A Slice of Orange

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Hi everyone! Check out the exciting online classes offered by the
Orange County Chapter of RWA!

“The Lessons of FIREFLY: Learning from the Works of Joss Whedon“
with Jacqui Jacoby

June 14 to July 10, 2010

Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassJune10.html
COST: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members
If you have specific questions, email occrwaonlineclass@yahoo.com

Although Joss Whedon’s television show FIREFLY only aired through the fall months of 2002, it has continued to generate followers through word of mouth, DVD sales and an inexhaustible amount of discussion both at conferences and online in writing loops.

FIREFLY, created by the Rod Serling of our generation, was a masterpiece of writing. Each of its thirteen episodes taught character development, dialogue and plotting techniques. Its motion picture sequel, SERENITY, not only touched on these subjects but added relationships, loyalties and loss to it’s repertoire.

In this workshop, Ms. Jacoby will reveal the lessons of FIREFLY. By using class participation and examples from the episodes, she will translate with words what Mr. Whedon was teaching us on screen.

Joss Whedon has reviewed this workshop and has given his permission for it to be offered to The Romance Writers of America.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Jacqui Jacoby is an award winning writer, who has penned nonfiction articles for various RWA Chapter newsletters including The Kiss of Death, The Orange Blossom and The Heartbeat of Denver, as well as RWR Magazine. She has met with such notable authors as Nora Roberts, Suzanne Brockmann and Debbie Macomber. She has done phone interviews with editors and agents and she has conducted e-mail interviews with Sandra Brown and Jayne Ann Krentz, just to name a few.

When asked how she got started in writing, Jacqui Jacoby looks a little confused. “Actual writing? You mean like pen to paper?” she wants to know. “Not until about 1989…April in fact. My son was eleven months old, my daughter about three. I’d been out of school for a year and a half and I was going a little batty. So, finally, I began to write down the stories that had been playing in my head.”

These days, Jacqui spends five days a week at her computer, creating her stories and writing her articles. “The most fun, though, is the research,” she says. “I’ve worked with rock bands and spoken to the CIA to get info for books.”

A graduate of UCLA, Jacqui lives in the Arizona mountains with her husband of twenty three years and their three semi grown children.

Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassJune10.html
COST: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members

Coming in July 2010–
“Break Free from the Slush Pile” with CJ Lyons

Join award-winning medical suspense author CJ Lyons as she explains the secrets to successful pitching, tips to engage an editor or agent through your query letter, and reveals the creation of a high concept.

This will only be a two-week class.
COST: $10 for OCC members, $15 for non-members

http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html. Check out our full list of workshops.

Want to be notified personally two weeks before each class? Be sure
you’re signed up for our Online Class Notices Yahoo Group! Sign up at
the bottom of http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html or send a blank
email to OCCRWAOnlineClassNotices-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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Impotence – a word to strike fear in the hearts and minds of men. For women, an opportunity to be understanding and supportive. Maybe. What about for a writer?

Could the dreaded writer’s block, though proclaimed by some writers to be non existent, at best a crutch for non-productive writers, be our own form of impotence? The thought came to me as I was putting fingers to keys on a new project. My basic method has always been to start with a scene and keep writing until I get stuck, making up names along the way. Generally I know where the story is set and why these people are in the story. Sometimes I write more than I might need for that specific story but it all comes together in the end.

Then I was told about plotting, and how important it is for efficient story telling. Always eager to learn new ideas, I thought ‘Why not?’ and proceeded to lay out the story prior to writing. Then found out once I’d done that, I wasn’t as driven to write the story – hadn’t I already done so? Okay, so maybe I was using the wrong method. Enter years (no kidding) of books and seminars and on line studies. No writing, mind you, but tons of theory.

Then someone introduced me to data bases for writers. Where you can treat the computer like a succession of yellow pads, plus sticky notes. Now how cool was that??? I downloaded the one that looked best to me, started in on the book that had been beating at my skull from the inside. Here we go, I thought. On the way to . . . nowhere. Mental impotence. The dreaded, perhaps non existent, writer’s block.

Drat.
It looks like the answer, for me at least, is to go back to those Halcyon days when I knew nothing about planning a book, about plotting, about scene beats, story arcs, defining moments, and just write. Then after the story is out of my mind, and there’s room up there for more technical stuff, I can apply those principles necessary to a publishable book. Coming in from the back door, I suppose, but there is always more than one door into the keep.

Once I can convince my creative self I won’t be imposing any more limits and rules, I’m thinking the ideas will start up again. Or hope, since I don’t think the drug companies are going to make any great strides toward developing some sort of mental Viagra.
Monica Stoner

tsent@ix.netcom.com

We’re only given a little spark of madness; we mustn’t lose it