April Online Workshops
Deadline Extended to April 4, 2010

April 5-30, 2010 Standard Workshop
Muse Therapy
Presented by :  D.D. Scott

D. D. Scott style - is all about injecting life into tired and/or stressed out muses.  I'll give writers fun and fabulous tools to analyze their muses' funks, reign in their creative divas and up their page counts.

Discover what makes your muses tick.  What ticks them off.  And what makes them dance like nobody's watching.

We'll name your muses and host a very special meet-and-greet just for them, then dig deep into their psyches by examining "muse disorders" such as:

**  Unleashing Your Inner Sybil
**  Writing Bi-Polar:  I Suck vs.  I'm a Genius
**  What Do You Mean I'm Neurotic?  No, I'm Not.  Well, Not Exactly.  But Okay...There Are Times When.  Like You Need To Know That.  Anyway, I Was Thinking, My Jeep Is Red.
**  Rorschach For Writers:  I See Dead Lines
**  Stimulants:  When Coffee, Chocolate and Martinis Aren't Enough

Once we recognize, acknowledge and accept our muses' afflictions, we'll find terrific tricks and "trips" to treat our word witches.
I'll provide fabulous hand-outs and super-cool tchotchkes for all participants.

So if your muse is in need of a tune-up, grab a comfy couch or chair and put up your feet.  You're in the right therapy session.

INSTRUCTOR BIO:

D. D. Scott is an agented, romantic comedy writer and muse therapist in the making.

She writes stories with big hearts and a bunch of sass.  Once a small town newspaper crime reporter and now a HarperCollins Publishing Returns Center Executive Assistant, D. D. has learned that great fiction comes from the streets as well as which jacket covers meet early deaths.

Ms. Scott's romantic comedies are all about sexy, sassy, smart, career-driven women and the men who complete them.  They're a bit chick lit with a gone-country twist.  Her series BOOTSCOOTIN' BLAHNIKS - think Sex and The City meets Urban Cowboy - is under consideration by several NY publishers.

She's a member of Indiana RWA as well as RWA's Chick Lit Writers of the World Chapter and ScriptScene RWA.  She's been featured in both Indiana RWA's and ScriptScene's chapter newsletters and been a guest blogger on Romance Writers on the Journey.  She also has an active blog of her own on her website at http://www.DDScott.com and is linked to on Romancing the Blog.

You can find her online teaching several Muse Therapy Classes.  And if you're ready for some Muse Therapy while on the beach, join her in March 2010 in Pensacola FL where she'll be doing a live Muse Therapy Workshop for RWA's Gulf Coast Chapter.

Regular, (Month-long) classes, consisting of at least 2 lessons per week for CRW and HCRW members is $15, all others $25.  Mini, (2 week) classes, consisting of 2-3 lessons per week for CRW and HCRW members is $10, all others $15.

*Please Note: If paying by Paypal, please send money to workshops@carolinaromancewriters.com.

For more information, email Carole at: workshops@carolinaromancewriters.com

Registration Deadline extended to April 4             Register Now!

April 5th- April 30th 2010 Standard Workshop
WORKSHOP: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Grammar & Style But Didn’t Think It Really Mattered
INSTRUCTOR: Annie Oortman and  Darlene Buchholz

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:
Grammar-crammer… who cares about how verb tenses; dangled, misplaced, and squinted
modifiers; and that dreaded passive voice? You should!

Most people would rather have a paper cut on the inside of their lip than learn better grammar. But good writing requires good grammar. Without it, you can’t really be sure your reader will understand the information you’re trying to convey, the story you’re trying to tell, and the mental picture you’re trying to paint.

The Grammar Divas (an English teacher and a professional copywriter, both budding novelists) do something most “grammar-for-better-writing” books, courses, and websites don’t do—focus on grammar for fiction writing.

First, we’ll go over the basics to ensure you haven’t forgotten everything from school. Then, we’ll move onto issues that affect sentence structure and paragraph development. Next, we’ll review the finer points of punctuation and style as well as common grammar errors. Then, we’ll show you how to enhance your writing’s curb appeal to make the most of your writing’s appearance, readability, and impact. After that, we’ll demonstrate how cutting the fat from your writing is the quickest and surest way to improve your writing. Finally, we’ll solve some crimes against sentence, sharing the grammatical forensics you can use to uncover evidence of poor writing and troubleshoot problem sentences.

INSTRUCTOR BIO:
Grammar wasn't Annie Oortman's first love (actually, it was a cute boy in her second-grade class named Henry Talley) or even her second (avoiding barn work). However, after getting an A for content but an F for readability on a third-grade book report, she learned having great ideas was one thing, communicating them well on paper another. Annie became a disciple of the church of Proper Grammar and card-carrying member of The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (www.spogg.org). Nowadays, she diagrams sentences for fun (yes, for fun), corrects her children when they say "I did good on the test" (I did well.), and argues with fellow grammar devotees on the acceptability of ending a sentence with a preposition (don't do it).

BTW, Annie is hoping to see her name on the cover of a fiction novel soon... very soon. (And, if you’re wondering, Henry Talley never even noticed Annie as he had a mad crush on blonde-haired, blue-eyed Libby Boxler.)

Darlene Buchholz fell in love in the first grade with a boy named Neil. He shared his crackers and milk at recess after someone took her snack and never got caught. She’s loved romance and intrigue ever since. By the third grade, she discovered Nancy Drew mysteries and developed a great passion for perky heroines who drove convertibles (proof they were in charge of their own lives). She wrote her own one-hundred-page mysteries, giving the heroine a much better hero than wimpy Ned Nickerson, who seemed more fashion accessory than hero. What woman wouldn’t prefer a cowboy or a cop named…well, Neil, of course?

Darlene never thought of grammar as a challenge. It was, instead, a tool to help her express the ideas she felt passionate about. She served as a peer mentor in junior high and high school. Becoming a high school English teacher was a natural for Darlene. She loved sharing ideas expressed in great literature and exposition.

Now, family raised, Darlene has decided to write stories again. She writes romantic suspense, and sometimes her heroines drive trucks rather than convertibles. Her heroes are still cowboys and cops. She hopes to publish soon.

BTW… Darlene disagrees with Annie about the acceptability of ending a sentence with a preposition. Yes, you can! No one, absolutely no one, including Annie, says: On what did you step? Not in casual conversation and not in situations where you’d like to impress the committee in charge of awarding you a grant or a fellowship. We all say: What did you step on?

Regular, (Month-long) classes, consisting of at least 2 lessons per week for CRW and HCRW members is $15, all others $25.  Mini, (2 week) classes, consisting of 2-3 lessons per week for CRW and HCRW members is $10, all others $15.

*Please Note: If paying by Paypal, please send money to workshops@carolinaromancewriters.com.

Registration Deadline extended to April 4             Register Now!

For more information, email Carole at: workshops@carolinaromancewriters.com