Newsletter June Bulletin: Sunday June 5 Mizell Center in Palm Springs 2-4 Ice Cream + Open Mic Listen to Other's Words Say So-long for the Summer Installation of the New Board Review Michael Steven Gregory Fran Kaplan An engaging guest speaker at the OPSWG Meeting, May 1, 2005, presented the highlights of attending the Second Annual Southern California Writers' conference. The Hot Writers Weekend, June 10-12, opens for registration, Friday, June 10, noon, followed by 2:00 PM sessions of Read & Critique, Writing Book Proposals that Sell, 3:40 sessions including Jerry Hannah's Short Story Stakeout: defining character, and Script-to-Screen, by Gregory. No Host Mixer at 5:00 PM, and Mark Haskell Smith, the evening speaker at 8:00 concludes a late evening Rouge Read & Critique session starting at 9:00. Saturday, June 11, registration opens 8:00 AM, with session all day long, up to the SCWC PS Banquet, with more Rouge Read & Critique sessions through the late evening. One workshop tract per session--If you are in a Novel tract, you can go to other sessions when Novel Tract is over, and a One-on-One with an agent will excuse you from Tract agreement. Sunday, June 12, 8:30 to 12:30 PM, ending with Awards and Farewell. Gregory says, there are significant changes in New York because of small houses and self-publishing: now book stores are more open to sticking with a book for 6 months. POD standards are improving, i.e. Ex Libris, and becoming more selective. Some stores will take back returns. The memoir market is big now. The hardest part of writing is getting the book done, and redone, and selling, and not getting published. There are writers and storytellers. Sometimes you just want a good ride, but Gregory prefers a story vs. a Who Cares? thing. At times, you get into a word thing--it keeps cropping up like, he's amazing, a signature word you're using over and over. Currently, all good, is the word of the day. Many novelists start their books too early--before they determine who the characters are. "Last year, 30,000 screenplays were submitted of which 20,000 were just gone, just stupid, nonprofessional. 3000 to 10,000 had proper manuscript format but nothing to tell you the writer knows how to write a story. Another 1000 have a beginning, a middle and an end but they have nothing to say. The first 600 are about something, but are not unique, just hackneyed. 300 are well written but you can't produce them, not stellar. 100 are good but not great. Down to the last 100, O.K., but. With the final 30, they are affordable, how many can you make in how many years? About 10 scripts are left." Gregory is baffled over the material that comes across his desk every day, perplexed over how much out there is bad. Another Thorn Birds would be good. The best non-fiction by Tom Wolf, and Truman Capote comes from good fiction. We need more of it. What we are: The Original Palm Springs Writers Guild is a nonprofit organization formed to support a variety of writers in and around the Coachella Valley. We meet on the first Sunday of the month, at 2 PM, in the Mizell Senior Center in Palm Springs, Ramon Road and Sunrise Way, for fun, fellowship and speakers. We work to hone our craft in Critique Groups, which meet more frequently. Please join us at the next meeting. ^ posted by Webmaster @ 5/31/2005 05:00:00 PM Pacific Time Powered by Blogger. |
