Then I signed up for a
five-day writers’ seminar in Honolulu, which took place on July 19-23, 2014 at The Makiki Community Library. The seminar guru/sensei, William
Bernhardt, is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Ben
Kincaid legal-thriller series. His Red Sneakers Writers Book Series, five
compact books in print and ebook format, go hand-in-hand with his seminars.
Once I committed to
attending a seminar for five days, I had to write a novel to present to the group for feedback and
critique. I made the decision to continue my Pepper Bibeau mystery series with
a fourth novel. I purchased Mr. Bernhardt’s Red Sneaker ebook series for kindle, and read each of the five books. Then I used the information from the first one, Story Structure:
The Key to Successful Fiction, to outline my manuscript.
 |
| See book link to Amazon below |
The five weeks preceding the seminar included
writing, researching, writing, eating, writing, and sleeping. It was my very own, intense
NaNoWriMo - all day - every day! My finished first draft contained 68K words, and was ready for
critique. During the five-day seminar, I received suggestions, ideas, and
direction from Mr. Bernhardt and the other seminar-ians (not theologists!) on ways to improve the
content.
Moving forward, I will use the
information from the other books in the series as a road map to complete and
edit the novel.
Are you planning to start/continue/finish
your novel this year? What is your process?
Link to William Bernhardt's Amazon Author Page:
Link to Story Structure by William Bernhardt
I'm planning to finish this draft of my current mystery in about 3 weeks. That's the deadline, because my writing group is going to critique it. Glad you got so much out of your conference. Bernhardt's book sounds quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, I hope you are moving forward with your WIP so it is ready for your critique group. It is always fun to see what you overlooked due to the "forest for the trees" issue!
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful when you have the opportunity to take advantage of such a great resource. Good for you. I am stuck with my novel and maybe reading some tactician books is just what I need to give me a fresh perspective when I go back to the novel.
ReplyDelete