The Weathers Creek Writers’ Series will continue in January with workshops on songwriting, fiction and making money with your writing. The sessions offer a one-day get away to a farm between Cleveland and Mooresville.Experienced freelancers, published authors and aspiring writers may chose one-day workshops to sharpen skills.The Farm at Weathers Creek is a peaceful spot with scenic views from almost every window of the log home on the property. Owned by the Campbell family, the house was built from logs salvaged from their mother’s home place in Mount Ulla.
The 2010 workshops will begin on Jan. 9 with C. Hope Clark, founder and editor of www.fundsforwriters.com, a writer’s reference that reaches more than 28,000 readers weekly with motivational editorials and lists of grants and markets.
Her workshop, “Funding Streams: How Serious Writers Plunge In,” will help determine where and how to take writing to the editors and Web sites that pay and reach target audiences.
Writer’s Digest Magazine voted Funds for Writers one of its 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for nine years (2001 through 2009). The four Funds for Writers newsletters offer information for writers at all levels ó from teens to novices to professionals.
Clark’s dozen ebooks are offered on topics from “Grants for the Serious Writer” to “Short & Sweet: Markets for Fillers.” She has published in Writer’s Digest, The Writer Magazine, College Bound Teen, TURF Magazine, Landscape Management and in several of the Chicken Soup books. Her nonfiction book, “The Shy Writer,” is an aid for writers who have difficulty appearing in public.
All subsequent sessions will be held on the second Saturdays of February, March and April. On Feb. 13, award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker Georgann Eubanks will lead a session on “Many Beginnings.” The session, for writers of fiction, nonfiction and/or poetry, will address character development, scene, description and word choice and are designed to give new juice to writing and new images for further exploration. Eubanks, the director of the Duke University Writers’ Workshop, is the author of “Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains” and a national communications consultant.
On March 13, Weathers Creek is proud to offer a songwriting workshop with singer/songwriter/producer Don Dixon. For “Shades of Gray: Writing for a World That Isn’t Black & White,” Dixon will concentrate on songs where topics are open ended. As he puts it, “not too preachy, not too idealistic, not too cynical, but multi-faceted and complicated like life really is.” Dixon co-founded popular band Arrogance. As a producer, he has worked with Marti Jones, REM, Smithereens and others. In March 2009, VanZeno Press published his first book, “Songs 101: The Lyrics of Don Dixon.”
For the April 10 session, novelist and former newspaperman John Jeter will lead a session called, “Be The Camera: Showing The Story and Reporting The Fiction.” He will delve into his experiences as a kidney-transplant recipient, a reporter who has traveled to Vietnam, Honduras, Cuba, China and Hong Kong, South Africa, Europe and the Caribbean and a music promoter to show how to “show a story.” Jeter and his wife, Kathy, run The Handlebar, a concert venue in Greenville, S.C. His novel, “The Plunder Room,” was published in 2009 by St. Martin’s.
The series grew out of talks between area writer/editor Ann Wicker, photographer and writer Susan Campbell and marketing and sales specialist Cindy Campbell.Sessions are $75 each. All sessions include a homemade lunch. Deadline for registration for the January session is Jan. 4. Registration for January, February and April is limited to 12 people. Registration for March is limited to 10 people and the deadline is March 5. Discounts are offered for more than one session.
Gift certificates are available. All sessions will start promptly at 10 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. For a registration form, directions and other information, go to our Web site, www.weatherscreek.net.