The Catholic Writers’ Guild is putting on another on-line Catholic Writers’ Conference coming up at the beginning of February. Registration is free, and you can participate as much or as little as you want. If you enjoy writing I recommend you give it a try.
Go ahead and register now at http://www.catholicwritersconference.com/index.php.
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BTW: I happen to know that several of my readers here are qualified to lead workshops at this conference. So you might, ahem, go volunteer to lend your expertise. Good for business.
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I attended last year, and found the conference to be very enjoyable and informative.* The conference included workshops on all genres, and is relevant whether you tend to write for the ‘catholic’ market or for the wider public. Workshops covered both writing skills and getting-yourself-published skills. Definitely a bias towards helping you become A Person Who Gets Paid to Write — good focus, I suppose, since being a volunteer writer doesn’t require much training.
You will benefit most if you are able to participate, and to be able to participate, you will need to clear your schedule a bit. At the very least, plan to substitute participation in the conference for your other goofing-off activities that week. I lucked out last year — the conference fell on a week when my schedule was wide open, complete with borrowed children to keep my own occupied. This allowed me to participate in one workshop intensively, dabble in a few others, and browse the rest; in order to do that, I probably spent 2-4 hours a day either at the conference or on my own doing homework. (I could have spent less time on the homework, but I got more out of the conference by putting more into it.)
Format was a combination of discussion-forum workshops and live chatroom discussions on various topics, led by catholic authors and editors with expertise in the subject at hand. There were also pitching sessions with catholic publishers and agents, which of course were not of any direct use to me since I had (and still have) no manuscripts for sale, but I learned quite a bit about that part of the industry from the related workshops.
[Are you thinking of leading a workshop? Know that last year many of the leaders of one workshop participated as a student in other workshops. You can do both. ]
I found all the workshop leaders (agents, authors, publishers, editors) to be polite, encouraging, and no-nonsense. Their goal is to bring more catholic writers to the reading public, and they will not pamper you in the process. If you are looking for someone to tell you how wonderful you are and how whatever you want to do is just fine, call your mother; if you are looking for someone to help you with your writing, try the conference.
*Same danger, of course, as reading a book on how to improve your writing: You may end up like myself, not a better writer, just a guiltier one. Nothing quite like a new improved awareness of all your faults.