One Thing Leads to Another...

I started back to school this year.  I took Ceramics I and Ceramics II.  I signed up for Ceramics Independent Study in the fall.  My first term we had assignments, but the second term was pretty much trying what interested us.  I gave myself a theme for the term...folk art.  It's the kind of art I gravitate to.  I focused on faces and nature.  Lots of trees, santas and even the quilt to your right (which was sized to fit over the electric panel at camp).

 But all the playing with textures and some underglaze painting left me wanting to know more.  I started looking at the world around me with new eyes.  I noticed textures in a way I never had.  One thing Lead to another

I started studying folk art.  My father-in-law was an artist, though he'd never have called himself that.  We have a cabinet full of santas that he carved and painted.  I tried to recreate his designs at first, but then I tried some of my own. I incorporated the trees I'd been studying with the fact I spend a lot of my summers splitting wood for the next winter and added a dash of my FIL's santas and that study of faces.  One thing leads to another.

And that idea of one thing leading to another is still playing out.  I'm going to start throwing clay on a wheel.  To date I've only hand-built my projects.  And I'd done a bit of underglazing on those, using them as paints.  So I wondered how I could make my painting better.  I'm envisioning a line of cups with rural scenes.  Now, I have no intention of being a fine art painter, but folk art...I wanted to explore that in order to add that dimension to next terms class. 
 
 I started out decorating some clementine orange boxes and then branched out to some small 8"x8" canvases.  I'm seeing some improvement and I'm hoping I can come close to replicating some aspects of these in my ceramics.







 Yes, one thing leads to another.

And this year's classes lead to an article in Romance Writers' Report, and my first workshop on Lifelong Learning, and I started a new book where this year's classes might be coming into play...

One thing lead to another.

I think it's a good way to live life.  Learn something new and then have that lead to learning something else.

I have a friend who calls me Renaissance Woman.  I will confess, I smile every time she posts something to me.  I am an expert at very few things, but I do so love learning new bits and pieces.  All of those feed into my writing.

I've wanted to take a ceramics class for a long time. You can see that yearning in Just One Thing.  Maybe that one thing lead to another and here I am.

I hope you all find something that enthralls you!

Holly

PS To all the Moms out there...Happy Mother's Day!

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Christina Hollis - Creative Writing, Chapter and....Prose

Hard at Work...(with biscuits)

Last year, the Romantic Novelists' Association awarded each of its local chapters £100 (around $168) to be spent on a constructive writing project of their choice. I'm a member of the RNA's Marcher Chapter, which covers the border country between England and Wales. We put our heads together, and decided to use our windfall to fund a day-long, fully catered creative writing workshop for our members.

We held Be A Fool For Love For A Day on the day closest to April Fool's Day that we could book at our favourite venue, the slick Hereford Courtyard arts venue.  The photo shows (clockwise, from bottom left) Fay Wentworth, Georgia Hill, Christina Courtenay, Joanna Maitland, Marilyn Rodwell and organizer, Ann Ankers, in mid-session.

My Current Release

A month in advance, we each submitted up to ten pages of a current project to our organizer, Ann Ankers. You can read part of my extract on my blog, by clicking here. Ann collated the entries into one document, removing our names and giving each entry a unique identifier. Members then read and critiqued every entry (including their own) before reading out their thoughts on each piece in turn during the day of the workshop. We then discussed them individually, in depth. This system worked really well, especially as everyone stuck to the ratio of three stars to one strike. That means, three good points were highlighted for every piece of constructive criticism given. The whole day was a really positive experience, and everyone went away full of ideas.

Last Tuesday, 10th June, we had a follow-up meeting. Everyone's made great progress with their projects and several (including me!) had completed their featured projects and submitted them to publishers.  Our first workshop proved such a success we're now planning a second one, to be held later this year. That's given us all a big incentive to start work on new projects.

Are you a member of a critique group? What's the most useful piece of advice you've been given?

