|
|
 |
|
|
|
We hope you find the following resourcses of use in your writing career. The short decription accompanying each resource is meant as a informative guide to that resouce and does not represent a thorough review of the resource or even the consensus opinion of the club.
Fairfax County Adult and Community Education (ACE) offers evening and weekend continuing education courses in fiction and nonfiction writing for adults (18+) at various county high schools. Courses generally run for an 8-week term and are open to nonresidents as well as county residents. For schedules and registration information: https://aceclasses.fcps.edu/Default.aspx.
Northern Virginia Community College offers non-credit creative writing short courses through its Community Education and Workforce Development Program, mostly for beginners. Courses are typically one or two sessions, and the offerings vary from campus to campus. The Annandale campus offers several writing courses online through Ed2Go. For information on courses by campus, go to: www.nvcc.edu/businesses-and-community/personal-interest-courses/index.html and click on a campus to reach the catalog.
The Writer's Center, Bethesda, MD (www.writer.org) offers short courses and workshops for teen and adult writers of all levels in fiction, nonfiction, memoir, essay, poetry, songwriting, stage and screen, and mixed genre. Some workshops are offered in McLean, VA. TWC also offers more than 50 events a year for writers, including the Open Door Reading Series, BookTalk, theater performances, and Open Mics. A program of "First Fridays" events is held in Leesburg, VA. Coming up on Mar. 4 from 7:30?9:30 pm: Screenwriter Khris Baxter discusses "Building Dramatic Scenes that Work." Download the Winter 2011 catalog of workshops and events at: www.writer.org/document.doc?id=57.
WriterHouse, Charlottesville, VA (www.writerhouse.org) offers one-day seminars on Saturdays as well as 8-week writing courses in fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Upcoming seminar topics include writing about wine, screenwriting, writing for magazines, and the art of blogging.
For Washington-area events such as book signings and lectures, check the Going Out Guide at WashingtonPost.com. Go to www.washingtonpost.com/gog/dc-events.html and search for "book events."
Annual Events
Bay-To-Ocean Writers Conference, Wye Mills, MD. Learn more at www.baytoocean.com.
Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, VA (www.vabook.org). Five days of literary events at venues around Charlottesville and on the UVA campus. No admission charge, and most events are free.
Malice Domestic 23, Bethesda, MD: www.malicedomestic.org. Malice Domestic is a convention devoted to the traditional mystery that attracts fans as well as writers--and attention from publishers and agents.
Fall for the Book, Fairfax, VA: fallforthebook.org
A five-day local book festival, with many free events on the George Mason campus and nearby venues in northern VA.
The NOVAWC does not currently hold its own writing contest, but we try to maintain an updated, active list on the publicly available calendar. You can find it here and on the Events page.
On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King
On Writing is fittingly called "a memoir", as much of it is made up of autobiographical musings by King. But the narrative style actually works well in putting the reader at ease, standing in stark contrast to other style, grammar, and writing books that can be terse and dry. I found it especially helpful when I began my first novel, as King touches on just about everything you need to get started: approach, commitment, daily word count, the importance of action, when to let yourself off the hook and when to put yourself back on. You won't find a lot of hard and fast rules about writing or grammar here; as the title says, the book is more about the intangibles of craft. Worth reading in its entirety before you fully commit to a novel-length project. The book ends with a sample chapter of King's with hand-written proofs and corrections followed by a short list of authors King admires.
- Matt Iden
On Writing Well
William Zinsser
Zinsser's books are primarily intended for those writing non-fiction, but his tips, guides, and anecdotes are a goldmine for any writer. Zinsser uses his own personal experiences to illuminate his career as a journalist, and result is a homey and comfortable approach to writing. Unlike King's On Writing, however, he also has a lot of the "bolded-header" type of rules and regulations you might find in a manual: when to drop in an exclamation point, using the right word for the job, avoiding the wrong or hackneyed word, paragraph length, the best place for contractions and so on. He uses quoted examples of his own pieces as well as writers he admires so that you see the lessons in action. There aren't any exercises, per se, as the whole book is meant to be instructional.
- Matt Iden
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print
Renni Browne and Dave King
Self-Editing is the kind of book that puts a keen edge on the dull knife of your writing. It's a more business-oriented version of the traditional help manual, pointing out the common errors, trite phrases, and basic mistakes that drive agents and editors crazy--and result in your manuscript being rejected. Browne and King aren't just mercenaries with a red pen, however; they're obviously concerned with good writing, just good writing that gets published, too. There are dozens of examples of bad and good attempts--made-up excerpts as well as famous ones--and each chapter has particular exercises meant to strengthen your writing in important areas: point of view, dialogue, tempo, sophistication, voice.
- Matt Iden
The Art & Craft of Novel Writing
Oakley Hall
Hall's Art & Craft is structured almost like a manual, with sections for dialogue, point of view, plotting, etc., but has always felt a little nebulous to me, with a suggestion here and a guideline there, and no real structure to sink my teeth into. Despite that, it's the book I return to when I feel "rules" aren't working anymore and I want to get back in touch with what makes writing, as the title implies, an art. There are many demonstrative examples of good, nuanced writing and many of the chapters are annotated. The book ends with a detailed examination of the entire first chapter of The Columbus Tree by Peter Feibleman, an example of a synopsis of one of Oakley's own novels, then a lengthy reading list of other authors, focusing on the writing process and craft.
- Matt Iden
|
|
