Burbank, Glendale, San Fernando Valley Writers: Writing Workshop Starts May 5th

Hey all you Burbank, Glendale, San Fernando Valley Writers!  Our longest-running writers group starts on Thursday May 5th!

This writers group a combination of writing workshop and critique group.  Our groups focus on getting words on the page and creating new stories / poetry and story ideas through creative writing exercises and also provide the opportunity to bring your current stories, chapters, poetry, memoir, or essay in for critique from your fellow group members and from a qualified moderator.  This writers group is run by Sanora Bartels, LAwritersgroup.com co-founder.

Meet Sanora

Attending a writing workshop with Sanora is a fantastic opportunity.  She only runs four groups per year.  Sanora is known for her supportive and exceptionally astute insights into writing, voice, stories, and prose.  She can jump from giving critique on poetry to fiction to screenplay to memoir with ease and often does in her groups, which attract and welcome writers of all genres and levels.   She is about far more than just story structure, she is about helping you elevate your writing in ways you didn't even know you were capable of accomplishing.  Her writing exercises have actually turned people into poets who never thought of themselves that way.   She will point out things you didn't even know you were doing, and give you solid direction and focus for your work in a way that leaves you excited about the possibilities of your stories.  If you don't live near her, she is worth the drive.

Sanora has been running writers groups for nearly 8 years and in 2006 graduated with a Master of Professional Writing degree from University of Southern California.  She has studied with various poetry mentors, including Cathy Colman (Borrowed Dress), Ron Koertge (Making Love to Roget’s Wife), and Holly Prado (from one to the next).  At USC, she studied screenplay writing with Syd Field (Screenplay) and has since completed a full-length screenplay titled “Straying Home” which made it to the Semi Finals of NexTv’s 2010 Writing and Pitch Competition.  Her poetry has been published in Wordwrights! magazine and New Millennium Writings. Her full-length poetry manuscript is titled The Order of Things. Sanora is a teacher of Vedic Meditation and has written several pieces on Vedic philosophy and has had over 20 articles published.  You can find her meditation schedule on www.VedicMeditationTeacher.com. Sanora is a co-editor on the Meditation page of www.AllThingsHealing.com.

LAwritersgroup.com Writers Groups

Creative Writing and Critique Workshop with Sanora Bartels

Meets on Thursday, May 5th for 8 Weeks

7:30pm - 10:00pm

This creative writing workshop is convenient and easy driving distance from to Glassell Park, Glendale, Pasadena, San Fernando Valley, and Hollywood, and parking is abundant.

How to Submit Your Writing to Literary Magazines

"Those who think the editor is rejecting with some pleasure in hurting are entirely wrong."

Makes sense to me. Unless the editor is a sadist, of course, but I'm guessing most sadists wouldn't choose to edit a literary magazine just to torture writers. There are easier ways. :)

That quote is from the article What Editors Want; A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines. It is a very informative article on how to handle submitting to literary magazines. Like most things in marketing - and getting your stories published IS marketing, whether you want to admit it or not - in order to succeed, you need to understand the person you're trying to reach. You need to understand what motivates them (the editors, the development execs, the agents, the fresh-out-of-college script reader) to take action. I've been telling writers for years to pick the magazines they submit to wisely. If you know what they are looking for, then you can pull something from your story catalog that fits that publication. Don't write one story and blanket it all over the literary universe. Write many stories and send them to the appropriate places. If your stories are ready, your acceptance rate will increase dramatically. This doesn't mean you should write for a specific audience. Write whatever story YOU want to tell. THEN find the right interested party.

Also read the LA Times Jacket Copy Article about it.

You are not alone and it is never too late

You are not alone and it is never too late. All you have to do is keep writing.

Just ask Longfellow:

It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late

Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles

Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides

Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,

When each had numbered more than fourscore years,

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,

Had but begun his Characters of Men.

Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,

At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;

Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,

Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Morituri Salutamus

Or Publetariat:

A list of 15 famous authors who were published late in life

Or the New Yorker:

Late Bloomers

Just keep writing. Write free, write often, write without inhibition or self-censorship. You will get there.

From the Blogospere: How to spot "Spaghetti Agents"

Yet another excellent and informative post from former Lierary Agent turned YA author. This time it's about how to protect yourself from what he calls, "Spaghetti Agents."

Nathan Bransford, Author: Spaghetti Agents:

"One of the hardest things about searching for an agent is that you don't exactly know what kind of an agent you're going to get. Even though..."

LA Times Festival of Books

Very cute that they'd use Madeline in the LA Times Festival of Books video ad.