Christina Hollis writes both contemporary and historical fiction - when she isn't cooking, gardening or beekeeping. You can catch up with her at http://www.christinahollis.blogspot.com, on Twitter and Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at http://www.christinahollis.com

Getting ready to go the RWA National Conference -- Michelle Styles

It's official. I'm over excited. For the last six years, I have watched from the sidelines with envy as people reported back. I have combed the blogs for scraps of info and generally longed to be there.
This time I will be! The RWA National Conference in Orlando Fl!
Because I am bringing my new netbook, I will be doing news flashes on the Pink Heart Society blog and several of the Harlequin Historical Authors will be blogging on the Harlequin Historical Author blog about the events they are attending. So hopefully I will be doing my bit for those staying behind. (Or at least that is the plan...but I know that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and I am one of the contractors in chief)
I have been to Romantic Novelist Association conferences before and so know how full on they can be but the RWA is supposed to take it to a whole new level.
In an effort to decide which workshops to attend, I have looked at the handouts. You do not have to be going to the RWA conference to see the handouts and they can be useful. If a workshop has a red title, it means it is the link to the handout. I know I have applied Susan Elizabeth Philips 6 magic words already to my writing and unfortunately Julia Quinn's workshop on dialogue clashes with something that I have to do, so I can't go to her workshop on dialogue but the handout looks excellent. And if you want to know about Steam punk -- what is it etc -- the handout for the workshop looks fantastic. But be warned, looking at handouts can make you determined to go to the conference...
There is the literacy signing which is open to the general public. Over 500 authors! I shall be signing but suspect my line will be short. I'm sitting next to Blaze author Cara Summers and If anyone stops by from Tote Bags and tells me, I will have cover flats to give away. But basically I will just be grateful to speak to people.
Besides the workshops and the signing, there are parties -- Thursday seems to be packed -- starting with a breakfast for Harlequin Historical authors, a keynote lunch with Nora Robert speaking, and going through to the legendary eharlequin pj party in the evening. And then on Friday, it is the Harlequin Author party proper. This year there is a rumour that they are going to be much tougher on gatecrashers...
But mostly I am looking forward to meeting people that I have only met via the Internet. So if you happen to be there and see me, please do come up and say hi.
I suspect by the end of the time, I will be exhausted (and will not have seen Disneyworld!)!

But before I go to the conference, I have revisions on my latest full manuscript to do. My new editor is wonderfully efficient -- not only have I sold a Roman set Undone (these are the sexy short stories that are made to be read in a lunchtime) this week but she has also given me some really good revisions.

And if all this has you excited about writing, Harlequin Mills & Boon are doing a global talent search with their New Voices contest. More details should be up on the http://www.romanceisnotdead.com/ website soon. Various authors in the UK are doing workshops in August to support the contest during August and September. My workshop at Knaresborough Library, North Yorkshire is on the evening of 1 September.

In the meantime, if anyone has any tips about surviving business conferences, please let me know.

You can learn more about Michelle Styles and her books at http://www.michellestyles.co.uk/

Fraud!

So hey, does that title get your attention or what? FRAUD. Ah...innocent people being duped. We all know the bad guys. The scammers.

In this case, *I* am the scammer.

Ok, so maybe I'm not a total fraud, but there are days I feel like it.

Like very possibly, today.

Tonight I'm doing my very first public workshop at my RWA chapter. Thankfully I got to pick the topic wayyyy back last spring, and I went with revisions. Revisions are my favourite part of the writing process. And I tend to be fairly competent at them (or so says my editor) which is a good thing. So perhaps I'm not a total fraud. I used to hate and be horribly afraid of changing my books. Now I look forward to it and love how editorial changes make my book stronger. So debunking the mysterious revisions process is a natural for me.

However...this coming weekend I'm giving a full day workshop for a writer's group out of town. It's called The Business of Writing.

And here's the issue for me. For one thing...despite having 7 books written and/or contracted for 2 different publishers, I'm still a relative newbie. I've really only been in on this business part of it for a little over a year. And as I'm sure many of you know, the more you learn the more you realize you have to learn. This is where the fraud thing comes in. Because I'm supposed to know what I'm talking about and there is still so much I don't know.

But then...I look back over the last 18 months and realized I've learned a heck of a lot. I've learned about contracts and deadlines and proposal writing. I've learned about the publishing process, reviews, and the dreaded promotion. LOTS of things about promotion. I've learned the feeling of holding my book in my hands and I've learned what it's like when readers write to tell you something you did that touched them, or the flip side - when you slipped up and missed it. I've also learned that time management takes on a whole new meaning.


So no, I don't have years of experience with the "biz". But I do have a lot more knowledge than I did not that long ago and if what I've learned so far helps someone else navigate the rocky road of that first year of publication, I'm happy to do it.

Just wish me luck, okay?