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December 10 – You NANO’d! Now What? Post-National Novel Writing Month Session

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Friday, December 10th, 2021
You NANO’d! Now What? Post-National Novel Writing Month Session
with Award-winning author and sixteen-time NaNoWriMo winner Nita Sweeney
Noon PT/3 pm ET

 

Whether you wrote 50,00 words or simply made it through the month, Congratulations! You’ve completed National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! 

What’s next? 

In this fun lunch n’ learn, Nita Sweeney, award-winning author and sixteen-time NaNoWriMo winner will teach you how to carry the NaNoWriMo inspiration into the rest of the year.

No matter if it’s your first Nano or your sixteenth, this session will help you continue.

Nita’s first book, the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink was a multi-year NaNoWriMo project. Her second book, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration & Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving, coauthored with Brenda Knight, offers author wisdom to help you on your NaNoWriMo journey.

In this workshop Nita will discuss:

  • How to continue the NaNoWriMo momentum without burning out
  • How to finish the story if it’s not complete
  • How to think about (and do) revision and editing
  • How to continue building the community you found in November
  • Why you should NOT send your NaNo novel to agents and publishers YET
  • And much more!

About Nita:

Nita Sweeney is the award-winning wellness author of the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and co-creator with Brenda Knight of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration & Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving. A certified meditation leader, mental health advocate, ultramarathoner, and former assistant to writing practice originator Natalie Goldberg, Nita founded the groups Mind, Mood, and Movement to support well-being through meditation, exercise, and writing practice, and The Writer’s Mind, to share using writing practice to produce publishable work. Nita also publishes the writing resource newsletter, Write Now Columbus. Nita lives in central Ohio with her husband, Ed, and their yellow Labrador retriever, Scarlet. Download your free copy of Nita’s eBook Three Ways to Heal Your Mind.

 

Join us for WNBA-SF’s Post-National Novel Writing Month Session!
Register below to receive the Zoom link:

October 28 – Cocktails with Publishers

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Thursday, October 28
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm /PDT
WNBA-SF Mixer and AMA
FREE Virtual Event!
Cocktails with Publishers

Fall is here and what better way is there than to greet the season with a cocktail party and networking?

WNBA-SF Chapter is hosting a virtual networking party where members who are writers can get some quality time with publishers and ask questions. It is an AMA, so ask them anything! This is a virtual mixer, though we certainly hope to be meeting in person sometime next year and how great will THAT BE? Bring your favorite beverage and all your curiosity. This will be fun!

As everyone probably knows, you or your agent needs to get your book or proposal into the hands of an interested publisher; that’s the first hurdle. A well-crafted proposal, an agent with good relationships, and choosing the right editors to approach are the first steps. What most would-be authors don’t know is that the editor has to turn around and sell you to an editorial board. The sales management, more often than not, makes the decisions. If sales and marketing think they can sell your book, then you’ve got a wonderful chance of getting published.

So how do you sell the sales people? Publishing veterans Jan Johnson, Lisa McGuiness and Brenda Knight will help you navigate the rapids of book publishing so you can find the perfect home for your books. Bring all your questions about book publishing so you can learn from some of the best in the business!

Publishing Experts

Jan Johnson is Publisher Emeritus at Red Wheel Weiser & Conari Press acquiring select books for each imprint. Before launching Red Wheel/Weiser, Johnson worked at Tuttle Publishing, HarperOne (when it was known as HarperSanFrancisco), Winston/Seabury Press and as an independent book doctor, rewrite editor and editorial consultant for corporate and independent publishers. Johnson has worked on many bestsellers, including Codependent No More, Random Act of Kindness, Oprah pick The Book of Awakening and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

Brenda KnightBrenda Knight began her career at HarperCollins, working with luminaries Paolo Coelho, Marianne Williamson and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Knight was awarded IndieFab’s Publisher of the Year in 2014 at the ALA, American Library Association. Knight is the author of Wild Women and Books, The Grateful Table, Be a Good in the World, and Women of the Beat Generation, which won an American Book Award. Knight is Associate Publisher at Mango Publishing. She is the immediate past President of the Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter, and an instructor at the San Francisco Writers Conference.

