Successes & Failures

It's always surprising -- though not shocking -- how things come in droves when they do come, whether good or bad. So here are some updates -- both the good and the bad -- and don't worry, there's some writing-related bits at the end.

1. After a very long and packed Spring planning for WriteCamp, we were rewarded with a great turn-out for the event and an even better response to it this year than last. There will most certainly be a continuation of the event for years to come, which has been my hope since it's inception.

2. After six years of marriage, my wife asked me for a divorce, which I must say will be on the biggest changes in my life to date. It's been a year filled with family tragedies, and this will certainly be something more to add to my list of life experiences. Life gives us a lot of hurdles to jump over; this is but another of those, and I will prevail.

3. For those who don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter (and you should), I had another story published on 365 Tomorrows' website. It's my first Steampunk piece, and I'm very happy about it. It's probably one of my most polished and experimental pieces.

4. With the success of WriteCamp -- as mentioned above -- I've decided to turn The Milwaukee Writers Workshop into a full-fledged organization, and I'm in the process of incorporating it in order to apply for non-profit status. That way (I can hope), we'll have a much easier time next year and years to follow to get more and bigger sponsorships from folks for WriteCamp and other events we might hold.

It's always friends and family that help me through the ebbs and flows of my life, and I thoroughly appreciate their presence right now. While many things in my life seem wildly out of control, at least I am kept sane by the continued mental benefit of my writing. I'll write again soon -- I promise.

Updates & More

Hello everyone. So it's update time.

First, there's WriteCamp Milwaukee 2. The event of the season is closing in fast, and we're all very excited. We're getting retweeted and forwarded and mentioned all over the place, and we're hoping that means an even better turn-out than last year -- which was, to our surprise, amazing. If you're in Milwaukee on June 5 of this year, please visit us. Here is the info: www.writecampmilwaukee.com.

In other news, writing has been going extremely well. Some of the pieces I have finished are as follows:

"The Village With the Hole in the Sky" -- 2043-word magic realism piece
"Lou in A Coffee Shop" -- 2005-word contemporary piece
"In Reynolds" -- 3171-word near future zombie story
"Adon Saldori" -- 6144-words steampunk story (part of a series)

I have two others I haven't yet typed up. I'm proud of the work I've put out lately. I think it's good work. I'm also working diligently on the YA Steampunk novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year. I think it's on its way to being a solid, complete work.

So that's it for now. I'll no doubt be busy with WriteCamp coming up, but I'll do my best to update a few more times in the next month.

Recovery & Bouncing Back

January was a bad first month for 2010 -- at least emotionally. Without getting too sappy and divulging too much, I had a relative pass away and my dad went into the hospital. I don't deal well with tragedy sometimes, and this time was worse than usual. However, I feel like I've come back with a vengeanace, and I'm working hard to get back into the swing of things with my writing, which fortunately has been easy because of the significant downtime I get at work.

So I've been working on a few short stories that take place in a world I create two years ago for a NaNo. While the NaNo was not a success (I did complete 28k on it, but it wasn't very coherent or cohesive), I believe that the world I built for the story was memorable, and I've been trying as hard as I could to come back to it, but I've just not had the opportunity or spark of "what to write" until now. I also feel that my knowledge and understanding of the genre has expanded immensely in the last four months, having read three steampunk novels and two full collections of short stories (and I just started a new novel today). So as I learn, I have begun to understand my own take on the genre, as well as how to blend it with my unique style and method of storytelling.

I have also begun to incorportate a very loose collection of stories I started years but never completed. I think that the stories I began to tell within them is very much a part of this world -- perhaps even the promulgator of this particular incarnation -- and things are going along nicely. Over the course of four days writing only at work I pumped out 5000 words on one story, and I've already started a second one, both of which I'm pleased with after the first draft.

Planning for WriteCamp 2 (or WriteCamp '10, we haven't decided) began this past week. While part of me has become a little disallusioned with the writing community in Milwaukee, I am eager to get this event squared away in order to produce something as memorable as the first one. I will, no doubt, update as often as I can regarding the status of said event, as well as my own increased writing schedule.

And that's all I have to say about that.

My Thoughts on WriteCamp

WriteCamp was here in Milwaukee this past Saturday, June 6th - for those of you who haven't heard me gabbing about it for the last two months. I believe that it was a huge success, and I am eager for the next iteration of it.

Over the course of the day, I learned a few things:

1. Writers are not nearly as isolated and introverted as people think. Not only did we have nearly 80 people, but all of those people were on-board with the whole notion of participant-driven sessions and interacting with as many people as they could while they were there.

