Showing posts with label Shelley Adina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shelley Adina. Show all posts
Friday, February 8, 2013
Brilliant Guests
As some of you may know, I’m the president of my local
Romance Writers of America chapter. We’re a very small group, less than two
dozen members. But! We are lucky that we are just over the hills – the Santa
Cruz Mountains – of the Silicon Valley RWA Chapter. And they’re pretty big.
Also Black Diamonds in the Bay Area, etc.
Which means we don’t hold conferences or host big names
(can’t pay for them, for one thing), but we are close to chapters that can
bring these people to our area. So, I’ve attended a Donald Maas all day
workshop, a Deb Dixon workshop and an Angela James workshop.
We also have a fair amount of writers within reach. And
those? We tempt them to come and talk to us, plus we have several published
writers in our chapter. We try to host someone every other month, though this
year, my new VP opted to get speakers the first half of the year and we’ll work
on writing the second half. Plus our holiday party and a few months off during
the summer, when we’re at big conferences.
So, why am I babbling about this?
Well, we had Tina Folsom late last year and invited members
from the other chapters and did pretty well. She’s local to the Bay Area. And a
last week, we had Shelley Bates come speak to us. Hal knows Shelley, since she
teaches a master class at Seton University. I know her from doing Steampunk
workshops with her last year at Clockwork Alchemy, in San Jose.
She lives up on the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Shelley
also writes as Adina Senft. Amish romance. And she does well! She self publishes
a YA Steampunk series and she does well! And the woman is brilliant. She held
all dozen of us mesmerized.
Her topic was “World Building Through Your Characters’
Eyes.”
I have the notes I took. Not many, but I do have the hand
out. And she covered character perception and home and how to use setting to
work inward and reveal and…and…and… If only my brain could make use of this
information!
I sat center, I watched, I listened! I understood! But I
couldn’t relate what she was saying to what I do, period. I honestly couldn’t
think of examples from what I write, or how I could do this or that…nada.
Her words went in one ear and out the other. Understood and
fondled, but they made no connection to my inner writer. I talked with her
after and finally found a metaphor I could use to understand her talk with us.
She was talking about the soundtrack! The motif of
characters, the underlying layer that builds, adds but isn’t intrusive. It
carries the story forward and helps the reader taste the richness, the spice…experience
the magic under the words. Thru words! But not in-your-reader’s -face,
let-me-explain-this words.
I can understand a soundtrack, the subtle nature. How it
adds without distraction.
I can’t decipher Shelley’s presentation. I’m simply blind
that way. I don’t know if it’s my superstitious nature, (I suspect it is), but
I have a block when it comes to using the wonderful aspects of teachers like
Shelley.
Luckily, she’s very understanding and actually, when we did
the panels together, we complement each other’s techniques quite well. She’s a
plotter, a planner, a creatively detailed writer. I’m a wild card.
I attend lecture, workshops, conferences…and I listen. I pay
attention. With my creative writing mind acting like a four-year-old, fingers
in ears, singing la-la-la-la-la. My intuitive mind is very present. I can
analyze, discuss the topic in regards to other books, or movies…but not my
writing.
Terri has seen this. I am so damned oblivious.
I hope that eventually, the information seeps into what I do…without
my having to think too deeply on it.
Because I’m an idiot and fear that if I totally understand
what I do, I won’t be able to do it anymore. I need to believe it’s magic.
How about you? Are
you able to make the connection between what you write and what you learn in
lectures? Does it come together for you all at once? During? After? Ever?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Books by the Crew
