Guest Blogger: Deborah Turrell Atkinson

I’m excited today because we have a guest! My friend and fellow mystery writer, Deborah Turrell Atkinson. Debby hails from Honolulu and writes atmospheric mysteries set in Hawaii. But not from the tourist point-of-view so you really get a feel for what it must be like to live and work in the Islands. Her new book is Pleasing the Dead, from Poisoned Pen Press.

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I had the amazing good luck to get to know Lise at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference.  This was my third or fourth time at JHWC, where Lise and I get to hang together, discuss the ups and downs of the writer’s life, and find the best sales—oops, I digress. We both do manuscript reviews for attendees of the conference, which always takes me back to the first writers’ conference I ever attended.  Back in 1995, (ack!) I scraped together the conference fees and plane fare, left my husband with our then-small children, and found the way to Palm Springs

The experience I most anticipated when I signed up for the conference was the manuscript review.  As you know, conference attendees pay extra for this, but that wasn’t even the deal-maker for me.  I was going to have the opportunity to speak with a Published Author  This person would tell me how to make my half-completed novel better, divulge the secrets of a glamorous writer’s life, and set me on the gold-paved road to publication (stop laughing, I was young and naive).

Sweaty-palmed and nearly hyperventilating, I parked myself across from The Author.  He was middle aged (wise and experienced, I presumed), and sat in a cloud of stale cigarette smoke.  My still-pristine ten pages sat in front of him.  He looked down at the title page.  “You’re from Honolulu?”

Debby

“Yes.” My address was written on the front.
“Does the university out there have creative writing classes?  You should take one.”
“I’ve taken two or three.”
“You think they need any visiting instructors?  I’ve written four books on *.”

“I don’t know.”
“You know someone you could ask?  One of your old instructors?”
“I guess.”
“Thanks, eh?  Maybe I’ll see you there.”

The rest of the conference was a good experience, especially all the aspiring novelist friends I made after I told them about this guy, and I returned home inspired, with a list of better techniques to apply to my work.  But the one thing I learned to the core was how NOT to do a manuscript review.  I hope like crazy new writers walk away from my sessions with at least one (I try for more) idea they can apply to their work.  Their pieces range from being newly-hatched outlines to virtual swans, and it’s my job to encourage them to take flight.

* I can’t remember.  Really.

Those writers… always telling stories.

Another year, another fabulous and sometimes agonizing writers conference.

I’ve been on the faculty at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, a smallish, intimate conference with a kind, casual, down-to-earth vibe, for almost fifteen years. The year after my first book came out I was asked as the featured regional writer. A few years passed, they missed me, finally realized it and asked me back. Hmmm. That’s a joke but the truth is they did need me — to read manuscripts. We faculty, published writers all, read some seven to fifteen manuscripts, 15 pages each, before each conference, then critique them one-on-one with the writers. We give them twenty minutes to talk about their work, back and forth. This year I had fourteen, seven in a row for some three hours. It’s a lot of talking. It’s not much work, besides the yakking, for me but it is an amazing sort of gift to writers who have never had unbiased feedback about their work. Some of them don’t like it. Some are freaked out. Some just say, right, right, thanks a million, see ya! Some just say, well, it’s done — as if I was asking for a major rewrite. “It’s your work,” I tell them. “These are only suggestions.” But most are thrilled to bounce ideas off another writer. Somebody who gets them, who they are, who they are striving to be. I remember my first conferences so well. As if I’d been lost in the woods and had suddenly found grandma’s house filled with like-minded cousins and deep dish gingerbread. Deep breath: it’s all good. The work itself, in whatever state it’s in, is good, important, not frivolous and ridiculous as the world sometimes makes you feel.

Of course, all sorts of interesting things happen at conferences. Writers you adore turn out to be egotistical slobs. Writers you adore turn out to be completely humble and helpful and delightful. Writers you never knew turn out to be soulmates. Writers tell you horror stories of publishing gone awry and careers slain. Writers tell you glossy tales of lightning strikes and mega-bucks. Writers commiserate and drink too much. Writers disappear and go hiking. Writers smile politely, nod stiffly, and tell you why later.

See a trend here? Writers tell stories. Try to get them to stop telling stories — about themselves, about other writers, about other people. Stuff happens to people, even at a conference. Somebody gets sick, somebody’s parent dies, somebody gets in trouble, somebody sleeps around, somebody sells a book. And somebody tells somebody about it. That’s life. That’s a writers conference: life in a nutshell. It’s sorry, it’s petty, it’s grand, it’s fascinating. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.