A great writers conference coming up

Less than a week until the Southern California Writers Conference in Newport Beach--I'm busy reading advance submissions, and preparing for a fun weekend for words at my favorite writers conference. Check out their lively site, and make sure you watch some of the videos on scwc.tv--they are a hoot, and some are fun animated stories, but they don't pull any punches.
I am polishing my two talks: Design or Death: Packaging The Self-published Title For Success, and also Young Adult: Why Write it and How Not To.
The thing about the SCWC is that it's not about going to meet famous writers and hear them talk (though you get to do that, too) it's about writing...Their motto is "a writer is a writer, before, as well as after publication" which I love!
There are so many amazing people on staff at SCWC, including some of my very talented friends like Judy Reeves, Marla Miller, Robert Yehling and Mike Sirota. Plenty more great writers and instructors--some of whom I haven't met yet--too many to list. And the list of Agents and Editors reads like a real "Who's Who" of Publishing.
Most important of all: When you attend this conference, you will write and read your writing to others; share your pitches, pages and queries with professionals; be challenged to improve; and you will get lots of good input and feedback on your work, be it novels, non-fiction, or short stories.
You'll also have a grand time, laugh plenty (Michael Steven Gregory, one of the organizers and sometimes MC, is a natural comedian and Wes Albers is the perfect straight man!) and, if all goes well, you will not sleep an awful lot.
So, if you don't make it this coming weekend to Newport Beach (Hyatt Regency NB), make sure you plan on San Diego on Presidents Day weekend, Feb 18-21, 2011.
If I don't see you next weekend--hasta pronto!

End of Summer Thoughts

Labor Day weekend in San Diego: Gorgeous days, cool weather, shopping for fresh summer fruits and veggies at the Farmer's market, reading a friend's fine YA manuscript (busman's holiday, I know) and an excellent dinner with friends. Then today a bike ride along the waterfront to the Festival of Sail on the embarcadero.
If you haven't read "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron yet, you might not have heard of "artist dates," but the gist of the theory is that we need to live life to be able to write about it well. Julia recommends taking ourselves on "dates" a couple hours per week. Get out and smell the air, see the views, feel the plums--take a hike, visit a museum, a gallery, a park, an art show, a bookstore or a farmer's market...whatever will stimulate your senses and get the creative juices flowing.
A few thoughts from readings this weekend:
Finished up Sherlock Holmes story collection I was reading last week, and was struck throughout by the admiring, intimate, and--would steamy be too strong a word?--voice employed by the character of Watson whenever he refers to Holmes. We may all have missed something in our youth, but the homoerotic overtones are impossible to miss now. I love Conan Doyle's use of Watson as his "excuse" for recording the "tales"; good device.
On a different subject entirely, Tortoises through the Lens, the latest book from Sunbelt has earned some nice comments from the natural history buffs in Southern California. Glad to see it hit the "big time" in the LA Times environmental blog Greenspace on Sunday.
A good article about the way different people (in this case, couples, are reading their books nowadays. This NY Times piece reminded me of Captain Russel and I, but we don't argue about it, we just read side-by-side, he with his book, me with my iPod. I say, as long as people are reading, who cares what they are reading on, or how they are getting their words delivered...Why can't we all get along?
Hasta pronto!

What Was Your First Clue, Sherlock?

Been reading some Sherlock Holmes...Seems a bit silly, I know, but if you want a crash course on how to craft a short story, in the mystery or crime genre, you could do a lot worse than a bit of reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is one of the many Public Domain books available online, for free or almost free. I enjoy reading classic short stories on my iPod Touch, because I can turn it on at 2am, read for a while, then go back to sleep--all without turning on any lights. (Important if you live on a boat.)
I enjoy browsing the many varieties of Best Short Stories collections, too, because there are seemingly endless ways to package and serve up what amounts to a couple of hundred great stories, over and over again. For example: "Best American Short Stories" (pick a year), or the "Best American Short Stories of the Century." I'd take the best stories culled from one hundred years, over those picked from one lousy year, any day. Unless I had the option of "The Ultimate Collection of American Short Stories" at hand, naturally.
Then there's "Best Short Stories of the Modern Age"--when did that start? The Modern Age. Pretty cool to be reading those on your iPhone.
But the best short stories are the collections you find by accident in old-fashioned bookstores full of both new and old books (not necessarily used but old). Or wandering past the shelves in your neighborhood library. I envy anyone who has not yet read the short stories of Willa Cather, or Edith Wharton, or Henry James, or O'Henry, or Hemingway...What are you waiting for? Pick one out, pull up a chair and dive in.
Short stories are NOT a dying art--places to publish them are dying, but the short story lives on--online in places like AmericanLiterature, and in collections old and new.
Happy reading--hasta pronto!

