Tag: seminars

Critique pricing change, seminar deals

- Stacy

While my going rate for a full developmental edit is $50 an hour due to my own needs to pay the bills (based on the market rate for developmental editing ($50 is actually at the low end), what I made as an in-house editor, my years of experience, my master’s degree, and my going rate on other editorial services), I realize that most authors are in the same position I am, strapped tight for cash. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’m going to go ahead and reduce my hourly rate on full developmental edits permanently until I no longer do critiques.

What’s that, you ask? I might be ending my critique service? Yes, but not right away. It’s definitely helping me to pay the bills (and I hope helping the authors I’m critiquing!) while I work on the number of other things I’m working on, but once I either get an in-house position or officially start looking for submissions for my small press (which won’t be agented-only submissions), I will of course be discontinuing the paid critique service for ethical reasons. Right now, I keep the critiques and the submissions for Tor separate by requiring agented-only submissions for Tor.

But until the time comes for that — which I don’t have a timeline on; I’ll definitely announce it when the time comes — I will continue to do full-manuscript developmental editing for authors at $30 an hour. The submission packet will still be a flat $50 fee because it often takes me much more than an hour to critique them.

For those who attend my seminars, I offer a discount on my critique services on full manuscripts, as well. When the going rate was $50 an hour, I was charging only $30 an hour for seminar attendees. Now that I’ve decided to lower the rate, the discount for seminar attendees will drop to $25 an hour (sorry, I can’t afford to discount it more; when you’re self-employed you can pretty much count on half of that money going to taxes, so my take-home rate is actually much, much lower than that).

So, if you decide that you need the services of a freelance editor (and that’s very much a personal decision), hopefully that will help you to better afford my services.

Spaces still left for worldbuilding seminar

- Stacy

We still have about 11-15 spaces left for the worldbuilding seminar this Saturday, so if you were thinking  you might come but weren’t sure if there’d still be room for you, be assured that we’ve got plenty of room. If Paypal was the trouble, at this point, just bring your check ($45 for an individual, $35 if you’re in a group of 5 or more) with you to the library, but still be sure to email my intern, Chersti, at cjstapley AT gmail DOT com with your registration information to let her know you’ll be coming.

Hope to see you there, and for those of you not local, I’m still working on the online workshop idea. Last week was rather slow on that end, however, due to a family emergency and my own asthma problems–I’m still waiting to hear how my ten-year-old niece is doing (thank you all for your thoughts and prayers–she’s doing better, and every time they do a test, like taking her off the heart bypass machine, she continues to improve, but we’re still just waiting to hear about a number of tests that I’m not sure that they’ve been able to do yet). I’m trying to get that ox back out of the mire from last week, which means getting several critiques back to people who have been very patient as I’ve been dealing with other things. Thank you all for being so kind and thinking of my niece–between all of my friends, and all of my siblings’ and cousins’ and aunts’ friends, I think there must be thousands of people thinking of her and praying for her. Thanks, everyone.

New seminar: Worldbuilding in MG/YA science fiction and fantasy

- Stacy

I have a confirmed date, time, and place for our next local seminar on writing fantasy for children and young adults. This time we’re going to focus specifically on worldbuilding–how it’s different for younger audiences (and how it’s the same as worldbuilding you might hear about in adult books), how to really hit the right tone with the audience you’re seeking to reach, how to use key details to flesh out your setting, how to use worldbuilding to create character, support the plot, and make your world come alive!

Here’s the skinny:

Provo Library, Provo, UT
Bullock Room 309
1-5 p.m.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Deadline: June 19

Cost: $45 for individuals (the increase in price is because I reserved the room for another hour, so we have plenty of time to workshop)
$35 for groups of five or more (make sure when you register to tell me who is in your group, or at least tell me who the “group leader” is)

We’ve got a bigger room this time, so be sure to tell your friends and anyone who might be interested–instead of being limited to 24 people, we can have 30-40 (I won’t want to get bigger than that, because we want to have a good number of people who want to workshop to be able to read).

On the day of the seminar, be sure to bring a sample from your current work in progress. It does not have to be the first chapter! Whatever section you think is the best representative of your worldbuilding and/or that you want the most help in creating a sense of worldbuilding: that’s the section to bring.

