LUW

So I went to League of Utah Writers this last weekend as part of the Precision Editing Group Posse. We taught the self editing workshops on Friday. Sometimes I am just in awe of the aligning planets that allowed me to be part of this group of women who are all so smart and amazing.

Made some new friends, got to know more about old friends, and had a great time in general hanging out with writer people.  I taught the class on emotions and dialogue–my two best subjects as far as writing goes and wish I could have shown the montage from the Disney show “Up.” There is very little I could teach on emotion that could not be gleaned in that four minutes. It ran the full spectrum of joy, wonder, excitement, anticipation, loss, regret, pain, determination, fear, and acceptance. It was truly one of the most enlightening four minutes I have spent with cinema in a long time.

I met the new up and coming author Tyler Whitesides. He’s got an adventure series for middle grade coming out with Shadow Mountain in June called the Janitors. Sounds hilarious. And also I was able to get to know Elana Johnson better. Her debut book, Possession, will be out soon and we should all be eagerly awaiting that release. James Dashner-the-dashing is launching the release of The Scorch Trials at the King’s English on October 12th. You definitely don’t want to miss that.

At the conference, I met John Gilstrap, who is genuinely funny. He shared his worst review with Heather Moore and me and I am still laughing over it. It was something to the effect of: “The glue boogers in the binding were more captivating than Gilstrap’s torpid prose.” You can read what he has to say about thick skin and the business of writing here.

Writing isn’t always twenty shades of awesome. Sometimes it’s tough–the point is to make sure your hide is equal to the task. A thin-skinned author won’t last long.