Write-O-Rama

What is Write-O-Rama?
Write-O-Rama is a full day of more than 40 one-hour workshops offered by our creative writing teachers to anyone who wants to write. To sustain you as you write we supply you with free food and drink, two open mics and a wrap party following the last session. You will come away with new writing, make new friends, sample Hugo House classes and find fresh inspiration.

How does it work?
Write-O-Rama is a benefit for Hugo House. The registration fee is $45, and the more money you raise, the more prizes you win! If 100 people raise $100 each, fireworks will ensue--let's be clear about that. Registration starts at 9:30 a.m., and the first workshops start at 10 a.m. The wrap party begins at 5 p.m., right after the last sessions of the day.

Write-O-Rama is an all day event, but you can come for any part of it. No preregistration required; just drop in. And if you can't make it yourself, you can sponsor a friend!  

The next Write-O-Rama will be held June 5, 2010. Please check back for more info in late April.

Presenting Sponsor:

What's a Write-O-Rama laureate?
Our Write-O-Rama laureates are our super fundraisers, our writing buddies, our special friends of Hugo House. They commit to raising at least $145, and in return for supporting Hugo House they get access to a blog where they can post their writing and read other laureates' work. In the weeks before Write-O-Rama, laureates receive weekly writing prompts from our teachers, invitations to the Write-O-Rama pre-party and special prizes. It's a great way to get connected to our writing community and get inspired--all while raising money for a great cause.

Who can be a Write-O-Rama laureate?
YOU can be a Write-O-Rama laureate! To sign up, e-mail Rebecca Brinson at development@hugohouse.org.

Don't forget the fabulous prizes
Last summer, Write-O-Rama raised $10,000 for Hugo House. We’d like to do it again this winter! Everyone will get their share of Hugo love on December 5, but a select few who bring in the most money for Hugo House will win prizes, too:

• The person who raises the most money will win a six-week Hugo Writing Class.
• The people who raise the second and third largest amounts will each win a one-day class.
• Anyone who raises $500 or more will receive two tickets to the final event of the 2009-2010 Hugo Literary Series and will get an exclusive invitation to a special pre-event cocktail party with the featured writers.

Plus this:

• Raise at least $250 and you'll receive a signed book by one of our Literary Series authors. Plus:
• Raise at least $150 and you'll receive a Hugo House membership and a Hugo mug. Plus:
• Raise at least $75 and you'll receive a pack of the finest literary magazines.

What if I can't make it to Write-O-Rama?
You can sponsor a friend instead. It's easy to sponsor participation in Write-O-Rama online with your credit card.

Here's how:

1. Push the "Donate Now through Network for Good" button below;
2. Enter the amount you want to give--it is all tax deductible;
3. Fill out your donation and privacy preferences;
4. Under "Designation" type "Write-O-Rama";
5. Under "Dedication" type the name of the person you want to sponsor (including yourself);
6. Fill out your credit card information as instructed;
7. Make your online contribution by 5 p.m. on Friday, December 5, 2008 for it to count towards your friend's total for Write-O-Rama prizes and glory.

Sample Write-O-Rama Workshops

Workshops begin at 10 a.m. and continue on the hour throughout the day until 5 p.m. The times listed below are subject to change.

Roberta Brown Root: Doin’ the Nasty; 12 and 2 p.m.
Have an urge for a quickie? Wanna go all-the-way with your writing? Get it on at Write-O-Rama. Join me for a nooner and come back for a matinee. Prompts will include paragraphs, poems and pictures.

Julie H. Case: Knives and Dogs, Deer and Rain: Place and Voice in Fiction; 10 and 11 a.m.
In a mere 15 minutes, we'll shake up familiar notions of what makes a place-filled voice real and authentic. (Hint: It ain’t slang and dialect.) Find out how to bring your place —be it the Pacific Northwest, Brooklyn or the Ozarks—to life in fiction, poetry or nonfiction.

Karin de Weille: Character Immersion; 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.
An extended, guided meditation—based on a photograph that you choose from a selection of portraits I provide—help you connect deeply with a character of your invention, practicing your skills of observation as well as heightening your senses. A specific instruction launches you into your writing.

Wilson Diehl: Out of the Box (and Onto the Page); 12 and 2 p.m.
In this creative nonfiction workshop we’ll employ a box of “treasures” (antique spectacles, a plastic cowboy, a Scrabble tile) to help us break from the linear tradition and play with the art of associative movement—and produce some lovely, lyrical writing in the process.

Kelley Eskridge: It’s Not Just What You Say; 2 and 4 p.m.
Dialogue is much more than what characters say. We'll look at how people communicate between the lines (or without them), and learn tips and techniques for visualizing and writing specific physical action and body language to carry the conversation.

