Just back from an intensive 5-day class, The Fiction Writers How To, taught at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario by master teacher and Best Friend of the Mesdames, Rosemary Aubert.

In attendance: Mesdames M. H. Callway, Rosemary McCracken and Joan O’Callaghan.

Now then, readers, you might ask, can a dozen published writers learn new tricks?

Well, if the published writers want to keep – and win – new readers, the answer is affirmatively YES!

Master teacher, and award-winning writer, Rosemary Aubert chose a novel approach to our class. We submitted questions about problems we’ve wrestled with – and need answers to. Rosemary received over thirty thorny issues from everyone: enough material for three week-long classes!

Some of the how-to questions we thrashed out during the week were:

How to write a sex scene – without laughing or cringing, or worse making our readers laugh and cringe
How to write a fight scene – without drowning our reader in cliché’s and revealing our far too theoretical knowledge
How to blend in research – without boring our readers to death

Rosemary led the roundtable discussions where we writers shared our solutions with one another. In addition, a few of us were asked to present on our personal areas of expertise, such as:

How to find a market for your short story – little money but many rewards
How to bag endorsements for your new book – and not offend established writers
How to give a book reading – without choking and turning off your readers

We spent half of our week sharing strategies on marketing in the new world of books. For MBA’s like myself, we see how publishing is evolving from a capital intensive business to one with a low barrier to entry: in other words, to a fragmented business. The challenges are many, but the opportunities are limitless.

Our biggest challenge: how do introverted authors transform themselves into salespersons?

In the afternoons, we gave feedback on each other’s work. Always so encouraging to see so much talent and to encourage new writers. Humbling to realize that becoming a writer means a long journey indeed.

Click here for a YouTube video: Lord of The Rings clip