Back in Vancouver and now finally processing my time at the Kauai Writers Conference over the past few days.
My goal was to build my tribe – job done. Met some great people in my “Lessons from Historical Fiction” masterclass with Priya Parmar, and also met many writers with varying degrees of interesting stories in the conference proper.
The conference sessions and speakers were of a consistent high quality. I’ve been going to writing conferences since 2017 and this is right up there. I started writing this on the hotel veranda, a confused rooster crowing before the sun was up. I’m finishing it now back in Vancouver as an “atmospheric cyclone bomb river” descends – these names! In my day it was just called a bloody storm. It’s as if meteorologists took English as a required course and figured, “Hey, we better use that thesaurus they gave us…”
Masterclass (Monday through Thursday afternoon)
On day one of Priya’s class, I said I wanted to learn some things I could apply to my second novel, and hopefully have an epiphany. I had four during the course of the conference.
The first one? I may need to re-write my second novel, The Storyteller’s Reputation, in first person, present tense. It is currently third person, past tense. Shit. I will need to re-write the first 50 pages and see if it works. Then decide. Almost everyone in the class had some kind of epiphany, so we gave ourselves the sobriquet “The Epiphanies” and agreed to stay connected as a writing group to support each other.
On the Tuesday evening several authors who had published after attending kauai spoke about their journey. A variety of paths including the traditional, indy and hybrid routes.
After the master class came the conference proper on Friday. Billy Collins and Marie Howe kicked things off with powerful and evocative poetry readings. I don’t go out of my way to read poetry, but man, they were cooking. Funny too.
Joshua Mohr’s sessions on “Plaracterization” and “Honing Your Voice” were two of my favourites. He combined practical examples with thoughtful and powerful descriptions of his own life experience and writing that landed as both helpful and moving. Highly recommended.
The Friday evening storytelling event was interesting. Each of my novels has at least one storytelling competition so I was curious to hear how this would go. The eight stories were told with passion and conviction and while not a competition, some rose to the top of my memory, including the final story about a shark attack.
Lauren Groff is a favourite (loved The Matrix), and she and Meg Wolitzer were both interesting and funny in “Sources of Inspiration”. The talks don’t always follow the titles but doesn’t really matter when you have these bright minds extolling.
Molly Ringwald and her husband Panio Gianopoulos were articulate and had a lively, sharp banter in discussing Fiction / Nonfiction: the differences.
I got deeper with Laura Lentz on Healing Through Writing, which, through her writing exercises, led me to the second, even bigger epiphany. I realized I needed to write about my father’s Normandy experience, and my experience burning down our house, as the two events were connected. One person was talking at lunch about a fire in their condo and I piped up about my fire, and told my story, and they said “you write about that.” The day before I had told the story of my dad’s Normandy experience to another couple and one said, “you should write about that.” I said I had, in short fiction. I realized somewhere midway through the conference that I needed to tell both stories, together, somehow. In a novel.
John Searles had helpful, practical advice on Revising Your Work delivered with both bathos and pathos. I’ve got to read his work. And so many other books!
The third epiphany was listening to Salmon Rushdie’s virtual talk on writing. He spoke so eloquently, so honestly, about this experience being attacked and almost killed and then somehow finding a way to write about this in his book Knife. But what brought me to my emotional knees was his finally words of advice: Write with love. I was taking notes with a pen. As I wrote the word “Love” the ink in my pen ran dry. Rushdie also said that “happiness write white.” At an earlier session a writer said “You must listen when things strike your heart.” And so I will listen to this.
Several other sessions were helpful, including the most helpful, practical advice in 30 minutes in Desireé Duffy’s Building your author platform, followed by the very honest Lin Lio Butler and CeCe Lyra sharing What Really Happens After You Sign With An Agent…fascinating to hear Lyn’s stories of getting published, being in sub, working with her agent and publishing independently.
In the final session, Chris Pavone, Tom Perrotta and Jess Walter spoke about their early careers and how they got into writing, adapting their work to the screen, and the curious fact of sharing the same book to screen agent.
Then, later, a fourth epiphany: realizing I must write everything with love. And, as another author said, lean into what scares you. Somehow I must write about both. Then I re-read my father’s memoir of his month in Normandy. And then cried in the shower the morning I left Kauai, as in reading his memoir I heard his voice so clearly, a voice I hadn’t heard for nearly 20 years since he passed. And thought I must stay in this place of love, of this soft place, this strange place, in order to write about this place. They say write what you know, and I felt then that I didn’t know well enough this place of love, that I only visited it on occasion, and that I would need to stay there awhile, move there. And that might mean some changes to work, and the other stories I was writing, which seemed less important. And that would be worth it.
But perhaps that is the way of the writer, ever changing and evolving, striving to getting closer to what it is that must be written.