Eli Hastings: Regional Rock!; 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.
If you’re from gritty city blocks or red dirt banks, well-groomed suburbs or Midwestern pastures, we’ll make others feel, taste, see, smell and hear that place. Make use of all five of your senses to bring the reader into your setting and bring him/her face to face with at least one character that a) reflects the landscape or b) is totally incongruous to it.

Wendy Joseph: Your Words Onstage: Writing the One Act Play; 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.
The class will communally write one short drama, to work on the concepts of conflict, character and use of the most effective language. The prompt will be two characters have a disagreement. What is it and how do they solve it?

Catherine Kirkwood: Point of View Unleashed; 3 and 4 p.m.
First person or third, the omniscient or unreliable narrator, emotionally close or distant–each point of view tells a story a little differently. But what happens to the story if you let them all speak up at once? Using a few simple tricks of literary masters, you'll shoot the rapids of shifting perspectives and find out.

Linera Lucas: Postcard Secrets; 3 and 4 p.m.
This is a three-part exercise. The first part is to write as the person who sent the postcard. The second is to write as the person who received the postcard. The third part is a secret—to be revealed only in the workshop.

Layne Maheu: Behind Door #3; 10 and 11 a.m.
The unannounced visitor; the unopened gift; the thing suddenly found. In the secret revealed, we’ll really explore how to reveal character, through action, dialogue and description—fiction’s real surprise.

Peter Mountford: Exploring Narrative Time; 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Some twenty-page stories deal with the events of half an hour, while many five-page stories cover an entire year. In this class, we’ll bend, stretch and compress narrative time and explore the effects of using this often overlooked element of storytelling.   

Cambray Provo & Bryan Edenfield: Exercises in Style: Storytelling with Zines; 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and 2-4 p.m.
Write a simple story, a work of flash fiction, a short description, anything. Using various styles employed by zines (collage, comic, poetry, etc.), we’ll retell that story six more times under challenging time and size constraints that will stretch the imagination. In the end, you’ll have your own mini-zine!

Midge Raymond: Jump-starting the Story; 2 and 4 p.m.
In this workshop, writers will have the opportunity to begin a story from scratch and write as much as they can in an hour’s time. Using prompts given at intervals during the session, students will create characters, place their characters in conflict and flesh out the story with attention to dialogue, setting and detail. By the end of the session, writers will have the beginnings of a story or novel.

Judith Roche: Eternal Persons of the Poem, Writing from Myth and Fairy Tales; 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Gods and mythic personas play in and out of our literature and, through their stories, help us understand our own lives. This class will explore truth and life of myth and the dark heart of fairy tales, and we will write our own poems inspired by mythic consciousness.

Ann Spiers: From Poem to Chapbook: Jiggle, Break, Jump, Counter; 2 and 4 p.m.
Taking cues from the Northwest’s published chapbooks, we’ll explore how to take a good poem and extend its parameters into a poem cycle worthy of the chapbook form. Input from interviews with local chapbook publishers as well as in-the-hand examples.

JT Stewart: The Set-up is Everything; 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Consider this workshop as a sublime adventure in using a variety of opening sentence patterns. Seven of them. Your choice. All guaranteed to jump-start your imagination for creating poems, dialogs, memoirs, manifestoes or stories. Our goal–two manuscripts. Lots of reading aloud. Lots of fun. Surprise yourself. Surprise us.

Ann Teplick: FLASH FICTION: Jump In! Jump Out!; 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Pinched for time to write that epic novel? Short story? Stage or screenplay? The aerobics of flash fiction (short short, 300-1000 words; ultra short, 10-300 words) may well be your ticket to bliss. Editors, online and off, are on the lookout for these powerhouses, where the focus is concision; the smaller idea in the big pond; one vibrant image per tale; the mystery along the way; the twist at the end; and the payoff or resolution. For inspiration we will look at the flashes of Paul Theroux, Lydia Davis, Dave Eggers, Donald Hall and Jamaica Kincaid, and then we will write our own.

Anastacia Tolbert: Naked Poetry; 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.
In this class you’ll write without censoring, without stigmas, without traditional cautiousness and without the imaginary borders you place upon the page. Nudity not required.

Susan Zwinger: Creating Vivid Human Beings; 3 and 4 p.m.
Learn to build and describe characters through scene, behavior, story arc and dialogue. Create believability and complexity. Allow your characters to grow, discover and change, just as actual people around you do. Watch how great authors create such memorable characters, which stay with us and change our lives. Every memoirist and biographer must create dynamic, controversial characters who leap from the page.