John Campbell Folk School Festival was Fun

In 1996 I signed up for my first writing class at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. If you have never been to this special place nestled in the beautiful mountains between Chattanooga, TN, Asheville, NC, and Atlanta GA, please add taking a class at JCCFS to your bucket list.

This weekend my sister and BIL, Stu, came up and we had the greatest time. Saturday afternoon we drove over to Brasstown and found ourselves caught up in a traffic jam. Who would have thought we'd have a traffic jam on Settawig Road? Cars were bumper to bumper and we had become discouraged by the time we reached the parking area on the campus. Stu dropped off Gay and me at the entrance near the Gift Shop. Thousands of people come from all over the country and I'm sure from other parts of the world to visit JCCFS on festival day.

This is a place where I always see people I know. We made sure we arrived in time to see Butternut Creek and Friends, a great singing group that includes Steve Harvey who plays banjo, ukulele, guitar and he sings.
We have been fans of the group for over sixteen years. Steve is an essayist and will be teaching a class at the Ridgeline Conference this weekend.

We didn't want to miss seeing the lovely twins, The Pressley Girls, who have blossomed into quite a singing group backed by their grandpa, their mother and their uncle. The girls belong to Tipper of Blind Pig and the Acorn.

The folk school holds many good memories for me from my first class there with Nancy Simpson, poet, to my first opportunity to teach a writing class. I was asked to sub for a weekend class. I had taught some classes already, but this was my first time at John C. Campbell Folk School.

I'll never forget the emotion that rolled over me as I turned the key to the door of the room where we would gather. I thought I would burst with gratitude, and I wanted to laugh and to cry at the same time. I felt I'd reached a milestone. I hoped I could give my students the same feeling I had in my first class at this magical place.

Years have passed since that day and many men and women have sat before me in writing classes at the folk school, at classes in church fellowship halls, at Tri-County Community College, at ICL classes held at Young Harris College and in my own studio. But I never forget that my life changed forever the day I took my first writing class at John C. Campbell Folk School. 

Kathryn Stripling Byer - The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest from Press 53

Kathryn Stripling Byer

How wonderful that all the fans of Kathryn Stripling Byer, first woman poet laureate of North Carolina, can now buy The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest from Press 53. This is the second edition of the award-winning book that was first printed in 1986. I'm not bragging, but I have an autographed copy of that first edition. 

Kathryn and I share a similar background having both grown up on farms in south Georgia. Her poems speak to me as if she were my sister, and I'm sure they will speak to you when you get your copy of this book.

Kathryn Byer has become one of the most important women in the literary world of western North Carolina, and a beloved poet throughout the country and in foreign countries as well.

Click on this link to see more about this book and the poet.

2005 NCWN Fall Conference, from left, me, Janice Moore, Nancy Simpson, Shirley Uphouse and Kathryn Byer

Panel on Publishing Appreciated by a Good Audience

Many thanks to Kathryn Magendie, Nadine Justice, and Maren Mitchell for being our panelists today at Moss Library in Hayesville, NC where we had a good sized group of interested folks who learned far more than they thought they would, I'm sure.

Our thanks to Mary Fonda and her assistant, Judy, who helped me set up the room and close up. I had thought we'd be out by four O'clock, but our audience continued to talk with our panelists and each other until five o'clock. 

Thanks to Jim Davis who helped me load my car. I hope to see Jim online with a blog one day. These events are wonderful ways to meet new writers and those who want to be writers but are still working up the courage to take a class or admit they really are writers, just not openly yet. 

I was delighted to meet Lise, a blogger friend, who lives north of us above Sylva. Visit her delightful blog. She will have a book out one day. 

Kathryn, Nadine, and Maren showed the generosity I have come to expect from most writers. They shared their experiences from publishing and marketing, and I know their words helped those who sat in the chairs and took notes. 

Perhaps we can do something like this again next year.

Maren O. Mitchell is author of Beat Chronic Pain;An Insider's Guide
Nadine Justice is author of a memoir, I'm a Coal Miner's Daughter But I Cain't Sang.
Kathryn Magendie is author of five novels, including the Grace series, and a novella. 

Words We Need to Cut

If we write the way we talk, we use words that often do nothing to improve our communication with our reader. I saw this article on a site I am going to share with you.

Click here to find some of the words we need to cut out of our writing. 

Are you guilty of using these words in your stories and essays? 

Michael Diebert's class on line breaks in poetry

L-R: Michael, Marsha Barnes, Karen Holmes, Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, Joan Howard, Brenda Kay Ledford

We had six students and were happy to have Marsha Barnes, second from left below, and Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin who drove over from Cullowhee. She is in blue with scarf.

Invest in Yourself

Alice Osborn sends out a newsletter chock full of good advice for writers. This is a little snippet from one of them.

6. Invest in yourself with a good computer, and with go to conferences, classes/workshops to keep developing professionally as a writer. Read "how to write" books and books within your genre. Hire a writing coach and do your homework. You need to put some skin in the game and when you spend money on yourself, you’ll know you’re a “real” writer.

I believe that we must invest in ourselves as writers and in our writing. 
If I want to be a doctor, I will study medicine. If I want to be a painter, and I did at one time, I will study painting with the best teacher I can find.

When writers tell me they can't afford to go to workshops or study with writing teachers, my reply is we spend money where we want to spend money. We set our priorities. We pay dues to organizations for writers because the organization can benefit us and other writers. How do they do that? Sometimes it is simply by connecting us to those who can help us. It is by bringing together the best authors for us to hear and learn from their experience. 

