2017 Omega Writers Conference Highlights #omega17 | Narelle Atkins

Left to Right: Elaine Fraser, Andrea Grigg, Iola Goulton, Margie Lawson, Jeanette O'Hagan, Narelle Atkins, Nola Passmore.

By Narelle Atkins

Wow. The 2017 Omega Writers Conference in Sydney last weekend was fabulous. Awesome. Brilliant. Inspiring. Around one hundred writers enjoyed the relaxed rural conference setting on the outskirts of Sydney. I feel blessed to belong to Omega Writers and the wider Christian writing community that encourages and supports writers in our part of the world.

Many thanks to Raewyn Elsegood and her conference team who worked hard behind the scenes. Jenny Glazebrook's new initiative to place attendees in host groups provided another avenue to build relationships and ensure first time conference attendees were welcomed into the Omega writing community.

The amazing Margie Lawson was our keynote speaker. We love Margie and love her teaching gift. Thank you Margie for blessing us by attending our conference. 

Margie is pictured above with the six Margie Immersion Grads who were at conference. Elaine Fraser is a 3-time Immersion Grad: Melbourne in August 2015, Sydney in August 2016 and a solo Immersion with Margie in Colorado in May 2017. Andrea Grigg and Iola Goulton attended an August 2015 Melbourne Immersion with Elaine (hosted by 4-time Immersion Grad Dorothy Adamek). Jeanette O'Hagan and Nola Passmore attended a Brisbane Immersion in August 2016. I attended a Canberra Immersion in March 2017.

Margie included quotes in her teaching points from Elaine Fraser's book Amazing Grace and Andrea Grigg's book All is Bright. It was exciting to see their excellent writing featured on the big screen.

Multi-published author Alex Marestaing from Southern California was our keynote speaker at the CALEB Awards. Yes, we really did have an international author who has worked with Disney attend our Aussie conference and teach our Young Adult and Middle Grade writers!

I had the pleasure of introducing the delightful Patricia Weerakoon and her much anticipated workshop 'Sex without Sleaze'. An informative and challenging workshop for fiction writers on how to write about sexuality and related issues in both the Christian market and general market from a Christian perspective. 

Multi-published regency romance author Carolyn Miller presented a fun and engaging workshop for fiction writers. We celebrated with Carolyn as her third book, The Dishonorable Miss DeLancey, was released in the USA during the week prior to conference.  

Omega Writers President Meredith Resce and Margie Lawson presented the certificates to the CALEB Award finalists. We live streamed the CALEB Awards via my Facebook Profile to Australasian Christian Writers and Christian Writers Downunder Facebook Groups. The video footage is in two parts and can be viewed at the links below.

2017 CALEB Awards via Facebook Live - Part 1

2017 CALEB Awards via Facebook Live - Part 2

Facebook Live Part 2 video includes Alex Marestaing's inspiring keynote address.

Facebook Live Part 2 video also includes Rachel Sweasey and Rochelle Manners from Rhiza Press and author Catriona McKeown (2016 CALEB Unpublished winner) discussing the upcoming release of YA novel The Boy in the Hoodie.

CALEB Awards co-ordinator Judy Rogers presented the CALEB Prize to the overall winner, Cecily Paterson.

2017 CALEB ~ Published Fiction

Winner: 
Charlie Frank is A-OK - Cecily Anne Paterson (CALEB Prize Winner)

Finalists: 
Daystar: The Days are Numbered - Anne Hamilton 

Forgiving Sky - Jenny Glazebrook 

Amazing Grace - Elaine Fraser

2017 CALEB ~ Children’s Picture Books 

Winner: 

Small and Big - Karen Collum illustrated by Ben Wood (CALEB Prize Runner Up)

Finalists: 

The Mighty, Mighty King Christmas Book - Penny Morrison illustrated by Lisa Flanagan 

My Imagination - written and illustrated by Ellen Wildig

2017 CALEB ~ Published Non-Fiction 

Winner: 
Burn My Letters: Tyranny to Refuge - Ruth Bonetti
Finalists: 
Heaven Tempers the Wind - Hazel Barker 
Becoming Me - Jo-Anne Berthelsen

2017 CALEB ~ Unpublished Manuscript 

Winner: 
Siren’s Fight - Kristen Young 
Finalists:
In the Middle of the Whirlwind - Hannah Currie 
The Gryphon Key - Elizabeth Klein 
Holy War - Anthony Peterson

Karen Collum & Cecily Paterson

Many thanks to Margaret Holahan who took hundreds of photos for Omega Writers during the weekend and allowed me to access the Dropbox and share photos in my post. The photos that are date stamped are from the Omega photo collection. Enjoy browsing the conference photos and plan to attend the 2018 Conference in Adelaide. 

