MIDWEST FICTION WRITERS FALL HARVEST 2011

Every year Midwest Fiction Writers group, a
chapter of Romance Writers of America, offers a Fall Harvest Workshop at the
end of September. This year the conference presented Margie Lawson’s Deep
Editing Master Class. Margie Lawson has a Master’s of Science in Psychiatric
Counseling and is a world-wide lecturer. On Friday night for MFW’s 35th
anniversary, they offered a formal dinner with guest speaker, Mary Janice
Davidson, who is from the Twin Cities and is the New York Times Bestseller
author of the Undead Vampire
series. She was as hilarious in person as she is in her writing. On Saturday,
the workshop consisted of Margie Lawson’s intense, hands-on, deep editing class
complete with multi-colored magic markers to highlight different sections of
our manuscripts. Sunday was a half day class with some final pointers from
Margie and included a delicious breakfast brunch. Fall Harvest is promoted to
all writers in the Twin Cities area and to all RWA chapters across the country,
although most of the participants are Midwest Fiction Writers members. This
year again it was tough to get people to sign up, probably due to the
conference being held at a location on the North side of the Twin Cities making
it a long drive for those of us who live out in the far southern suburbs and
requiring a car rental for out of town people. Also the cost was high
considering there weren’t editor or agent appointments included in the
conference and considering the state of the economy it was hard for many people
to justify the cost without having an opportunity to pitch their stories to
editors and agents. I guess most writers are just more willing to put out money
to go to an out of state conference if there are multiple classes taught by
more than one speaker and definitely more enticing if there are editors and
agents attending. It may be time for MFW to take a serious look at making some
changes in their current conference offerings and going back to the types of
workshops offered in past years. It was certainly a pleasure to meet Margie and
hear her ideas regarding deep editing, but of course with editing, it is just
one of those things that requires sitting down and trying it on your own
manuscript. So we’ll have to see if after working through the deep editing
process, my manuscript becomes a keeper for a publishing house!