Gwynn generously catered the rest of our meals in their cottage where the conversation ranged from the progress of the writing, to the business of publishing to the merits of George Clooney as an actor.

They gave us unfettered time to write and think and walk, talk if we chose, to other writers, or silence to listen to the lake and the birds.

Each of them blue-pencilled ten pages of work for each of us and one-on-one, invaluable sessions that combined encouragement and critique.

The other writers: a range from the never-published to the soon-to-be published to those making a living by their pen. The most extraordinary voices emerged from unexpected people.

This was my second retreat with Ruth and Gwynn. It won’t be my last.

Writers’ Retreat/Turning Leaves

October 31, 2011November 1, 2011 / ginny200 / 2 Comments

i spent the weekend at a writers’ retreat—Turning Leaves—at the Fern Resort on beautiful Lake Couchiching. Writescape, a joint enterprise of Ruth E. Walker and Gwynn Scheltema who produced the event and taught. http://writescape.ca/writescape/

The resort itself is old, turn of the nineteenth century old, but with modern amenities, at least in the section we inhabited. The spacious room assigned to me overlooked the long breakwater out into the lake, and the ducks and geese that lived within the calm waters. It faced west, with glorious sunsets.

I have stayed in resorts that promised a fireplace in every room, only to be disappointed by the ersatz fire with its electrically-produced flames. Not this time. A genuine log-burning fireplace, with supplied artificial(and therefore easily started) logs.

Otherwise—clean, comfortable, spacious. My only quibble concerned the lack of electrical outlets for my various electronic devices. I solved that one by unplugging the clock, substituting my phone. It has a reliable alarm clock!

We met in the same building which provided a boardroom and a spacious living room(yet another fireplace), supplied with coffee, tea, juices, snacks, comfortable chairs and good lighting.

The package included three meals a day which were delicious and generous. My only complaint would be that the distance from the kitchen to our small dining room meant some dishes arrived, not cool but not hot either.

Poet and author Jonathan Bennett filled in at last minute for a scheduled guest speaker Barry Dempster. He spoke on point of view, a subject I find very interesting as was the discussion that followed. He also read some of his own work, including his award-winning poetry and answered questions about the writing life.

What else—free writing time, lots of it; workshops which we could attend, or not; discussions at meal times with other writers; the privilege of talking with Gwynn and Ruth.

Writescape. What a resource for writers.