The Muse & The Marketplace 2020

It's never too early or too late to prepare for your time in the spotlight, especially as you're building a long career as a professional writer. This session will teach you the most important elements to focus on when publicizing your work and representing yourself on TV and radio interviews, and at readings. 

As part of a lively critique session, we will show clips of authors in a variety of situations and invite participation in a discussion on what works to engage an audience and sell books. Topics include: What to avoid at all costs (behaviors, language, gestures, appearance); how to get your message across while plugging your work graciously; how to hide nerves and find the right mind-set; how to connect with an interviewer; and how to handle tricky questions/situations.

Some stories are told from a single point of view, while others are told by many characters who take turns giving us their own (sometimes conflicting) version of events. How do you decide when to tell your story using multiple perspectives? Which characters should serve as narrators? And once you’ve decided to use multiple perspectives, how do you create voices that are strong and distinct? 

In this workshop, we will discuss the when, why, and how of writing an effective multiple-POV story. We’ll use short writing exercises and our own powers of empathy to practice creating different characters’ voices. Then we’ll talk about how to best use them to deliver a powerful, multi-layered narrative.

Arguably, memoir is the toughest genre to sell. Two dozen agents told me my memoir was beautifully written but that no publisher would buy it because I wasn’t a celebrity. Instead of getting discouraged, I retooled my approach, found an agent, and got a publishing deal. 

In this session, I’ll reveal how I turned things around by identifying and amplifying themes that resonated with current cultural conversations. We'll broaden the scope with examples of other memoir successes by non-celebrity authors, such as Educated, Sick, and Maid. Extensive handouts highlight passages where these writers connected their prose to a broader conversation as well as positioned themselves as credible voices with valuable insights to share. By the end of the session, you’ll see your writing from a new perspective. And you’ll walk away with concrete examples for how to communicate what's urgent and important about your nonfiction writing to agents and editors.