I am pleased to look back on the past year of classes at Writers Circle. We hosted excellent instructors, some who teach at colleges in North Carolina and Georgia: Scott Owens, William Wright, Robert S. King, Carol Crawford, Karen Holmes, Robert Lee Brewer, Michael Diebert and Dr. Gene Hirsch. That is an outstanding line up of talented writers and poets. Thanks to Karen Holmes who introduced several of the poetry teachers to Writers Circle. She is already on the schedule to teach next year.

Beginning in March, 2014, we will start a new series of workshops and we are in process of lining up more excellent teachers for the writers in our area. I hope everyone will take advantage of the opportunity to study with them.

I am blessed to have had classes with outstanding writers over the past seventeen years including Kathryn Stripling Byer, Nancy Simpson, Steve Harvey, Maureen Ryan Griffin, Fred Chappell, R.T. Smith and so many other writers at conferences and through the John Campbell Folk School writing program. Conferences and week-long writing retreats are well worth the investment if you want to be a writer. But those who can't afford to spend a few hundred dollars in one lump sum, can certainly set aside $35 - $40 dollars a month for a three hour writing class. Meantime, they can attend critique groups and get feedback on their work. That is always helpful if you join a group with writers who are experienced and who have had their work published in reputable publications. 

Check our Schedule page on this site often to see who will be teaching at Writers Circle around the Table in 2014.

Netwest News page prints some very interesting information

Be sure to visit http://netwestnews.blogspot.com/ the news page of the NCWN West website. Tonight I dropped by and found an exciting link to the videos of authors at the Blue Ridge Writers Bookfest in Flat Rock, NC last year and 2011 when Ron Rash was there. That was the year our Netwest panel was placed opposite Ron Rash's talk. I was surprised we had anyone come to hear our fine group. But they did.

I look forward to seeing all of these videos but tonight I just watched one. 

The Blue Ridge Writers Bookfest has grown rapidly and now with the television station making videos of the speakers, they have added a new dimension to this fine program. Go there and see if you like it. Then let me know what you think.

Pitfalls of Publishing

New writers and amateur writers often fail to see the pitfalls ahead that will keep their book from being the best it can be. They don't understand why booksellers don't want to sell their books. Why aren't their books selling?

They spend months, years sometimes, writing the story they felt compelled to put on paper. They share these stories with family and friends. Mothers, sisters, sons and daughters say all the things they know the author wants to hear. The family encourages the author, and well they should. But few of the author's family have the expertise to help him polish and make the manuscript he has poured over all those months into a finished product that readers can't wait to share with their friends; that book store owners recommend to their customers.

A novice writer often becomes frustrated when he self-publishes his story after it has been rejected a few times by traditional publishers or by a couple of agents. After all everyone he knows has claimed he should publish the book. But only his friends and family buy the book. He can't understand what has gone wrong.

A short time ago I attended a reading by a delightful woman who had written the story of her life. She did not read so much as she told us, the audience, about her exciting accomplishments. As Patricia Fry says, Personality sells books, and everyone in that room lined up to buy the book. A few weeks later when I had time to delve into the memoir, I was stunned and saddened by how poorly it had been put together. 

The punctuation was correct. Grammar was good. Anecdotes were amusing, but within the first three chapters, she had repeated one scene two or three times. A good editor would have caught this and made sure those repetitions were removed. 

It isn't uncommon for a writer to repeat himself when he is writing his first draft. Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, says that is one of his worst traits, but his proof readers find those places for him and they are removed. A good editor will catch mistakes such as calling the neighbor boy Ed in the first chapter, but calling him Ted in the eighth chapter. 

I talked with a man who is in process of writing a historical novel set in our local area. He is excited about the book and his story seems like it will be a page turner, but I hope he will invest in his writing by having a number of proof readers and then hiring a professional editor if he plans to self-publish as many are doing today. A content editor knows when material is redundant, when it should be moved into another chapter or left out entirely. That is what they do.

All writers do not know how to punctuate dialogue. Where do the quotation marks go? Writing convincing dialogue is not easy. The reader must hear the character speaking and not be bogged down by trying to decipher what is going on in a conversation. 

If the author wants to publish in the traditional manner, hires an agent and then gets a publisher, his manuscript should be polished and in good form to impress first the agent and then the publisher. Publishers will edit a manuscript before it is printed and put out for public consumption, but even Pat Conroy wants his book at its best before he mails it to his publisher. Luckily for Pat, his wife is a successful author and she helps edit his books. 

We don't all live with successful writers and we must depend on our writer friends or writing teachers who can help us with the proofing. We still need to invest in a professional editor, or a book doctor, who can take the book out of the amateur stage and make it into the polished gem we want to present to the world.

On October 19, 2:30 p.m. at Moss Library in Hayesville, NC Writers Circle is sponsoring a panel discussion on Prepare to Publish. On this panel will be Kathryn Magendie, author of a number of books published by Belle Books. Also on this panel will be Maren O. Mitchell, author of a non-fiction book, Beat Chronic Pain; An Insider's Guide. Nadine Justice is the author of I'm a Coal Miner's Daughter But I Cain't Sang, a memoir that takes us from the coal mines of her youth to her success as an Interior Designer in Atlanta. 

My experience in publishing books began with a family history book in 1998 and a poetry chapbook published by Finishing Line Press in 2009. None of us are experts in the field of publishing, but we can tell what we learned along the way - what we should have done and what we would do better next time. We will have a question and answer session and hope our audience will come ready to take notes. 

There is no charge for this event. Much appreciation to Moss Library and Mary Fonda, librarian. Refreshments will be served during break.