Raewyn Elsegood & Margie Lawson

Jo-Anne Berthelsen

Rowena Beresford

Rose Dee at the Registration Desk

Katrina Roe

James Cooper

Penny Morrison

It's conference time!

Omega Writers Australasia will be meeting this coming weekend for their annual conference, and it is set to be a great weekend meeting our writing friends from around Australia and New Zealand, and engaging in some first class learning with our conference speakers.

We are thrilled to have had a number of businesses join us as partner sponsors, and as a result we have been able to bring in a couple of sought after speakers who I know will bring another level again to those of us who have been writing in Australia for many years.

Added to this, we will have the CALEB Prize awards evening, where we will recognise Australasian Christian writers in different genres. Our partner sponsors have generously contributed towards the prizes that will be awarded to our winners.

I would like to take a moment to mention some of our partner sponsors, and ask that you would consider them if you are in need of this sort of service:

Tabor College – Education in creative writing

Ingram Spark – Self-publishing and Print on Demand specialists

Book Whispers – Writing and self-publishing assist specialists

Finesse Writing Services – Writing and self-publishing specialists

Breath of Fresh Air Publishing

Cam Print – Screen print and embroidery for t-shirts, corporate wear and caps

Simon Malcolm Productions – Video production specialist

Rosanna White – Graphic designer specialising in book covers

Christian Super – Superannuation specialists

Christian Editing Services – Professional and respected editor

Details for all these partner sponsors can be found on OmegaWriters website 

I hope to see many of you at the conference, and that you will enjoy the workshop streams that are being offered. If you have been unable to make it this year, the good news is that it has already been booked in again for next year. This time we will be headed to beautiful Adelaide, South Australia, and now would be a good time to make a plan to join us in twelve months time.

I have only just finished up a skype session with our Omega Screen Writers group this evening, and we have talked about trying to introduce a new stream to next year’s conference especially for writers of screenplay.

Don’t forget that there are writing chapters functioning around the country, so if you’d like to get together with other writers and can’t wait until October next year, look up the groups that may be functioning in a place near you.

http://www.omegawriters.org/meet-other-writers/

As always, I like to remind members of Australasian Christian Writers and Christian Writers Downunder that Omega Writers continues to function because we have financial members. If you believe in the work that we do, and the services we provide, I would encourage you to consider becoming a financial member. There are benefits to be had. More information on this is on our website.

I would like to take this opportunity to bless you in your writing journey, and pray that you will continue to grow in God and as a writer.

Best regards

Meredith Resce

President

Omega Writers Australasia

www.omegawriters.org

Emotion and Connection

Have you ever read a story and been moved in some way? Perhaps you've smiled, maybe laughed out loud, felt tears, or even sobbed? Of course you have (except for maybe the sobbing - that might’ve just been me).

Have you ever stopped to analyse exactly why you felt that way? Was it the intriguing plot? The use of humour? Beautiful phrasing? According to Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius, our ability to be moved by storytelling is something ingrained in us, and the thing that keeps us reading is not so much the plot or the beautiful language involved, but our connection to the protagonist’s internal struggles, as they work to navigate mysteries of the social (and physical) world. Lisa Cron mentions Jonathan Gottschall, who wrote The Storytelling Animal, and his findings relating to functional MRI studies that suggest “when we're reading a story, our brain activity isn't that of an observer, but of a participant."

Isn’t that we what we want? For our readers to feel like they are ‘in’ the story? To have our readers emotionally invest in our characters so our stories are more than simply words on a page? So how do we get readers to emotionally invest in a fictional character, and create a reading experience that will resonate long after the book is closed?