The Pale King: Monologues from the unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace

This just in from Skylight Books:

PEN Center USA presents: THE PALE KING: Monologues from the unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace 

Rosemarie DeWitt joins Henry Rollins, Josh Radnor and Nick Offerman in the event cast. Los Angeles Times book critic, David L. Ulin, will host.

Beverly Hills, CA: PEN Center USA will present THE PALE KING: MONOLOGUES FROM THE UNFINISHED NOVEL BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills on April 28, 2011. Doors will open at 7 PM with a cocktail reception in the theatre’s rotunda. The event follows the April 15 release of The Pale King (Little, Brown and Company), which follows the lives of the agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois. The Pale King, as well as Wallace’s backlist titles, will be available for purchase before and after the performance, courtesy of Skylight Books.

PEN Center USA is proud to make a follow-up cast announcement, adding Rosemarie DeWitt (Cinderella Man, Rachel Getting Married) and René Auberjonois (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) to the line-up, which includes Henry Rollins (Black Flag, Lost Highway, Get In The Van), Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother), Megan Mullally (Will & Grace), Adam Scott (Step Brothers, The Aviator), Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, Sin City), Michelle Azar (Monk, ER), Brian Elerding (Mad Men), Rob Delaney (Nature Of The Beast), and Casey Wilson (SNL). Bonnie Nadell (Literary Agent) and Bruce Cohen (Producer, American Beauty, Milk) are co-curating the literary material for the evening.

Charlie Stratton (Naked Angels, New York Stage and Film, Wilton Project) will direct the performance. The event will be hosted by Los Angeles Times book critic, David L. Ulin.

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois. He received
Bachelor of Arts degrees in Philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in Philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught Creative Writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion, and the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award and a Whiting Writers’ Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008, leaving behind unpublished work of which The Pale King is a part.

To purchase tickets for THE PALE KING: MONOLOGUES FROM THE UNFINISHED NOVEL BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, please contact the Saban Theatre Box Office, Tuesday through Friday, 12 PM – 5 PM. The Saban Theatre Box Office is located at: 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211. Phone: 323-655-0111. You may also purchase tickets for the event online at
www.ticketmaster.com. Tickets are: $65 (includes admission, preferred seating and a copy of The Pale King) and $25 (includes admission).

For more information on this event, please contact Michelle Meyering, Director of Programs and
Events, at PEN Center USA: michelle@penusa.org.

Other books by David Foster Wallace:

Hermosa Beach. Pier Ave. Writers Group!

There's more to do on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach than partying, tanning, and rollerblading! Now there's our newest writers group! This group is the same format as all the groups we've been successfully running since 2003. Better yet, it's in a parking-friendly part of Pier Ave, at Planet Earth Eco Cafe. The group starts at 7:30pm on Wednesday, May 11th and the cafe will be closed to the public during group (the cafe closes at 5pm daily, but go there and stop in before 5pm because they have yummy drinks and vegan and vegetarian food). Part writing workshop, part critique group, part creativity booster, our groups are more than just a group of writers gathering together to review each other's work. They are professionally led by a qualified moderator so you not only benefit from peer review of your work, but you also get critique on anything you bring in from our professional group leader.

We are delighted to announce that our Pier Avenue writers group will be run by Miranda Valentine:

Miranda Valentine is an East Coast native soaking up sunny Southern California, where she lives with her husband and two rescue dogs, Bailey & Lola. She holds a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California, where she was fortunate to learn from some of the best writers in the business, including The New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear, The Atlantic Monthly editor and memoirist Sandra Tsing Loh, and best selling novelist Gina Nahai. While her first love is the short story, she adores her work as a contributing writer for Bunker Hill Magazine and Joonbug.com, and as the editor of the popular lifestyle blog Everything Sounds Better in French. She is currently working on a memoir about love, loss, and what to do when your ex’s new wife appears naked on your computer screen. It’s tentatively titled “Reboot”. Just kidding...

Writers of all skills, levels, and genres are welcome in our groups. It works for everyone whether you write poetry, memoir, literary or genre fiction, essays, or screenplays and we hire moderators for their specific ability to provide cross-genre feedback, and for their overall supportive nature.

Los Angeles Writers Group, Hermosa Beach

Location: Planet Earth Eco Cafe Map

Date: Starts Wednesday, May 11th and meets once a week for 8 Weeks

Time: 7:30pm - 10:00pm

Register for our Hermosa Beach Writing and Critique Workshop

Fill your notebook.(tm)

Email any questions you may have to lawritersgroup@gmail.com