As with the previous seminar, we’ll start with me lecturing a little, giving you information on the topic and plenty of examples from great books. Then we’ll start workshopping! You don’t *have* to share your own work, but you’ll get a professional editor’s opinion on how you might improve a particular aspect of your story, and great feedback from all the rest of the people in the class, too.

My intern will be helping me with registration, so the directions for registration are a little different this time. As before, if you want to pay via PayPal, send the payment to me at stacylwhitman AT gmail DOT com, but then send an email to Chersti at cjstapley AT gmail DOT com, giving her the following information:

Name
Address
Phone number
Email
The one thing you’re most hoping to learn about from this class (this helps me to gauge the learning levels of everyone in the class so I can tailor the seminar to the people who are attending)

Note that my email is down, so I won’t be able to answer any questions today until it comes back up. But Chersti will confirm registration, and once I receive the payment I’ll notify her and she’ll keep track of who has paid, confirming with you that we got your payment.

Also, watch that deadline! If I don’t have enough registrants (I need at least 10 people registered to make it worth the room rental), we’ll cancel. But I don’t think we need to worry about that–just a head’s-up to let you know that we need at least a certain number of registrants for it to happen. We’ll have plenty of room for everyone, but you’ll want to register early so that I know you’re coming.

New class planned for early June, more local events

- Stacy

I don’t have a date pinned down yet, but I’m planning to do another community seminar in early June: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction for Children and Young Adults. Writing fantasy and SF for children and YA is different than writing it for adults because of that added children’s/YA component: it’s a whole different readership and market that you’re writing for. So we’ll talk about how important worldbuilding is, how to use concrete details to create a world without bogging down your prose, and a number of related topics. This will be a more nitty-gritty, in-depth kind of seminar compared to the last one, but we’ll build on the format of talking first of principles, looking at examples, and then workshopping with each class member’s work in progress, so be thinking about the sample you want the most worldbuilding help with (or perhaps better put as your *best* worldbuilding example, so we can discuss both what you’re doing right–which will help your classmates–and where you might be able to improve).

Come prepared for an afternoon of lots of tips and the give and take of constructive feedback. Plan on it costing $45 for individuals or $35 each for groups of 5 or more–I’ll give you a link and more information when I pin down a date and time. I’ll also be handing out handouts for it at Conduit next weekend, so if you’ll be heading to that convention and want to get a group together, you can hand me your registration forms and payment right there at the con.

I’ll post here and on my Seminars page when I’ve pinned down a firm date, hopefully sometime in the next week or so.

Also, don’t forget that the Provo Children’s Book Festival is this Saturday from 11 to 4 down at the Provo Public Library. The Utah children’s writer community is quite large, so look for Brandon Mull, Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George, Nate Hale, Mette Harrison, Aprilynne Pike, Ann Dee Ellis, Emily Wing Smith, Will Terry, Ann Cannon, Carol Lynch Williams, James Dashner… the list goes on and on.

Which reminds me that I need to remember to take my copy of Rapunzel’s Revenge with me to get it signed!

Speaking of Carol Lynch Williams, her new book, The Chosen One, is out today. I was just at the local B&N (okay, it’s been a few hours now) and got to hear her read from it. Intriguing, and I can’t wait to read it. It’s about a girl in a polygamous colony who is told that she must marry her uncle. Carol has some great blurbs from some really great authors–Meg Cabot, Gregory Macguire, Cynthia Kadohata, Kathi Appelt… and some great reviews. You also might know Carol from BYU Writing for Young Readers, which she runs with the inestimable Cheri Earl.

So, to sum up: Provo Children’s Book Festival this Saturday! Conduit next weekend–Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, May 22-24! Worldbuilding class coming sometime in June! See you then! I’m out, and taking all my exclamation points with me!

(Good night.)

Seminar report

- Stacy

I had a really great time meeting somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 local writers on Saturday at the Provo Library. We talked about writing science fiction and fantasy for children and young adults, and in that context we talked about hooking agents and editors and young readers themselves with killer first chapters and beyond. I think my favorite part of the afternoon was getting volunteers to read their first hook and then the collegial atmosphere when we applied what we’d been talking about as we discussed how to improve those samples.

Thanks to everyone who came! I think a writing group grew from it, as well. Good luck with your writing.

I think I’ll try to do a seminar like this every quarter or so, and perhaps a few other classes, perhaps getting more in-depth on other aspects of writing science fiction and fantasy for young readers. Suggestions for class topics welcome, and if anyone from the class has further questions I’m happy to answer them.