I truly believe that writers make amazing teachers. I could not have gotten this far in my writing journey without my wonderful writer friends teaching me what they know.
When I first started, I had no idea how much tie in there was between writing and teaching. Well, I sort of did. I remember sitting at my first OCCRWA meeting and taking in everything the speakers were saying. I had so much to learn. And these speakers were experts. I remember thinking to myself, “I would love to someday know as much as them, so I could share like they do, but I know nothing about this industry and writing a novel.” And I felt like I would never know what I needed to know.
Fast forward eight years later and I’m now the one in front of a room and teaching. Who knew! And who knew how valuable us writers are to teach what we’ve learned and share it with our fellow writers.
Wikipedia defines a teacher as the following: A teacher (also called a school teacher or, in some contexts, an educator) is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue. Informally the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. when showing a colleague how to perform a specific task).
We, my dear writer friends, are all colleagues showing one another how to perform tasks!
1. To other writers.
2. To our readers.
Let’s talk about other writers. If you are part of a critique group or have ever judged a contest, you are in some form or fashion, teaching. You provide feedback and make suggestions. You are helping another writer learn how to make their manuscript better. You are taking your experiences and sharing them with other writers.
This is yet another way writers make amazing teachers.
I have been blessed with so many writers who have offered their input and suggestions throughout the years, either through contests or from the many different organizations I’m a part of. This is either by being the main speaker at meetings or conferences, or in a table discussion during the lunch break. I have learned many, many, many things from all of it.
This is another way writers are amazing teachers.
And to all my writer friends, you have taught me much!
Again, taking me back to my first meeting, I thought I had to keep my story ideas close to the vest. But that’s not the case. Writers love to talk about stories and there are so many stories out there waiting to still be made up there are not enough days in a year to write them all.
So, as writers, we share. We share ideas, concepts we’ve learned or tried, information we’ve gleaned from a conference, meeting, or blog post. We share encouragement. And we celebrate every single milestone hit by fellow authors. We motivate, innovate, and believe in one another just like the t-shirt says in the photo at the top of this blog!
This is yet another way writers are amazing teachers.
As writers, we also teach our readers. We research specific locations, jobs, diseases, and disabilities, and we incorporate that research into our books. We look at cultures, relationships, and history and add that in as well. Sometimes readers will not be aware of any of the things we write about and so we are teaching our readers about how other people might live.
Writers are amazing teachers.
We also might inspire our readers to make better choices, be kinder, open their heart to love, or any number of ways people can be inspired. That counts as teaching too.
Just like the t-shirt I recently bought says:
Motivator.
Innovator.
Believer.
Teacher.
We, as writers, are all those things and so much more!
Write-on….amazing teachers, write-on!
I love to encourage and motivate others. Check out a recent blog post here titled Find Motivation to Accomplish Goals, and Hang On To It.
I teach Author Brand and SEO at conferences and meetings. If you’d like to find out more you can go to my Marketing for Authors page on my website.
0 0 Read moreMy original plan this year before the pandemic was to host a live writers conference here in Malmö, Sweden, in October. I had speakers and everything all lined up – and then I had to cancel it all, of course.
But my main speaker, Jennifer Dornbush, was still excited to do some teaching with me, so we made a pivot in our plans and decided to host a 1-day virtual writers conference called Writing with Hollywood in Mind on July 25, 2020. To give people a taste of what the conference will be like, we are hosting two free webinars of the same name. The next one is Saturday, July 18. Click the link – I’d love to see you there!
0 0 Read moreI’m super excited to announce I will be teaching for the first time at a writers’ conference in June this year. The SoCal Christian Writers’ Conference will be held at Hope International University in Fullerton, CA on June 20-22, 2019.
And I’ve been given a cute social media button to announce that I’m faculty on my website and social media. I thought it would be fun to add it here, too.
This is what is listed on their website:
Whether you’re a new writer or you’ve been in the industry for a while, you’ll find a wonderful community of writers at the SoCal Christian Writers’ Conference.
There are several topics that attendees can learn about, but to help you find out more, take a look at their websiteor Facebook Page.
Did I tell you I’m excited? I am a little giddy about sharing my knowledge and experience with others in a way that I hope will be helpful. I’ve been waiting a while to have this opportunity. I also will have time slots for people to sign up and meet with me one-on-one for advice or input. I wonder if anyone will be interested in hearing what I have to say?
Whether you are a screenwriter, fiction, nonfiction, memoir or teen writer, this conference has something for you. The morning is filled with continuing sessions in a specific topics such as platform, editing, screenwriting, memoir writing, fiction, and nonfiction. There’s even a special section just for teen writers. Each morning session builds on each other throughout the three day conference.
Then there are also individual topics in the afternoon workshops in areas including; publishing, the writing life, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, specialty and marketing.
In the Developing Your Author Brand class, I plan to help attendees figure out what their brand is or at least narrow down options to help them decide later. And how to develop that brand with your target audience. We will brainstorm applicable content for future use and introduce apps that can help create posts for social media and websites. I’m hoping to have it be a hands on class, where people can actually make something on their laptop during class they can use right away.
For the SEO Marketing for your Website workshop, I will go over what is SEO and why it is important, how to use search engines to find strong keywords and how to create strong SEO with your photos and text (and the steps to do it). We will brainstorm content ideas and create one item from your list.
Years ago when I sat in on my first writers meeting, I had an interest to want to teach a workshop. But I felt at the time like I didn’t have anything to offer, especially because I didn’t know much about this industry. How would I ever have enough experience to provide knowledge and inspiration to both published and unpublished authors?
Well, it turns out I can use my knowledge in my 20+ year career in marketing. The only thing I didn’t have, was an understanding of the publishing world. Yet.
I’ve had several years’ experience in creating my own website and evaluating other author’s pages, as well as practicing different theories and formulas and working with experts in the field. And I’ve learned that what comes naturally for me, may not be natural for other writers. But it doesn’t have to be scary. Thus, this is where I can help.
This year, the conference is in its third year. I wrote about the first year in my blog, What Do You Do At a Writing Conference? Since I’ve been involved from the beginning, I’ve made such wonderful friends and have learned something new each year I’ve attended. It’s the perfect place for me to get my feet wet as a new faculty member. I can’t wait!
3 0 Read moreA Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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More info →A Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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