Must-have Books for Aspiring Writers

People always ask me questions about how to become better writers, and the answer is simple: Write.
I also believe that writers should read as much as they write. I suspect any writer who can't say who their influences are--they either have not read much, or widely, or they love one writer or school of writing and are just copying their style.
Another good rule is: Good in, good out. Read good stuff...Life is too short to spend much time reading junk.
That all having been said, there are a couple of books all writers should read/use. Hopefully you can find these at your favorite bookstore but I've included Amazon links, if not.

These are some of my favorites:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (I once wrote a whole novel (which is becoming a screenplay), using her 3 pages a day process, and I highly recommend it.

My friend (and inspiration) Judy Reeves' A Writers Book of Days which as its subtitle implies, is a friend indeed...

The Little Red Writing Book by my old friend Lonnie Berstein Hewitt will kick start you on those days when you can't face the blank screen/page.

On Writing by Steven King. I love his style and his writing.

The Elements of Style. You can't go wrong reading this and using the rules of Strunk and White.

And the book that started it all for me, in terms of reading about writing, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones

I also love Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, but I think I've mentioned those before...

A newcomer to this distinguished group of books on writing is The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly by Charles Harrington Elster, who is not just a genius and a good writer, but also quite witty. I haven't read it yet, but I plan to soon, and I'll report back on it.

Tonight is the much-anticipated launch party/reading/event for John O'Melveny Woods swashbuckling pirate yarn, Return to Treasure Island at the wonderful local indie store Book Works in Del Mar. I'm going to get to act out some scenes--with another actor as Long John Silver--so it should be great fun!

Happy reading...and writing...
Hasta pronto!

What Is It About Dog Stories, Anyway?

My mother claims that I learned to read at age 3, so I could read a dog book--probably "Go Dog Go!" which was long a favorite of mine. I may have simply memorized, rather than read the book, but I certainly wanted to. The lure of reading was strong already, as I had two parents and two siblings who could read by then.
But dog stories--that was the real prize...I desperately wanted to be able to read those books whose pictures told me they revolved around my favorite life-forms: dogs. Not many years later, I was given a book called "Brave Tales of Real Dogs" (published in the 1940s, it was already an "old book" by the mid-1960s) and I read and re-read it so often I nearly did memorize that book.
Recently, I was sent a copy of Huck: The Remarkable True Story of How One Lost Puppy Taught (blah-blah-blah, I hate subtitles that take up a whole sentence). Anyway, it's a cute idea, but the book itself was no more than a plumped-up feature article posing as a book, and of course, bound like one. The cover photo will get you--it's a really cute puppy, after all--and the book begins well, and has a heartfelt message, but as a dog book, it was disappointing.
Marley and Me was a good example of what one looks for in a dog story (yes, it was a terrible movie, but let's move on, shall we?). It had warmth, humor, then the inevitable tears, but you were left somehow feeling better about the world. (Huck did leave you with a good feeling but it was short-lived, like the book.)
For writers, the dog story poses a unique challenge, because we have to get inside the head of a non-human creature. Whether we narrate the story from the dog's point of view (I tried this in my short story "Dodger Dog") or try to relate the tale from the master's POV and imply what the dog is thinking and feeling, as in "Marley," we still don't have the familiar props and tricks at our disposal. Sex scenes with our main character are pretty much out--as are drugs, booze, and cigarette smoking (or attempting to quit any of these). We have to show character through action--always a good idea for writers, but one we avoid like the plague, usually choosing to fall back on dialogue and inner monologue.
A few great dog stories I remember from my youth are: Beautiful Joe, which I see is back in print and even re-released (could be a movie in the works), the classics Old Yeller and Sounder and Where the Red Fern Grows (three dog stories that are really about people), The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams, Lad: A Dog, and of course, Lassie Come Home.
For those who love audio stories, check out my friend CM Mayo's fine audio story "written" by the irresistable pug Picadou: The Essential Francisco Sosa or, Picadou's Mexico City, available here from cdbaby.com
Most of the dog stories mentioned, and many many more, are available in your library or bookstore...Bring one home to share with someone younger than you, or simply for your own "guilty pleasure". Happy reading--hasta pronto!