Our Takeaways from 2022 WriterCon Writer’s Conference

We just returned from the 2022 WriterCon Writer’s Conference. It was soooo good! In this Writing Momentum podcast, Chris and Gena share their key takeaways.

Here's something fun

Download this FREE PDF poster and hang it on your wall to remind yourself each day: YOU'VE GOT THIS!

Links:

– Writing Moments – Write with us and give your writing momentum!

Episode 36 TranscriptioN:

[00:00:14].150] - Gena
Hi. Welcome. Welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast. I'm Gena Maselli and I'm here with my husband, Christopher Maselli.

[00:00:21].020] - Chris
Hey, good to see you all. Today. We're going to talk about writing today, right?

[00:00:25].530] - Gena
We are. We're talking about writing. And we just returned from the 2022 WriterCon in Oklahoma City. It happens every year over Labor Day weekend. So next year, mark your calendars. They're already accepting registrations. So it's just a really great conference. It's a great time of writers getting together, and there's just some fabulous teachers who are there. And this year, I just thought it was really fabulous.

[00:00:58].520] - Chris
It was really fun. We always love going to writers conferences because you learn so much, but this one especially is like one of the best, we think, in the Mid West. We just thought today we'd give a brief kind of recap of the 2022 WriterCon Writer's Conference. For those of you who couldn't make it, we'll just share some of our favorite things that we learned, as well as just some other things, some of.

[00:01:26].290] - Gena
The things that we took away that we learned or that we were really impressed by, that we really loved that's right?

[00:01:31].940] - Chris
Now, I got to tell you, there was something really cool that happened at this year's conference, and that is that for the first time, we attended WriterCon. And there were people there who had heard our podcast. They were like, oh, I follow you guys on the Writing Momentum Podcast and shout out to David who said he has never missed one podcast.

[00:01:53].770] - Gena
Thanks, David. Truly, that was encouraging.

[00:01:59].870] - Chris
People are listening because you record podcasts and things like that, you'll think, I wonder if anyone's listening to this one.

[00:02:06].650] - Gena
You're just thinking it might be your mom or something, or family members. So yes, we are thrilled that we are hopefully speaking life into other people's writing.

[00:02:18].120] - Chris
We should probably also give a shout out to Ingrid, who's a part of our Writing Moments group where we get together weekly and write together on Wednesdays at noon. You can find out more about that Writing Momentum.com. But Ingrid told us that every time, so there's some glitch with her phone, and every time she turns on her car, she hears the Writing Momentum Podcast. That's pretty awesome.

[00:02:39].750] - Gena
That is awesome.

[00:02:40].600] - Chris
She said that she had already memorized our intro or something because she hears it so much that life could be worse, right?

[00:02:49].670] - Gena
Well, you say life could be worse. I say that maybe it's some kind of divine connection. Hopefully we are inspiring her in some rewarding and impactful way. And it was just really fun to meet with those Writing Moments members, people who are part of our Writing Moments Group. We've gotten to know them on zoom. Some of them we had met face to face before, but we had got to meet them on Zoom. And so if you're not familiar with our Writing Moments, then what it is is every week on Wednesdays at noon Central, we get together, it's Chris and me, as well as Renee Gutteridge. One of us leads the writing moment for that week. And we get on there. Not only do we encourage one another, but we also spend about ten minutes. One of us will teach for about ten minutes on some topic that has to do with writing or marketing or selling books or branding or just everything, just hacks that we have found that help give us better productivity, things like that. And then we write together for 45 minutes, and then at the end of the 45 minutes, we come back together and just kind of sign off.

[00:04:05].530] - Gena
But it's just been this great community that is developing, and that's what happens.

[00:04:10].820] - Chris
To when you go to a writer's conference, you build a community like that. And that's why we have so enjoyed going to WriterCon.

[00:04:16].290] - Gena
Yes, well, and if I could just point out one more thing about the writing momentum. One bit of feedback that we heard is we heard from someone who said a family member is wanting to join your podcast or wanting to join your writing moments, but they've never written anything, and they're so new to it, they feel like maybe it wouldn't be for them. And I want to tell you that writing moments is exactly where we hope you will be. You will be welcomed with open arms. And we love working with people who are new writers and who are just learning the business and just getting started. And we are very welcoming. We hope that we create just a warm and inviting space.

