Probably
the smartest thing to do after a writing conference would be hurry home and
burrow in, open a new document (or six!) for all the ideas that skittered across your mind while there. Or, better yet, take
a solitary decompressing trip, that frees you to write and muse. I've done
both of those things before.
What
I hadn't done was return home, run a load of
laundry, answer only the urgent emails, repack, sleep a few hours, and then set
out with my family for an enforced four days of R&R—strictly away from my
computer, all of us together in a small seaside house (often huddled in the A/C
to escape daunting heat and humidity when not under a beach umbrella to escape frigid A/C), and on unspoken but rather clear orders
from my husband not to disappear into my brain and essentially away from the
moment
I
had books. I had my notebook. What I didn't have was time to spread out all my
notes from Hippocamp
2016 (a conference for creative nonfiction writers), and reflect, make
notes, tackle follow-ups in the immediate manner I like, and to write a
post-conference post.
But
I'm back at my desk now (feeling of course as if I never did leave it!), so
here goes.
If
you read my post from the
first day of activities this year, you already know how much I love this
conference. You can scroll the live-at-the-time
tweets, and read other post-Hippocamp coverage here
and here
and here,
and at the official
conference recap page. I'll just share some of what showed up in my
notebook and program margins when I was sitting in the audience at various
presentations.
First,
I'll note that I was completely unprepared and overwhelmed by the lovely,
positive reaction to my own session, "Writing About the Same Experience Across Multiple Pieces." Not only did people fill every seat in the
break-out room (nerve-wracking and wonderful), but I was gobsmacked by how—for hours
afterward and into the next day—so many writers approached me to say that the
session opened up something for them about their own CNF work. I've never had
that kind of response before, and almost cannot adequately express how much it
meant to me. (And served as a timely reminder that when I'm in the
audience and find value in a speaker's presentation, saying so afterward, face-to-face,
can be a true gift to that person.)
Now,
on to some of the small gems I came away with.
> In
the Collage Essay Workshop (a pre-conference add-on), we got to talking about
other fragmented forms, and Sarah
Einstein shared her own definition of a segmented
essay, which she thinks of as not
exactly linear, but a series of interconnected stories that follow a timeline
progression. Yes! That makes so much sense; something I think I intuitively
understood but hadn't worked out a definition for.
> During
a panel on query letters, one agent (sorry, didn't record who!) suggested a
simple formula: "The hook, the book, the cook." What's the essential
heart of the book? What is the book
about (slightly extended description)? Who is the writer? Another noted that query letters should
involve no more than "one scroll" of the email screen. Still another
advised digging through the Manuscript
Wish List's site or following #MSWL
on Twitter.
> Wendy Fontaine, part of a panel on truth
in nonfiction, shared some of her captivating research on memory
and recall, brain anatomy and function. This, for example: "The brain
makes no biological delineation between a true memory and a false one." Whoa!
Certainly makes me want to think twice, or three, maybe four times when writing
about what I think I remember
clearly.
> At
a presentation on designing and delivering a writers' retreat, Joanne Lozar Glenn advised working
backward from the intended outcome. Ask yourself what you want the writers who
will attend to take away from the experience. Newly generated pages? A notebook
of ideas? Feedback? New process skills? Community? A combination? Something
else?
> In
a talk on incorporating science into CNF, Jeannine
Pfeiffer, writer and scientist, suggested ways to track down data and
experts without spending a lot on abstracts or other access to scientific journals—such
as using Google Scholar; the Public Library of Science; asking a professor
friend to let you search on Academia.edu
or Researchgate.net; gaining in-person
access to a local university library; and searching the terms "open access
journals" + "your topic".
> At
a session on content marketing, Kelly Kautz
noted that for writers who are marketing themselves, their books, and/or their
services, it's wise to tame the intimidating monster that is analytics data, focusing
only on areas that are meaningful to you. Identify keyword combinations that work,
and then purposely use them in posts or social media exchanges. That means, for
me, posts incorporating the word combinations "New Jersey… Editor"
"Writing teacher…NJ" and "NJ…writing coach," might be in my
future.
> Jim Warner, on a panel about
literary citizenship, invited writers from everywhere to submit audio files
from literary events, especially interviews with authors, for consideration for
his podcast, CitizenLit.
> Finally,
it would be impossible to sum up all the wonderfulness that was Mary Karr's keynote address, so I'll
leave you with these notes:
On
writing about family: "A dysfunctional family is any form of family with
more than one person."
On
stories within memoir: "Memoir is, by its nature, episodic. Everyone has
stories."
On
melodrama: "Don't write how you suffered. Write how you survived."
On
writing from reality: "Don't exaggerate. Trust that what you experienced
was enough."
On
blame: "Judge yourself more harshly than anyone else."
On
her writing process: "One sentence at a time. There's no strategy. Jump
lump along. Six hours or 1000 words a day, whichever comes first."
On
revision: "Make the ugly parts prettier. Make the pretty parts better. And
if you can't, cut it out, because you don't want to be boring."
There
was so much more. I suspect it's all going to be buzzing around my writer's
brain for weeks or months to come, and maybe as long as it takes to get back
there in September 2017. Which is what I want out of a conference after all.
Images - Beach umbrella: Flickr/CreativeCommons - Monkeyatlarge - Memory stone: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Tim Green aka atoach
