Women’s Writing Weekend in loving memory of Anne Labastille.

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Visit: ADIRONDACKCENTERFORWRITING.ORG

• Friday, June 25, 2021 4:00pm – Sunday, June 27, 2020 10:00am
• Great Camp Sagamore in Raquette Lake

Join a group of like-minded women for a reading and writing retreat. Activities will include writing workshops, reflective paddling, arts-based activities, technical writing and experiential learning, and Adirondack-based readings to contemplate the role of sense of place in nature writing. 

This weekend is dedicated to the memory of Anne LaBastille, whose passion for the Adirondacks led to her writing the landmark series of “Woodswoman” books documenting her experiences and observations of the natural world. Registration fee includes 2 nights lodging, all meals, workshop sessions and supplies.

This year’s writing workshop leader: Mary Sanders Shartle

Please note: All lodging arrangements and weekend activity inquiries should be sent to Great Camp Sagamore. 

Women’s Writing Weekend Pricing

Starting at $350 per person. Includes 2 nights lodging, all meals, workshop sessions and supplies. If you prefer, you can call to register: (315) 354-5311. book now

About Your Stay

• 2 nights lodging, all meals in our historic Vanderbilt Dining Hall, historic tour of the family’s guest & workers’ complexes, water sports on secluded Sagamore Lake, lawn games, bowling, campfires, and miles of hiking & biking trails in the 3,500 acre Historic Great Camps Special Management Area
• Wine & beer is for sale
• Check-in at 4pm on day of arrival
• Check-out by 10am on day of departure – but you are welcome to stay for one last paddle!

Great Camp Sagamore

• Great Camp Sagamore is taking precautions that will address the health and safety of all of our guests during this pandemic. Camp is following guidelines from the CDC and NYS Health Department in response to COVID 19. If you have any questions or concerns regarding staying with us, please call (315) 354-5311.
• With regards to COVID 19, Great Camp Sagamore has implemented protocols that will allow individuals or groups that are traveling together to reserve a room/rooms that have access to an assigned bathroom. Guests will not be sharing bathrooms with strangers.
• In keeping with our status as a wilderness retreat, there is no cell phone service at Great Camp Sagamore. WiFi is available in the Collins Building only and is accessible to all guests in the building’s guest lounge.
• Great Camp Sagamore is an 18-acre wilderness campus with gravel paths, dirt roads, and stairs leading into all buildings. There are no elevators. Great Camp Sagamore is not wheelchair accessible.
• All accommodations are within historic buildings. There is no air conditioning. There are no mini-fridges, complimentary toiletries, hairdryers, or televisions in the bedrooms. We do provide a large guest refrigerator to store extra food or beverages.

For more information visit: ADIRONDACKCENTERFORWRITING.ORG

For 2021, get into the quarantine writing process while you still have time at home. This year is the perfect opportunity! It’s a new year, but we’re still in quarantine. You can spend more time writing down your ideas, journaling about current events that have severely impacted your life, creating an autobiography, or maybe even penciling together an eloquent love letter in your diary. Either way — spend more time writing.

Writing shorthand helps a lot with processing our thoughts. It helps free up some mind space for other things. Writing is merely getting things off your chest when you want to keep it between you, a document, and the movement of your fingertips, creating words that express a magnitude of emotion.

The Words

Words mean everything. When used recklessly, it’s as if they can cut right through us. Some would say words should be kind and handed out with love and care. I say, they should be honest or (for fiction writers) realistic. They should reflect what you believe and feel in the depths of your soul. It’s still challenging to be vulnerable on paper. Words are powerful and preparing them into a great novel, essay, short story, or poem is a task worth completing at least once in your life. You should start this 2021.

Outline

For the story of your life, even though you know it like the back of your hand, you’ll need an outline. To capture all the times you’ve forgotten, the feelings you had, and the details of the situation that, in hindsight, you may have stumbled right over in your mind.

Outlines help us get, whatever information we’re preparing, organized. We can then spill it on the page after it’s all together properly. Outlining any large piece is like paving a road on untouched land. Making bullet points is often the routine I go to tailor a compelling story on my laptop.

The snowflake method is a visually creative outline layout. You map out an intricate web that touches on other ideas lurking in the back of our consciousness. Novelist Randy Ingermanson coined this method. Me? I use the playwright Freytag’s pyramid of the seven elements of the plot diagram to dish out my fictional pieces. First, there’s the exposition, then the inciting incident, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution and denouement, or in other words, the ending.

