This week, from October 5th-8th, there's a free writers' summit by Pages & Platforms called Write Anyway. The focus of the summit is to address the obstacles and mindsets writers struggle with when trying to write. From writer's block to having ADHD to having a busy life and more, the speakers delve into these challenges and provide ways to help writers move beyond them.
The summit is free to participate in, but there's also an All-Access pass people can purchase if they want to keep the videos to view again later on, and they get various other perks too. The videos of the talks are available to watch for 24 hours after they debut for the free version, though.
I signed up for the free version, and I think many of these talks could be interesting to learn from, since I struggle greatly with wanting to write but being stuck all the time in one way or another. Even simple writing ideas can be a challenge to put down. Hopefully this summit will help!
Update on this: The
Write Anyway summit last week was wonderful! I was able to watch around 12 of the talks on my own time while they were available, which ranged anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half (most averaging about half an hour). I'm so glad I heard about this summit and had the time to tune in and watch so many talks!
The first one I watched was about editing your own manuscript. The speaker started off with describing the three levels of editing (structural/developmental editing, line editing, and copy editing/proofreading) before elaborating on what each of them included. Then she shared the five elements every good story should consider, them being Desire, Stakes, Change, Premise, and Emotion.
The part I really liked was when the speaker reviewed the seven different types of stories and demonstrated how those five elements would appear in each type of story. The plot-driven types of stories include Action, Crime, Horror, and Love, and the character-driven types are Worldview, Validation, and Redemption. A story should contain at least both a plot-driven type and a character-driven type. This was helpful for me because with the big fanfic story I've been working on for the last year (which I mentioned in a post here back in February), I was able to give definition to its types and feel reaffirmed because it gave me a sense of credibility for my story. (For those curious, my story starts off as Action but quickly turns into Horror. The character-driven type will either be Validation or Redemption, but I'm not sure yet.)
Several of the talks focused on changing our mindset and acknowledging our capacity; taking a look at our circumstances and the thoughts and beliefs we tell ourselves to overcome them and even use them to our benefit. A big emphasis was on not letting our guilt, shame, and sense of failure overtake us (regardless of wherever these feelings may stem from). This was a big thing for me, as I often feel like I'm failing with writing in many areas, and as a result feel guilty and ashamed for my shortcomings. 😓
Another series of talks I found interesting were of a writing coach meeting with attendees and personally helping them work through whatever their mindset problems were. She held this live coaching session once a day over each of the four days of the summit, and each session she was able to help around 4-5 people think through their challenges with writing, whether it was about their struggles with finding time to write, returning to writing after a life crisis, needing advice on how to think about their book or marketing, or wanting to overcome their negative feelings associated with writing. While it was certainly great for those people to find solutions-- and resolutions-- it was also encouraging for anyone else who listened in on these coaching sessions because they could find ways to learn from the advice as well, and they could see we writers are all in the same boat together. No one is alone in the challenges they face.
The summit also provided speakers who addressed writing with ADHD, how to market your book, how to write memoirs, various writing story element talks, etc. The presentations covering procrastination and perfectionism were very enlightening to me, as I very much fall into both categories. 😅 Another talk was about how to draw readers into your book and into feeling for your characters by using the technique of
interiority, which is basically getting into your main character's head and describing the world through their eyes. I'd never heard of the term before, but the concept of it was very intriguing and makes total sense. I will be looking into this further, intending to take advantage of it!
Overall, the main point of the summit was to
just keep writing, no matter what. Yes, life can and does often get in the way, and there are times when writing has to take a back seat, but don't give up. Come back to it when you're ready. Try to intentionally carve out time throughout the week. Whether you write ten pages, five sentences, two words, or simply spend time thinking about it during a writing session, consider it a victory instead of a failure for not getting as much done as you would have liked, or for it being messy instead of perfect. If your story truly interests you, you'll be willing to stick with it however long it takes (in my case, years!). If you tire of it and feel drawn to new ideas, it's okay to put one story away for the time being to focus on something else.
Oh, and another key point I learned was about how not every reader is not going to be
your reader. People talked about the issue of how their readers weren't "getting" their story, or weren't showing much interest. If your story isn't hitting your intended audience, of course there will be fewer readers or people who don't understand your vision. It's nothing to take offense at if not everyone likes your writing. I certainly know my
WIP will have a limited audience because of the nature of the story, and I'm okay with that. I'm not writing it in hopes of gaining a large audience, but because I enjoy the concept of my story and I want to explore it. Of course, it would be nice to get it to a point where I can share it with others someday, and hopefully at least a few will enjoy it and feel drawn in as well.
There will also be another summit in a couple weeks, on October 17th-21st, called Escape the Plot Forest, hosted by Daniel Wallace. I'm looking forward to it too!
This begins today! After reviewing the schedule of talks listed for the next five days, I'm very excited for several of them. Many of the presentations will be about how to write your characters in their darkest situations and crises, addressing their emotions and character-development, how to make the plot have its greatest impact, etc, which would be very helpful for my horror story in particular, but also for any story I write. There will also be plenty of sessions about scene and sentence structure, how to keep going when you're stuck somewhere in the plot, and more. There are probably too many talks for me to try and catch them all before they lock 24 hours after their debut (free version), but I definitely want to watch as many as possible!
@david_wendelken posted the link for the summit above, but I'll share it again here in case anyone's interested:
The online summit for plotting your story
forest.plotsummit.com