[00:05:05].490] - Chris
Let's talk now about WriterCon. Let's give a brief recap here about what happened at WriterCon. And one of the things that I really enjoyed about it that is not something that can be duplicated as well online, I think, is that they have these things called roundtables, and this was neat. We met together each evening and everyone went to a table based on a subject. So, like, the first time I was there at a table, that was about nonfiction, and it was so interesting to hear each other's projects, but then all speak into each other's projects and answer questions and just help one another. And it was really a neat way to bond together and talk about this thing that we love, this writing. And that was really a fun thing to do every night. And that's the reason I would encourage someone to attend a writer's conference or even Writing Moments, because we do kind of replicate that online a little bit, because it really is just a good, strong meeting point.

[00:06:01].180] - Gena
Well, I think what you came away and were telling me, because I actually didn't get to attend one of the writing roundtables because I was talking one on one both nights with other writers. Yeah, but what you came away and said was that it wasn't just about you speaking to them. It was about the group working together and this really beautiful collaborative effort that came about and just kind of iron sharpening iron and building one another up and helping each other just get further in the process. And that was what was that's just such a beautiful thing when you see that happen.

[00:06:46].170] - Chris
For sure. But one of the things that we noticed about this year at WriterCon is how generous so many of the speakers were. They really just kind of sowed into other people's lives. There's just a lot of humility there. And there are some of these people were best selling New York Times best selling authors, and they're just sharing their day to day how they write, what they do. And I thought that was pretty neat. In fact, I remember met Yasmin, when you talk about meeting what you learned.

[00:07:15].100] - Gena
From me, you got to go to the class with Yasmin Angoe, please forgive me for not pronouncing correctly. She's a fairly new author, but her book is just getting a lot of great reviews. It's already won awards. She's released her second book in the Nena Knight trilogy. Her first one was Her Name is Knight. Her second one that's just being released is They Come at Knight. And what I loved about listening to Yasmin speak was, one, she's a pantser. So she is this pantser who is full of energy and full of life. She was a lot of fun to listen to.

[00:07:58].580] - Chris
What does that mean, a pantser?

[00:08:00].060] - Gena
A pantser is someone who doesn't have a detailed outline of what they're going to write in a book. Especially it speaks to novelists, but probably also screenwriters, that kind of thing. They know what they want to say. They usually have in their mind a few points that they want to hit along the way of this story, but they don't do these really detailed outlines before they get started. They kind of pants it by the seat of their pants is what it comes from. And I have discovered I am a bit of a reluctant pantser myself when it comes to fiction. And so I was really interested in her process. How does she make sure that she hits all of those beats? And she said that she writes very much as a pantser, very much. Kind of opens her computer each day and thinks, what do I want to say today? Where do I want to go? What kind of scene do I want to create? And she goes with that. But at the end of that, she then takes her book and she takes her scenes and she plugs them into these different outlines that are online.

[00:09:08].810] - Gena
Some of the different what would you call them like, detailed. There's, like, the Snowflake method, and there's the different writing methods. There's the Save the Cat, there's the different ones. And so she kind of plugs it in, and she was actually using not either of those, she was using another one. But she plugs it in and she sees, is my book hitting all the points? Is my book hitting this? All the beats that it needs to hit in order to create a satisfying story. That was encouraging to me because I know as a pantser, you can kind of write off into the sunset. You can just get going, and before you know it, you've lost control of your story and your characters and just all sorts of things. But she was saying, no, she writes along, and then she kind of checks herself at the end. And I thought that was really encouraging for me to hear. And just something I thought, okay, that makes sense.

[00:10:06].880] - Chris
Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:10:07].680] - Gena
And it's easy.

[00:10:09].030] - Chris
I like hearing how other writers get their writing done. I am not a pantser. I'm someone who has to outline everything that he does. And it's neat to see how others go through their writing method because even though I'm not a pantser, to hear how she does that still makes me think about my own writing and how I can apply that. And it's really good.

[00:10:31].840] - Gena
Yeah, I think so. It gives you freedom, but it gives boundaries.