Lisa McGuinness is the Creative Director at Mango Publishing and the author of numerous books. As founder of Yellow Pear Press and the imprint Bonhomie Press, she is a twenty-five-year veteran of the publishing industry; she has worked in the editorial, sales, and production divisions during her tenure at Chronicle Books, and as a freelancer. Lisa’s books include Hoppy Trails, Catarina’s Ring, Caffeinated Ideas Journal and Meaningful Bouquets and is co-author of several children’s books including the New York Times bestseller Bee & Me and Baby Turtle’s Tale—both animated picture books written under the pen name Elle J. McGuinness. She is the co-author of The Dictionary of Extraordinary Ordinary Animals and Gotcha Covered. http://www.lisamcguinnesswrites.com/

Join us for our WNBA October mixer!
Register here to receive the Zoom link:

Mechanics Institute presents -Publishing in the Time of Coronavirus

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a conversation with Brenda Knight and Laurie McLean over Zoom

Thursday, April 9, 2020 – 12:00pm to 1:00pm

In partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference and the Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter.

Join us and publishing veterans Brenda Knight and Laurie McLean for a timely discussion about how the publishing industry may be irrevocably changed by the global pandemic.  

This meeting will take place over Zoom. To receive an invitation to the meeting, please email Taryn Edwards tedwards@milibrary.org.

 

Laurie McLean spent 20 years as the CEO of a multi-million dollar marketing agency and 8 years as an agent/senior agent at Larsen Pomada Literary Agents before co-founding Fuse Literary in 2013 with her business partner Gordon Warnock. At Fuse Lit Laurie specializes in middle grade, young adult and adult genre fiction including romance, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, suspense, thrillers, and westerns. Laurie is also the Director of the San Francisco Writers Conference, in its 18th year, and co-founded two ePublishing companies: JoyrideBooks.com for romance, and Ambush Books for tween and teen books (acquired by Short Fuse Publishing in 2015). Find out more at FuseLiterary.com and on Twitter @FuseLiterary and @AgentSavant.

Brenda Knight began her career at HarperCollins, working with luminaries Paolo Coelho, Dr. Dean Ornish and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Knight was awarded IndieFab’s Publisher of the Year in 2014 at the ALA, American Library Association. Knight is the author of Wild Women and Books, The Grateful Table, Be a Good in the World, and Women of the Beat Generation, which won an American Book Award. Knight is Associate Publisher at Mango Publishing. She also serves as President of the Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter and resides in the SF Bay Area.

NaNoWriMo – Tips for Success

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by Nita Sweeney

When someone asks HOW to start writing, what they often want to know is WHERE to start writing, as in, “Where should my story begin?”

If it is November and they are participating in National Novel Writing Month, the annual challenge to write 50,000 words of fiction during the thirty days of November, about which I’ve written many times, the person’s question is premature.

Come to think of it, regardless of whether or not it is November or whether or not they are participating in NaNoWriMo, the question is still premature. In order to begin, a writer, new or otherwise, doesn’t need to know what words will follow the heading “Chapter One.” They just need to start writing.

But let me add a caveat. I write from my gut. I feel my way through. Not everyone is like this. Some people need to think a piece through or draft an outline. They may need extensive notes and research, especially for longer works. All that is fine, of course. But at some point, they just have to dive in.

That’s where writing practice saves me.

Decades of doing timed writing with no agenda except to put words on the page sidesteps the potentially paralyzing question of where the story should start. I figure it out by writing. I get in there and wallow around. Research or plotting or planning I’ve done ahead of time only serves me once my fingers are hammering the keyboard. I have to turn on the spigot and then, once the water is flowing, I’ll see what crevices it naturally wants to enter.

What is writing practice? It’s what I learned from best-selling author Natalie Goldberg. Timed writing. Set a timer and go. No thought. No crossing out or back spacing. No wondering if what I just wrote makes any sense. No stopping until the timer dings. It’s freeing and terrifying and the only way I know how to work. It’s the engine beneath everything I write.

And, it is just my way. I would love to hear about other ways in the comments.

Nita Sweeney
(c)Nita Sweeney, 2019, all rights reserved

Nita Sweeney is the author of the memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink, which was short-listed for the William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award. Her articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in magazines, journals, books, and blogs including Buddhist America, Dog World, Dog Fancy, Writer’s Journal, Country Living, Pitkin Review, The Taos News, Spring Street, Pencil Storm, WNBA-SF, It’s Not Your Journey, and in several newspapers and newsletters. She writes the blog, Bum Glue, publishes the monthly e-newsletter, Write Now Columbus, and coaches writers in Natalie Goldberg style “writing practice.” Nita has been featured widely across media outlets about writing, running, meditation, mental health, and pet care. She was nominated for an Ohio Arts Council Governor’s Award and her poem, “Memorial,” won the Dublin Arts Council Poet’s Choice Award. When she’s not writing or coaching, Nita runs and races. She has completed three full marathons, twenty-seven half marathons (in eighteen states), and more than eighty shorter races. Nita lives in central Ohio with her husband and biggest fan, Ed, and their yellow Labrador running partner, Scarlet (aka #ninetyninepercentgooddog).