First Draft

The quarantine writing process requires that we create a first draft. The first run through of anything is usually strange and unusual territory for me. I don’t know about you, but sometimes stories write themselves at the beginning of the writing process. This phenomenon happens when you’re writing, but your imagination seeps from your brain’s crevasses and leaks out onto the document instead of what you thought you’d write. At this point, you’ve already sat down and decided to go through with it.

Writer’s block tends to happen, but don’t worry. You’re not stupid if you can’t get down the first draft very quickly. Creativity comes and goes like the wind. It’s like a breeze that isn’t always able to be caught — but there’s hope when you take the time to create the blueprint.

Yes, it’s messy. Just keep writing!

Revisions

These can be a horrifying nightmare. Don’t stress or feel like this process is in vain. It’s not. Revisions are a part of the writing process. They require us to clean up the draft and polish it. A support team is necessary so that you won’t have to look at the same work a thousand times. But we’ll get to that next. Revisions require breaks between working for the sake of fresh eyes on what you’ve written. Modifications create light at the end of the tunnel.

Peer Review

There’s a need to make connections in the literary community. An array of online portals, such as webinars, workshops, and conferences are still available to authors during this pandemic. For the quarantine writing process try swamping work with another author. It’s the easiest, cost-effective way to have someone review your writing. It’s the oldest trick in the book. ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.’ A good writer keeps an editor, agent, proofreader and all other community members in their back pocket.

Tools For The Process

Grammarly: Grammarly is suitable for general spelling and grammar checks. The system is very automated, meaning it doesn’t have the same capabilities as the sophisticated human eye. Oh, and Grammarly is also a coma nazi. Lol!

Auto Crit: Finally, an automated platform for fiction writers! That’s Auto Crit! I must say, for an automation system, this site does a fantastic job analyzing the author’s story. Once the author has purchased a plan and uploads their manuscript, Auto Crit produces an analytical report on the information submitted. It informs the author of their use of repetitive words, measures the pace of the storyline, provides an overall grade point average on the readability of the document, and points out several other factors documented in the manuscript.

Drafts 2 Digital: Thanks to Drafts 2 Digital, my e-books are for sale in various other digital markets. For example, my ebooks are selling on iBooks, Hoopla, Barnes and Nobles’ Nook, Kobo and several other retailers have access to selling my e-books. Go to the website, sign up, upload your document with its cover art and voila!

Amazon KDP: Self-publishing with Amazon couldn’t be easier. Kindle Digital Publishing is a website designed to simplify self-publishing books. I think this is an excellent tool to take advantage of if you have a story you’re dying to tell the world. The author has the choice of publishing in their country and throughout other parts of the world via Amazon. The platform publishes books in print as well.

Well, that’s it for me. Thanks again for reading K.B. Krissy A Write Life.

Visit www.kbkrissy.com and subscribe to my blogs!

Creative Minds Dream Big!

Ever since I first acquired a basic vocabulary, I could piece together stories with my imagination. At the curious age of four years old, creativity ruled me. If I wanted to be the bad guy during child’s play, then I was that. If I wanted to be a pretty princess, then poof! I’m the Frog Princess. My thoughts were like trips to another planet. Every day was a different adventure in cartoon land. This is how I knew I was meant to be an author. It’s my job to acquire great ideas and birth them to life for others to see for themselves. Readers are supposed to see written stories in their mind’s vision. They have to be able to picture it, just the way it came to life for me, the author.

As a kid, I spent countless hours daydreaming of a bright future. I imagined my first day of school each year. I thought of all the different scenarios that could happen. Unfortunately, not everything has a happy ending or a compelling climax, but writing fiction means the outcome is whatever the author desires. This is why I believe it’s sometimes easier for me to write novels than it is to just live and breathe in reality. 

A wise person would label the understanding of a child rudimentary, continually pointing out their unforeseen flaws in perception. Yet, there’s something special children have inside them. Their minds are full of endless possibilities due to the unlearned. This is almost like being hopeful during the times when most would predict the inevitable. 

The best thing about children and their imagination is that it actually can be plausible (even by a long shot sometimes). Children have their whole lives to make their ideas tangible. In other words, they have a journey ahead of them to make accomplishments. That’s the difference in children. They don’t forget to believe in what they’re able to envision. While old farts, like me, just have to write about it in books. The beauty of a creative mind is that, if you can think it, then just maybe—it’s attainable.

For more of K.B. Krissy’s blogs provide your email address below. I hope you’ve enjoyed 4-Year-Old Author. Thanks for reading!

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