2. Writers are savvy networkers. I saw more people interacting with complete strangers at this conference than I ever saw at UWM's Spring Writing Festival. That's not to knock that conference, because it's great, but the atmosphere at WriteCamp was so much more relaxed and open, that people felt comfortable stepping out of their bubble.

3. Milwaukee's community is big. Outside of the members of The Milwaukee Writers Workshop who showed up to the event, there were a large number of people who I've never met. We did, however, have people come all the way up from Chicago-land.

4. Community - or the notion of community - is changing dramatically. I had more than one person come up to me during the conference and say that they enjoyed the approachable nature of the conference and how they felt more apt to share and listen than they do at their regular group or with their colleagues. This made me happy.

WriteCamp is an evolution in the way we think about how people in the writing/editing/publishing world think about disseminating knowledge to the world at large. Traditional means are working anymore, and no one likes the idea of the acedemic world thinking that they have the keys to the publishing world by determining what's "good" and "bad." WriteCamp proved that there are more experts in the world than people know about, and they're willing to share, to mentor, and to support the community that they're becoming a part of.

Let's hope that word spreads about WriteCamp and that we can hope to begin fostering a new generation of writers who believe in our mission. Thank you to everyone who attended, participated, volunteered, and came up to me and said nice things.

Distractions 5/26/09

With WriteCamp coming up in two weeks, things have been a bit hectic. However, I managed to polish off an old short story, titled "Terminal." I think that it's a bit stronger now, and I will begin to do my bit of research to figure out where would be best to send it.

My next goal will be to finish off a story that I started at an MWW workshop about a month ago. I've been listening to a lot of Snow Patrol lately, and I keep getting better and better ideas for how this story will go. Essentially it's a tale about a reporter who visits a town that's been hit by a meteor (which I might possibly change) only to discover that it's the town where an old flame from college - some 30 years previous - is living and dying of cancer. It's to be a story with a bit of nostalgia for the two, some obvious undertones of romance, and perhaps a bit of reconciliation after years of regretting a break up in college. I know, it's romantic :-)

Anyway, I'm very excited for WriteCamp, and I keep getting a lot of good compliments and comments about it, so I'm very hopeful about it. I sent out for some new JB Dryden Co business cards, which should be good, and I'll be getting some MWW cards, too. Yay!

Until next time. Cheers.

Fresh Ideas

I've been very pleased lately with my writing.  Or, rather, the fact that I've been writing.  I polished a story I had not even looked at in quite some time and began a new story that I'd had in my head for a while.  I suppose distractions were my biggest reason for not writing but more importantly I think it was a mental block.

I get that way sometimes - as I'm sure plenty of other folks do, too.  I find it hard to break the cycle of "oh, well, I'll get to it tomorrow" when I'm so busy dealing with other things.  I have been bad about practicing what I preach (regarding writing on a regular basis), and I feel badly about it.  I feel like I've been abandoning my own craft for other things.  But I'm glad to be back on track.

I think that we, as writers, get pulled aside so often to do other things that we forget our passion at times.  Or maybe it's just me.

In other news, WriteCamp is just two weeks away, and I'm getting a little annoyingly excited about it.  Already we have a good collection of sessions, our keynotes, and a fair amount of registered folks.  I think it's going to be a wonderful event, and it will be a great establishing of the community for future events.  As with everything else I'm doing this year, I'm being very positive and considering this part of me "Year of Boone."  If nothing else, I will have learned a great deal about event planning by the end of things.

That is all.

WriteCamp Ahoy!

June 6th seemed so far away not too long ago. Now, here it is only a month away. The inaugural WriteCamp here in Milwaukee is about to be unleashed upon the world. I'm very excited about the progress the planning board has made over the course of the last three months. As it stands now, we have about 40-50 people signed up officially, at least a dozen or so more than that unofficially, and we have folks coming all the way from Chicago to join us. I think it's going to be a great event.

So that's what I've been working on. I've had a lot of opportunity to speak a lot about WriteCamp and what it is and what it's meant to function as, and I've come to realize that people don't understand it. The literary community is so engrained with academia that the thought of a free exchange of knowledge is baffling to most of them. So often I've heard the phrase "Well, people don't like to do things for free," and it disappoints me. Offering things for free shows to the community that we're here to support the community - without having that feeling of "obligatory compensation."

I hope the community here in Milwaukee shortly sees that we're here to help. Not only is the Milwaukee Writers Workshop here as a support group, but groups like Robinson Writers and individuals like Liam Callahan are here to be a part of the community.

If you haven't heard of it - btw - please visit www.writecampmilwaukee.com for more information.