Busyness as usual

Although I'd rather sit and revel in my vacation, there are squiggles in my calendar that say I have to do stuff. So it's time I get to it.

First on my list is the Southern California Writers Conference (http://writersconference.com/la/), where I'll be teaching an introductory workshop about self-publishing. The focus of the workshop is for those folks on the fence, wondering whether they should take that step. I can't give anyone a magic formula, you know, "if X is True and Y is False, Then Publish." What I can give people is a list of questions to ask themselves and an accounting of what I've had to do.

My hope is that people come away with the ability to make an informed decision.

I love this conference because I consider it a friendly, working conference. I will confess, I haven't been to a lot of other conferences, but the few others I've been to have not tapped into that desire within me to go home and write. SCWC inspires me, goads me, takes me by the reins and gallops me toward finishing my next project.

If you like lists, here is my list of why I like the Southern California Writers Conference:

1. The people are friendly and supportive. You can walk into any workshop, sit down at a table and make 5 or 6 friends. And most of them are friends who will continue to be your friends, post-conference.

2. The workshops give you useful information, whether about the craft of writing or the business of publishing. And if they don't - they encourage you to try another workshop. The rule is that if you get into a workshop and it's not what you expected, you should go to another workshop. You paid for this weekend. You shouldn't feel like any time was wasted.

3. Their "Read and Critique" and "Rogue Sessions" are fabulous. Both of these workshops work the same way: you read some number of pages of your work and get feedback on your writing. The difference between the two is that the Rogue Sessions occur after the evening speaker, starting around 9 p.m. and go until everyone has read. Sometimes they last until 6 a.m. the next morning! The facilitators ensure that the critiques are controlled and remain positive and focused on the work. They really taught me the correct way to run a critique group. Read their rules (http://writersconference.com/la/faq/) and see if you don't agree.

4. The organizers care about whether your conference experience was a good one. They want you to get your money's worth. They are willing to listen to suggestions for future workshops. Michael and Wes want to give you value for your money and time. Read this as proof:

(From the website) - NOTE: Agents wanting to participate contact Michael Steven Gregory only if you're accepting clients. There are plenty of other conferences that provide reps who have no sincere intent of acquiring new clients with free weekends at nice hotels in desirable locales. The SCWC is not one of them.

Here is my one caveat for attending this conference: if you are a very, very serious writer who is intense about your writing experience and general literary discussions, this may not be your conference. We work hard and we play hard. We joke a lot. We're irreverent sometimes. But if you can take a joke or two, if you can hope to achieve our conference goal of "sucking less than you did before you came" then please join us.

Hope to see you in Newport Beach. If not, they have another one in San Diego in February (http://writersconference.com/sd/).

Humor workshop, anyone?

If you've noticed my calendar of events, you'll see that I'm at the Southern California Writer's Conference in September, which is, like, a month away. I've been going to these conferences since 2006, and I've sung their praises lots of times, but this year, I'm actually teaching a workshop.

I'm so stoked!

The workshop is called, "Funny How? How am I Funny? (And How to Write it)" As you can guess, it's about writing humor. The name of the workshop came out of a website called "I Write Like". You plug in a sample of your writing and it tells you what author you write like. I submitted a paragraph from Freezer Burn and was told I write like Mark Twain. Then I submitted a paragraph from my weekly humor column and was told I write like Mario Puzo.

Wha-huh?

If you don't know, or don't want to bother with the whole click-on-his-name-thingy, Mario Puzo wrote a lot of Mafia-related books, including The Godfather. Hmm... my sense of humor is akin to The Last Don... all I could think of was Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.

"... like I amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?"

I think this is just before he shoots someone.

So the goal of my workshop is to spell out some of the pitfalls of writing humor and suggest some solutions for punching up your punchline. Ha ha - get it? I'm in the process of organizing the flow of the workshop and I think I've got the material I want to cover, but I'm wondering:

1. Should I have charts or drawings, like PowerPoint or something? I'd rather not hand out copies of things, since I do believe in Save Paper, Save the World, but I could plug in some e-charts and offer to email them to people, or even post them on my blog or website.

2. The workshop is 90 minutes long, and I'd like to engage the participants in some kind of exercise after I get finished blabbing. My thoughts are to either see if anyone is struggling with a specific piece of their humor writing and have a group session on how to fix what might be wrong, or to have everyone work individually on some of the points I'll be making, or to give them a humorous situation and have them write it up in their own style. Any preferences?

3. Here's the other thing about the workshop: It's on Sunday morning, at 9 a.m. This is after Saturday night's banquet and subsequent late-night sessions. There may be some comatose folks - should I offer coffee and donuts? I mean, there's nothing like bribing your audience, right?

Any thoughts, writers and readers?