Today’s writing exercise: Rolphing

If only I would have discovered Rolphing before I finished my book. I’m sure it would have taken my creativity to whole other level. Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda of Chad Vader fame spoke at the conference this past weekend and introduced a room full of middle-aged women to rolphing. Some of the women may have thought it was funny. I thought it was hilarious.

Erma Bombeck writers’ conference

I’m not sure I’ve made it as a writer yet. Such things are like knowing whether or not a country is in a recession – only hindsight can tell. But I owe much of what success I have had to the Erma Bombeck conference in Dayton, Ohio.

It was there, in 2006, that I met an editor at the Christian Science Monitor who gave me my first big boy clip, which led to an editor at the World Vision Report radio program contacting me to record some essays for them. One thing led to another and by 2007 I had enough clips to be taken seriously by editors of books and magazines.

This year, the director of the conference mentioned me in his opening address. He mentioned my small victories, my underwear wall of fame (which I forgot I even had), and the fact that I spent a month in Bangladesh because that’s where my underwear were made. I was “the underwear guy” the rest of the weekend. Garrison Keillor even signed his latest book Pontoon, “For Kelsey, the underwear guy.”

Garrison Keillor’s speech was awesome. Connie Schultz, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist and author of And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, gave a hilarious and touching speech. She was a single mother and feminist that ended up marrying Sherrod Brown shortly before his campaign to become an Ohio Senator. I was lucky enough to meet both Keillor and Schultz and her husband.

I had never met a Senator before. I was excited to meet Senator Brown because I voted for him in 2006 and he has worked a lot on trade laws. He helped introduce the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act in 2007, known by some as the “Anti-sweatshop” bill, and even wrote a book on trade. I have a bazillion and one questions for the Senator. When I told him about my book he was very interested, promised to send me one his book, and told me that he would give me a call. I think he might even have mentioned the possibility of contributing a blurb. I’m not sure about this; I was a little busy trying not to look like a stuttering idiot. The strange part is that he was on my short list of people to ask for blurbs. So was Nicholas Kristof who I met a few months ago. I would have never dreamed I would be lucky enough to meet them both.

Of course the most exciting part is meeting other writers. I had the pleasure of celebrating literary victories and consoling one another in our literary defeats with Dave Fox, Bobby White, Seth Brown, Lizzy Miles, DC Stanfa, Jenn Dlugos, Danny Gallagher, Norm Cowie, and Joanne Brokaw.

All-in-all a pretty successful and enjoyable conference. I’m sure I’ll be at the next one.

A thousand words…Garrison Keillor

At the Erma Bombeck conference in 2006 I met Dave Barry. This weekend at the conference I met Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion/Writer’s Almanac/Lake Woebegone/column writing fame.

More about the conference tomorrow.

Heavy stuff

It’s one thing to have an idea in your head, but it’s a whole other (super cool) thing to hold that idea in your hand.

The heavy lifting of the writing process is done and I’m about to begin the very undigital process of marking my manuscript to shreds with a red pen. It’s due to Wiley on April 15th, which should be plenty of time to find the sucky parts and make them not suck and to make the good parts better.

There will be carnage. 13,000 words must die and I won’t hesitate to kill them.

Have a sneak peak…

The 1st word of the book = I
The last word = story