[00:10:36].990] - Chris
This year we had kind of a dual keynote session from Robert Dugoni and Steven James, both of which are New York Times bestselling authors. They both write thrillers and really good writers. If you haven't read anything from Robert Dugoni or Steven James, I encourage you to get some of their books. And if you like thrillers, and I think you'll find them really good, they taught an all day session on troubleshooting your novel, and this is something that WriterCon does, is kind of unique. And it's over Labor Day weekend. But that Monday. After Labor Day weekend, they have a full day sessions that you can attend. And this year they were teaching it. And one of the things that Robert Dugoni talked about is he challenged us and he says, what is the primary purpose that you have when writing a book? What is it that you write a book for? And we were all thinking about it, and he said the answer is should be to entertain. And that was challenging because I think a lot of times we write books with ideas in mind, things we want to get across, right?

[00:11:43].700] - Chris
We have a theme we write and we want people to take away. And he was saying, no, it needs to be first and foremost to entertain. And it really is true, because if your book does not entertain, it doesn't matter how good the message is, how poignant, what you have to say is people are going to stop reading. So first and foremost, we need to entertain even in nonfiction books, right. Because the nonfiction book still has to have that story structure and keep the reader hooked. Because if it's just plain teaching all the way through, sooner or later people are going to drop off.

[00:12:15].430] - Gena
Yeah, it can get really tedious if you're reading a book that you want to learn from them. And I'm speaking about nonfiction, you're wanting to learn from them, but it's real easy to lose your stamina by about chapter five when it just feels like, okay, this is not entertaining, it's not holding my interest, it's not holding my attention.

[00:12:41].810] - Chris
That's right.

[00:12:42].360] - Gena
So, yeah. And I think that you're talking about that. Steven James also talked about stories that have become so agenda driven, and we've seen that a lot. You see it in TV shows, you see it in movies, you see it in all different types of books. And it has seeped into fiction. And not talking about necessarily nonfiction in this case, because if you're a nonfiction writer who is writing a how to book or some type of book to enlighten and educate people, that's not what we're talking about. But I know, we all know when we watch a movie or a TV show, when there's a strong agenda to it. And it could be anything from what are some of the popular ones, there could be different culturally relevant and kind of hot button topics that are out there right now. It could be.

[00:13:41].070] - Chris
Well, whatever it is, the idea is that when your story is agenda driven, it undermines quality storytelling because the agenda comes before the storytelling. And people, though, don't want to hear the agenda. They want good stories, not propaganda. And that's not using the word propaganda in a negative way, necessarily. It's just saying that if you have something you're trying to get across and share with people, that's kind of the definition of what propaganda is. It can become troubling for the story, especially because it can undermine the big twist. Right. If you know what the author's agenda is when they're writing the story, you can often see which way the twist is going to go because, you know, the author can't betray his or her agenda.

[00:14:30].690] - Gena
Right.

[00:14:32].490] - Chris
So that's why we have to focus on the storytelling first. And I think he even said he comes up with his theme after he goes the first past through.

[00:14:41].200] - Gena
Yes, that's what he said. He said he does his first draft and then he goes back and kind of figures out what is my theme, and he weaves that in. And so that is one way of doing it. You don't have to do it that way. But I think the point is that your theme cannot overshadow your story, and your story has to go back to that first rule in which it is entertainment primary.

[00:15:14].310] - Chris
Good. Those are just some of the high points we could probably talk about this for a long time. We just wanted to share some of the things that hit us the most. Now we have several sessions we taught. I taught on how to write ten times faster, which was a productivity session for writers. Gena talked about writing for the Christian and inspirational market, and I also talked about the top ten secrets of high performing author websites. And what we're going to do is we're planning to record all of those into online training sessions to make them available for any of you who couldn't attend WriterCon, because those are sessions that we think are just really good to hear. And so we'll let you know about those when we have those ready to go. And then you can take advantage of those too, definitely.

[00:16:00].420] - Gena
So thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you will join us again for our next podcast. Be sure to check out anything you've missed. Check out our website at writingmomentum.com. And if you are looking for a writing group, people to come alongside you, you are looking for a writing tribe. I do not care if you are an experienced writer or if you've never written anything, come to WritingMoments.com, we truly have a passion for helping people just fall in love with writing and do their absolute best at it. So be sure also to rate. Well, how do we do this? We say rate, review, subscribe, and share. There you go.

[00:16:45].580] - Chris
Because we don't want you to miss any podcast. So subscribe to them so you don't miss any. And please share them with another writer who you think might benefit. And then join us because remember, together we have Writing Momentum. See you next time.