This weekend I went to the 13th Annual South Coast Writers Conference in Gold Beach, Oregon. The conference, sponsored by Southwestern Oregon Community College, starts on Friday morning and runs through Saturday evening.
On Friday attendees can choose from several all-day workshops. The one I attended was on setting up your own website, and I am pleased to say that I am now writing this on the website I set up! There is a LOT to learn – I feel like we only covered the tip of the iceberg. Our instructor, Jim Coffee, who I consider to be a computer “guru,” gave us a fascinating history of communication, showing how things evolved very slowly at first, but now are changing at practically warp speed in comparison.
He helped us set up TypePad websites and purchase domain names from Go Daddy. His patience with our many interruptions and in answering our questions was amazing. He recommended Google as a resource to help us in completing our site set-up, as well as a book: Blogging for Dummies. Over the next few days or weeks, I will be working on setting up more sidebar information, so keep watching for that.
Friday night I went to Authors’ Night, where some of the conference presenters read from their own works. This event is open to the public, as well as conference attendees. There was a LOT more people there than I had expected, as it turned out that David Oliver Relin, the author of the New York Times best-seller Three Cups of Tea, was the keynote speaker and quite a draw. After a break, about ten other authors read.
Saturday I took four workshops, all excellent. Two different ones by Sally Harrold, were on writing memoir and focused on the elements of scenes, summary, and musing; Harrold teaches autobiography classes at Southwestern Oregon Community College and recommended a good book for beginning memoir writers to read: Modern American Memoirs by Annie Dillard and Cort Conley. One workshop was by Sue Fagalde Lick (author of Freelancing for Newspapers: Writing for an Overlooked Market, and Stories Grandma Never Told: Portuguese Women in California) on how to get started freelancing for newspapers and what you need to know as a beginner. Another was by Jayel Gibson, author of the Ancient Mirrors fantasy series, who discussed the universal set of elements in a good story.
Each workshop lasts an hour and a half, with 15-minute breaks between them and a longer break for lunch. Six workshops are scheduled for each time slot, and they usually don’t repeat, so it can be difficult to choose just one four! Other presenters this year included Larry Brooks, Ann Cameron, Se-ah-dom-Edmo, Phil Hahn, Jessica Bryan, Dan Frechette, Rory Miller, and Sylvia Tohill.
Not only did I have a great time and learn new things, I started two different short memoirs that I plan to continue. I was also fortunate to win a door prize of a bundle of Rogue River Echoes, a collection of writings from conference attendees that the conference publishes each year.
Anyone interested in the South Coast Writers Conference can contact Janet Pretti at scwc@socc.edu or call 541-247-2741. It is held every President’s Day weekend on Friday and Saturday.
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