When it feels like the end, that’s only the beginning

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Counting down the days until Write on the Red Cedar 2016, which starts this Friday in East Lansing. This will be my third year attending (it’s only three years old) and second year presenting. Earlier this month I was on the WOTRC blog answering some questions about success, failure, the books I’ve read the most, and more. Click here to read it.

Beyond WOTRC, I have articles to work on for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association before the month is up, and I’m still finishing up the renovations in our chapel at church. Just have window treatments and a little touch-up painting to go. When I looked ahead to January back at the end of last year and saw the commitments I had already made, I decided that February 1st was going to be my new year, my fresh start. That’s the month I plan to bring back some good habits I’ve had in the past, namely getting up earlier and using the quiet morning time alone to read, write, pray, and journal.

On the bedtime story front, the boy and I are smack dab in the middle of Watership Down and things are looking bleak. Holly’s team has just come back from Efrafa with many injuries but no does, and Hazel’s been shot after the raid at Nuthanger Farm. As I closed the book Saturday night, Calvin’s voice wavered as he wondered what would happen now. “Don’t worry,” I said. “This is just the beginning of the most exciting part of the story.” It’s a cliché that things are always darkest before the dawn, but that is often how the story goes, isn’t it?

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US. Race relations have taken a serious hit in the past five years. Or perhaps the wider culture is just now noticing how bad things still are despite the work of Dr. King and countless other people who devoted their lives to seeking justice and equality in this country. The national mood must seem a lot like it did fifty or sixty years ago. Indeed, things look strikingly similar. Racial unrest, a long military conflict overseas from which we cannot seem to extricate ourselves, prominent political figures calling for the profiling and restriction of those with differing beliefs. I find it difficult to be optimistic.

Yet, what can make us rise to the occasion like opposition?

The rabbits of Watership Down will have to use all of their courage and cunning to save their warren. They cannot give way to fear, or they’re through. There’s only one way forward, and it’s down the most treacherous road. There are no guarantees of success. But to not go down the road at all means certain failure.

Don’t those make the best stories? When there is no choice but to walk through the fire?

There is nothing like a hard winter to make the spring all the more glorious.

An Incredible Weekend with Literary Agent Donald Maass

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Phew! What a week and what a weekend. By the grace of God, the prayers of many, and the workings of modern medicine, I was able to function on Friday and Saturday for Write on the Red Cedar. I also managed to get quite caught up today at work, despite almost a week of painful delirium where I think I may have answered a dozen emails, all with a mere sentence if possible. And now I am almost at 100% again.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOne of the highlights of my weekend was driving Donald Maass from the airport to the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center, chatting about my writing. Don gave a fantastic, uplifting keynote address Saturday morning before launching into two hours of instruction on Writing 21st Century Fiction. As insightful and winsome as he is in writing, he is even more so in person. I was lucky enough to sit by him at lunch while our table shared stories of family, publishing, MSU shenanigans, and Michigan’s natural beauty.

After lunch, Zach and I answered questions about traditional publishing at a “roundtable” discussion, which I think was helpful and enlightening for the participants. Then I presented a workshop I’ve done at the Breathe Christian Writers Conference called Finding Your Writing Rhythm. I felt a little rushed with only 45 minutes, but I got some good feedback from attendees and, best of all, my voice held out.

Next I attended a great workshop on character led by author Kristina Riggle. She had some wonderful insights about how to create characters that walk off the page and feel like real people.

After a quick agent/author panel, I tried my first real solid food in nearly a week and managed not to choke (huzzah). Then I settled in for four hours of Writing the Break-Out Novel with Donald Maass. Wow. Writers, if you ever, ever have a chance to sit under this man’s teaching, you need to do it. Don is engaging and funny and challenges you–commands you, even, but in the nicest of ways–to think differently about your writing, to forego the easy solution for the creative solution, to raise every aspect of your craft to the next level, to take control of your fiction and thereby take control of your reader’s emotions in order to create fiction that moves and sticks with people.

I have a notebook full of ideas that Don drew out from me through his probing questions and exercises. I’m excited to get back into my first draft of I Hold the Wind and to get The Bone Garden back out to make even more improvements.

