Third Annual Atlanta Writers Conference

May will bring flowers and a bang-up writing conference to Atlanta. Join Wino Writers Saturday, May 15, 2010 at the Third Annual Atlanta Writers Conference. According to the AWC site:

“The goal of this conference is to give you access to top literary agents–from six renowned agencies–who will respond to your pitches, critique the work you submit in advance, and educate you about the current environment of the publishing industry and the likely trends for the near future.”

What’s more, Shamus-award winning historical mystery author David Fulmer (a Wino Writer favorite!) will provide four talks on topics like query writing and even his infamous sex and violence lecture.

We’re excited about this conference and hope you’ll join us there!

Basics of a Writing Career

On Saturday, Wino Writers attended the “Basics of a Writing Career” seminar with Barbara Collier and Bridget Anderson through Emory’s Center for Lifelong Learning. A good time was had by all. We were seeking inspiration and tips for kick starting our writing careers and we definitely got that. One point that was made clear was that no two paths are the same and you have to do a full court press if you’re going to beef up your resume and get more work published. You also need to cut some things out of your life to make more time for writing (read: watch less TV).

We also did a couple creativity exercises that helped get our juices flowing. During one exercise we listened to classical music and jotted down words that popped into our heads. Then, we wrote a quick paragraph including those words in a story.

Some ideas that I jotted down from the seminar were:

Buy a Neo (which is basically a new-age typewriter and has amazing battery power and is light weight)

Join Georgia Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America (you have to join RWA before you can join GRW)

Read, read, read and especially read writers that are in your genre.

Use music to stimulate you when blocked.

Join Absolutewrite.com community. It’s free and there are Writer Beware posts (among many others) that are helpful.

It was a great outing and we’d definitely recommend it to others.