Carlton Mellick III

These are the workshops that will happen at BizarroCon:

“Writing High Concept Bizarro”
Instructor: Carlton Mellick III
Time: Friday morning (exact time TBA)

People read bizarro books primarily for the outlandish, crazy ideas. Some books have ideas that are just so out there that readers can’t resist picking them up. This workshop focuses on how to write bizarro books that sell based on the ideas alone. Each student will come up with the most irresistibly strange idea for a book that they can, write a back cover description for it, then the class will critique the descriptions and decide which book ideas are worth their money. The most irresistible books are guaranteed publication by Eraserhead Press.*
Space limited.

“Defense Against the Dark Arts: Preparing for Criticism.”
Instructor: Eckhard Gerdes
Time: Friday afternoon (exact time TBA)

This workshop will be designed to help every writer better defend his or her writing against the inevitable pettiness and jealousies of reviewers and others. We need to identify our own weaknesses and develop cogent and coherent theories of defense that befuddle even the most acute academic into thinking that what we do intuitively is actually carefully planned and intentional. We’ll have everyone bring in negative reviews and criticism they have received in the past, and then find ways to pre-empt those strikes through interviews and promo materials and such, thus disarming the attackers. There are ways of disarming entire schools of attack, and in so doing we immunize ourselves against the critics.
Space limited.

* Even though a book might be guaranteed publication, if the writing is not up to standards the author might have to go through several drafts until it is publishable. Good ideas don’t necessarily make good books. If needed the Eraserhead Editorial Board will offer guidance on how to turn your good idea into a good book.

If you want to take one or both of these workshops, you have to sign up for BizarroCon before the end of September. BizarroCon takes place October 22-25 near Portland, OR

Learn more about BizarroCon here:

http://bizarrocentral.com/convention.asp

This entry was posted on September 17, 2009 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Bizarro Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.