But I think the most important thing that Don said, for me at least, was this (I’m paraphrasing): You have the time. No novel is so timely that it can’t wait a few more months or a year or more for the author to make it better, to make it as good as it can possibly be. Don’t be in such a hurry. I’m going to try to take that to heart this year and truly enjoy every minute of the process of writing rather that always wishing for the next step to be here.

There is time. There is always time.

Accepting the Pace Life Wants to be Lived

Posted on by Erin Bartels

I’m a week away from the writing conference I am helping to put on (Write on the Red Cedar). We’re sold out. All the nitty-gritty details are being dealt with. I’ve been busy updating the conference blog almost every day, which may partially explain my slow posting on this blog. And even though we haven’t run into any huge snafus yet, I still feel a bit like this guy…

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Like I have one little part of this thing in hand, but also I am going to trip up at any minute. I’ve started having dreams about things going wrong, like back when I was in high school plays and I would have dreams of shoddy scenery falling down during a performance. But mostly, I’m excited.

I am still slowly plugging away at the first draft of my current WIP. My ideas are at a slow burn. I type a paragraph then do other things, come back and type another. I stopped drafting the other day to jot off a very short story (fewer than 1,500 words) as a fun diversion. The novel draft won’t be done by conference time, but it should be finished by the end of the month, which is fine with me. That will give it enough time to sit and simmer before Zach and I take a long weekend writing retreat during which I can do the first big revision.

As frantically busy as November and December were, in writing and in life, January has gotten a slow start. And I’m okay with that. Winter’s really here now, and it bids us take our time.

Gearing Up for Write on the Red Cedar 2015

Posted on by Erin Bartels

In less than three weeks, I will be speaking at Write on the Red Cedar, a writing conference put on by my amazing writing group, Capital City Writers Association. The line-up includes the incomparable Donald Maass; authors, editors, and journalists like Kristina Riggle, Elizabeth Heiter, Natalie Burg, Lori Nelson Spielman, Chad Allen, Louise Knott Ahren, Kelly Rogers, Alyssa Alexander, Darcy Woods, Tracy Brogan, and my own husband, Zachary Bartels; indie publisher Tricia McDonald; and agents Nikki Terpilowski, Katharine Sands, and Ann Byle.

Today I answer nine questions about my own writing experiences and advice over on the Write on the Red Cedar blog…

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1. What is the best writing advice you ever received?
Not long ago, I saw a little clip on YouTube of Anne Rice talking to aspiring writers and one of the lines that stuck out to me was, “Write what you want to be known for.” There is so much temptation to write what we think will sell. My own contacts through almost thirteen years of working in publishing are in a particular subset of the publishing world: Christian books. It is tempting, then, to write something with which I know my own publisher or another Christian publisher would find success. But I have never felt called to write the type of book I help to market as a copywriter. What I want to be known for is something else. So, while the road is rougher and feels like it’s all uphill, I have chosen to write novels that fit better in the general market than the Christian market.

2. What is the worst writing advice you ever received?
I have never been able to follow the pervasive advice to write every day. I can do it for a time when I’m drafting (I managed to keep it up for most of November as a participant–and winner!–of National Novel Writing Month in 2014) but once I type the last period of a draft, I can’t turn around and start writing the next novel the next day, even if I already have an idea of where I’m going with it. I need days off to let my well fill up again. I’m a believer in the need for Sabbath rest, both weekly and seasonally. Our culture is so harried compared to so many around the world, and I try, as much as I am able, not to let myself get sucked in completely.

To read the rest of this interview, click here!

The Joy of a Good Writers Conference

Posted on by Erin Bartels

This weekend I spent a couple days in the company of other writers at the Breathe Christian Writers Conference. It was my third year attending, my second year leading a workshop, this time on taking our writing to the next level through rewriting and revision. We had a fantastic keynote speaker, Julie Cantrell, and I’m looking forward to reading her book, Into the Free. And we enjoyed inspiring words and a charge to write the truth and write at the highest level of excellence we can from Dr. Michael Wittmer, a professor at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and a friend.

