Angling for Plot: Find the Angle of Your Autobiographical Piece

with Adair Lara, Award Winning Columnist, Author of 10 plus Books including Naked, Drunk & Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay & Writing Instructor

Have you ever poured your heart into a personal essay only to find that it just grows like an untended plant?  You really have no idea where it should begin, where to end it, or what goes in the middle?

Adair Lara, author of Naked, Drunk and Writing (Ten Speed Press) , will show you how to Find your angle. The angle is the plot of the essay, the controlling idea. In a memoir, it’s called the premise ( “Cook a new Julia Child recipe every day for a year").  An original spin, even on a common idea (a story about illness, for example) will make your memoir stand out and get it published.

Topic:  Angling for Plot: Find the Angle of Your Autobiographical Piece
Speaker:  Adair Lara, Award Winning Columnist, Author of 10 plus Books including Naked, Drunk & Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay & Writing Instructor
Time: 11 AM PDT |12 PM MDT | 1 PM CDT |2 PM EDT
Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (NAMW Members, the Call-in telephone number and conference call code are posted below. If you are an NAMW member and cannot see the details, please login here and navigate back to this page).

[private_NAMW]
Telephone Number: (323) 417-0075
Participant Access Code: 895767#[/private_NAMW]

Not Available for the Live Call? NAMW members can access a link in the NAMW member area within a week of the teleseminar to download the audio mp3 of this call!

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In this teleseminar, you will learn:

• How to single out one idea –the most surprising one -- to focus the essay on.
• How to use  topical, seasonal ,and local angles to make editors eager to buy your pieces
• How to shape your essay so that it exactly fits the needs of the editor you send it to, yet is faithful to your original vision

About Adair

Adair started her career by writing for local magazines—first as managing editor of San Francisco Focus, the city magazine, and then as executive editor of SF, a design magazine. She wrote a column every Tuesday and Thursday for the San Francisco Chronicle for twelve years, winning the Associated Press Award for Best Columnist in California, and was a reporter in the paper’s books and feature department for an additional four years. She has published more than ten books and is a contributor to magazines such as MORE, Reader’s Digest, Glamour, and Ladies’ Home Journal. Lara leads sold-out writing workshops and conducts private memoir consulting in the San Francisco Bay Area. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and is available for interviews. For more information, visit Adairlara.com.