More than 175 authors, poets and students converged on the third floor of the University Union Saturday for the Baltimore Writers’ Conference.
The event featured 16 panels about freelancing, fiction, poetry, memoir, script writing, publishing and other aspects of the “craft and business” of writing.
Tracy Miller, the conference’s logistical coordinator, said the event was designed to appeal to many types of writers.
“Some are writers who want to get published. Some others have ideas and they want help with how to put it on papers. We also have people here who have been published but want to keep learning,” she said.
Miller is TU’s director for retention and the National Student Exchange. For 10 years the conference was sponsored by the Baltimore Writers Alliance, before the group disbanded in 2003. Towson University still wanted to host the event, though, so it partnered with Johns Hopkins University and CityLit to present it.
“Writing machine” offers tips
Stephen Hunter, Washington Post movie critic and author of 12 novels, was the keynote speaker. He joked about the “butt-on-seat theory of literature.”
“My whole career is really a drama of my crushing this one difficulty that all writers face: Getting my ass off the couch…and sitting in front of the keyboard,” he said.
Hunter engaged the audience with entertaining stories and self-deprecating jokes. He offered six words for success: “Start now,” “work every day,” and most importantly, “finish.”
“I like to think of [writing] as brushing your teeth,” he said. “You cannot conceive of going through life without brushing your teeth…you’ve got to make that habitual connection to your work so you do it reflexively.”
After the speech, Hunter said the skills could be applied to any big project.
“The most important thing is to get it done, not to think about it,” he said, describing himself as a “writing machine.”
Alumni authors return to campus
Two presenters on the “Memoirs That Sold” panel were Towson alumni. Jeanine Cummins, author of “A Rip In Heaven,” and Buzz Williams, author of “Spare Parts,” discussed how they wrote and published their first books.
Williams wanted to serve his country while going to school, so he joined the Marine Reserves in 1989. The 1991 Gulf War interrupted his student teaching, when he was deployed to the Persian Gulf after only four weeks of combat training. Williams said “Spare Parts” was written as a coping tool after the war, as he dealt with persistent memories and sleepless nights.
“Instead of just staying up and watching infomercials, I started to write,” Williams said.
Williams said it was difficult to return to campus after combat. While some professors understood, others seemed to express anti-war sentiments by holding him to certain standards, he said.
“It was difficult to return from a life-or-death experience, step foot on campus, and receive assignments from professors,” he said.
Williams majored in physical education at TU. He is now an assistant principal at Bel Air High School.
NEA chairman reveals reading trends
Most of the sessions were upbeat and optimistic, but the lunchtime address by Dana Gioia, National Endowment for the Arts chairman, discussed more distressing issues.
After reading a passage of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” he shared data from a report entitled “Reading At Risk,” which surveyed American literary reading habits.
“The percentage of adults reading literature has dropped dramatically over the last 20 years,” Gioia said.
Less than half of adult Americans had read one page of a novel, poem, drama, or short story in the last year, according to the survey.
Gioia noted the best predictor of reading levels is education, but pointed out the number of college-educated Americans who read literature was also dropping sharply.
“Something is not happening in American colleges and Universities to instill a lifelong love of writing,” he said.
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