Besides those entertaining and encouraging presentations, I was able to attend workshops led by several talented writers, professors, and professionals, including

-Dave Beach, a psychologist who turns his expertise toward creating characters that are highly developed and nuanced by examining them through various psychological lenses. Check out his website, characterdoctor.com to try it out!

–Zachary Bartels and Ted Kluck, who took us through all the pluses and pitfalls of indie and traditional publishing, highlighting their own successes and failures in both arenas, and teaching us how to read between the lines while working with editors and big publishing houses. Check out their indie micropress, Gut Check Press.

–Dr. Michael Stevens and Dr. Matt Bonzo, who gave us insight into the life’s work of Wendell Berry, who spent fifty years writing about one small locality and made the people and the events in this little rural Kentucky town speak to readers on a universal level. I’m very interested to read their book after dipping into Wendell Berry ‘s work.

I was also privileged to spend time in the company of writers like Tracy Groot, Suzanne Burden, Alison Hodgson, Andy Rogers, Josh Mosey, and others. Breathe is an intimate, noncompetitive group–far more intimate than the huge ACFW Conference we went to in St. Louis this year–and I appreciate the camaraderie there.

The whole affair has me even more excited for the second annual Write on the Red Cedar Conference that my own writing group, Capital City Writers Association, is holding January 16-17 in East Lansing, Michigan. We’re ecstatic to welcome literary agent and author Donald Maass as our keynote, along with other writers, journalists, editors, and agents from around the country. If you’re a writer in the Midwest, this is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business for a very reasonable price.

You’ll be hearing more about that conference in the months to come. In the meantime, our very busy season at home is hopefully slowing down a little bit. Around here there are gardens to ready for the winter, desks to clean off and organize, quilts and crochet throws to make, rooms to clean…and a new novel brewing in my mind.

October is half over. I want to really live intentionally during the second half. How about you?

5 Reasons You Need to Attend a Writers Conference

Posted on by Erin Bartels

On Saturday I attended the first ever Write on the Red Cedar writing conference, hosted by a relatively new writers group in the area, the Capital City Writers Association. The featured speakers were writer, blogger, and literary agent guru Chuck Sambuchino and literary agent April Eberhardt. Both were friendly, gracious, funny, informative, and accessible. In fact, everyone was friendly and fun to be around. It was a great group of both established writers (like Lori Spielman) and beginning writers.

But why go to a writers conference? Why spend the money? The time? I’m glad you asked. Here are 5 good reasons:

1. Network. Writing may be something you can do alone, but publishing and getting your book into the hands of readers is not. Even if you self-publish, you need a network of people who can help you along the way with everything from editing and cover design connections to endorsements and book reviews. So much of publishing success lies in who you know. So you need to get out and meet people.

2. Hone your craft. Working in isolation can make us fall into lazy writing, even bad writing. Yes, you can read books (like this one) but it’s also helpful to get jolts of focused advice in one-hour portions. I went to a workshop once that was about where to start your story, with much of the class focused on just the first sentence. It was extremely helpful.

3. Make new friends. I know you have friends, but having friends who are fellow writers is awesome. Writer friends spur you on, cheer for you, complain with you, and know what you’re going through. They read your drafts and give you constructive criticism. They go to the next writers conference with you. They are special.

4. Learn insider tips and tricks. When you go to a conference attended by professional writers, editors, agents, or anyone else involved in the Industry, you get priceless insider information about how publishing really works on the ground level. I gave out a lot of such information at both Breathe, where I was a speaker, and Write on the Red Cedar, where I was an attendee.

5. Meet agents and/or editors. Nothing can substitute for positive in-person interaction between a new writer and an agent or editor. Cold calls and queries just don’t carry the same weight as a handshake and a great conversation that will make you real and memorable. Not every conference or retreat has agents and editors attending, but even if they don’t, people you meet there can lead to meeting agents or editors in the future. You never know who someone else has connections with.

If you’re just starting out on your writing journey, I can’t recommend good writers conferences enough. Just being around that many other people committed to improving their writing and helping each other along the way is energizing and encouraging.