If we want readers to care, then we need to mine a little deeper for those points of emotional connection that resonate with our readers. We need to create moments of authenticity that readers can identify with, even if on a subconscious level, moments where they relate to the vulnerabilities our characters present, and start to cheer them on to see them succeed.

One of the things I’m working on in my own writing is to identify those moments in my life when I feel a certain emotion. When I’m frustrated, what does it feel like? What physical sensations, what other secondary emotions, what words and phrases might be swirling round my brain? How about anger? Is that different? What does regret look like, feel like, for you? Identifying these emotions—when we’re feeling them—and writing about them at or near the time of experiencing such things can be a powerful way to later create a scene with which our readers will be able to relate. Investing in an ‘Emotion Journal’ can be a great way to record such things.

Recently, my daughter’s little birthday-gift bird, a grey cockatiel with the sweetest face, escaped and flew away into the cold and windy wintry world. In the days following, I was amazed at the level of grief the loss of this tiny creature pulled from me. It was not dissimilar to when people close to me have died; I imagine it’s a tiny fraction of what it’s like to have a loved one disappear. Moments of thinking everything is normal, then the realisation that it’s not that tugs forth tears. Thinking you glimpse or hear them, only to realise it’s a trick of the wind. Thoughts that say ‘just look here, just look there,’ that lead to disappointment and exhaustion. Regrets. Even resentment. Battling between tremulous hope and faith, and the cold hard reality that those (ahem) super kind, encouraging people feel necessary to share with you.

To lose a loved one—even a beloved pet—is not something any of us ever want to undergo, but this experience showed me how powerful such emotions can be. None of us like loss (except maybe weight loss!), so to find ways to express such emotion is important, as it’s something others can relate to. This experience provided plenty of scribblings in my Emotion Journal, and I know I will apply this in a story one day.  

Now while we are creative writers I don’t recommend creating situations just so we can experience emotional authenticity. (And just to be clear, I did not let the bird go!) Resources such as The Emotion Thesaurus by Angeka Ackerman and Becca Puglisi can also be useful. This ‘Guide to Character Expression’ outlines an emotion (eg Desire), then lists the physical signals, internal sensations, mental responses, and cues signalling acute or repressed/suppressed forms of this emotion. This can be quite helpful, especially if you’re not wishing to personally undergo every emotion your character must experience!

  

Resources are good, but for our writing to truly resonate with readers they need to identify with what our characters feel, and only we can frame our experiences in our unique voice. So the next time you feel envy, write about it - maybe your Emotion Journal can be a prayer journal, too. When your neighbours annoy you, describe what that feels like (go on, it can be cathartic!). When you feel surprised, or contentment, or bored, record your feelings and keep it for use one day when your characters need to display that particular emotion. That gives our words a rawness that readers can connect and identify with, so our writing really resonates.

If we want our words to stick in people’s hearts long after they have closed the pages, then let’s create authentic emotional connections.

Looking at how we can add emotional connection to our stories is one of the elements I’ll be discussing in the Creative Writing workshop at this October’s Omega Writer’s Conference in Sydney. If you haven’t yet set aside time to go, I strongly encourage you to invest in prioritising this time – not only will you get great teaching from the likes of Margie Lawson (can’t wait to hear her!), but you’ll establish connections and make friends with others who will cheer you on your writing journey. Details here.

Carolyn Miller lives in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, with her husband and four children. Together with her husband she has pastored a church for ten years, and worked as a public high school English and Learning and Support teacher.

A longtime lover of romance, especially that of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer’s Regency era, Carolyn holds a BA in English Literature, and loves drawing readers into fictional worlds that show the truth of God’s grace in our lives. Carolyn is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Australasian Christian Writers and Omega Christian Writers and is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. Her debut Regency novel ‘The Elusive Miss Ellison’ released in February 2017, and her second ‘The Captivating Lady Charlotte’ released in June from Kregel Publications, with her next releasing in October. All are available from Amazon.com.au, Koorong, Book Depository & other sites.

Connect with her at www.carolynmillerauthor.com and subscribe to her quarterly newsletter, and follow via Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.