Steve Perry's Writing Seminar

The Only Sin is to Quit

Steve Perry gave a one day seminar on writing in general and writing Fiction/Science Fiction specifically. By now everyone should know that I am friends with Steve Perry, and he occasionally gives me writing advice, as he does lot’s of noob authors. You all should also be aware that he is a martial arts adept, and a student of Maha Guru Stevan Plinck, Pentjak Silat Serak. I’ve crossed hands with him on a few occasions, and I have to admit: The old man has the moves.

Having said all this, I have avoided posts that sound too much like idol worship when I write about him. In fact, I usually only mention him in reply to some barb/insult/inquiry about my death. I hate name dropping. It’s an easy thing to do when you admire someone, and famous people are always a kind of showstopping look-at-me opportunity that I despise seeing in other people. It’s like trying to be famous by association. “I was speaking to Tony Blair the other day – You know, Prime Minister of Great Britain – and he thinks we should have scones for tea on Thursday”.

Yes, quite.

Usually if you do know someone famous and you start touting that person left and right, well, it makes you a little suspect. It's hard to remain objective in the spotlight. I mean, the first thing I say when the friend of somebody famous tells me that said celeb has produced something great and I should read/listen/taste/buy it, I want to ask; “Is that how you REALLY feel, or would you completely ignore this (thing) if you didn’t know him?”

So: No idol worship from me. No gushing. No mushy stuff.

*SIGH*

I can’t help it.

What a great workshop. Its cliché, but a truism in this case: It would have been worth it at twice the price. If he does another one, I’ll go even if it’s just a repeat performance of last weekend. When you find a good teacher, one tends to cling.

Writers are usually introverts, and drawing anything from them publicly is a task unto itself. Steve’s humorous teaching style made us all feel comfortable opening up around each other, and as the day progressed we all shared various ideas and inspirations around the room. He’s easy to listen to, and doesn’t drone on until you are passing out from sheer boredom.

I’m not sure how much of the material I can legally put up here, but most of what Perry taught you can find on his blog. In retrospect, he gives away quite a large amount of information online and it’s all great stuff, but there is much you aren’t getting unless you are in the room with the man himself. No, there wasn’t much on lasers, aliens, Matadors and Kung Fu. The fact that Perry writes “Space Opera”-style fiction probably was a little misleading when the advertised the workshop, it can make one think that we’ll be spending the day hearing stories of how he was inspired by Rex Rocket and the Galaxy Rangers of the 1950’s serial cliffhangers. We did indeed get a few stories and anecdotes, but it was by and large the nuts and bolts of writing and succeeding as a writer. Character arc, storyline, outline, plots, rules of writing…These are things that I needed explained to me, and Steve gave us the whole meal with all the trimmings. I could see this was difficult to cram into a one day workshop, but we covered an enormous amount of material in seven hours. Steve even stuck around for a while after the thing was over and gave private consultation to several of the authors wanting some attention from him.

Several of the attendees were already published working authors, and it was a good experience for me personally to see them listening to the same guy I was. I haven’t published anything yet, and I have a kind of distance-awe of people who do this regularly. It helps knowing that they’re humans as well, and need advice from time to time.

One of Steve’s big themes was positive reinforcement. Lot’s of critical writing professors like to tear their students down, tell them that most of them won’t make it as a writer. Perry made us all walk out of there with the feeling that we not only COULD make it as writers, but that we WERE going to make it, and to get busy making it happen. I know many of the attendees left inspired and motivated to get busy with various writing projects they had on the fire. I certainly did.

If you are an aspiring writer, check out Steve Perry’s blog HERE, and if you live in the Pacific Northwest check out the Oregon Writer’s Colony HERE.

They are both worthwhile investments of your time and money. Tell them that Bobbe sent you. It won’t give you a discount at all, but they might give me a break sometime in the future if enough people say it. God knows I need it with all the speeding I do between Seattle and Portland.