{"id":713,"date":"2009-09-04T09:22:05","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T16:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=713"},"modified":"2009-09-04T09:22:05","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T16:22:05","slug":"writing-for-charity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=713","title":{"rendered":"Writing for Charity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little while ago, I posted about the Writing for Charity Event<\/span><\/a> at the Treehouse Children’s Museum<\/span><\/a> in Ogden, Utah.\u00a0 I was invited to take part in the workshop as a debut author, and I think I was the “newest” writer at the event.\u00a0 It also happened to be my first time participating in something like this as a presenter, rather than an attendee.\u00a0 I didn’t really feel like there was much of a difference between me and the talented writers we were presenting to, but I had a wonderful time.<\/p>\n

I got to participate in a big group panel, and then a smaller session with Emily Wing Smith, Sara Zarr, James Dashner, and Wendy Toliver.\u00a0 After that, I guided a critique of first pages with several soon-to-be-published writers.\u00a0 I was quite impressed with the quality of storytelling in those pages (like I said, not much difference between me and them).\u00a0 I hope I said some helpful things.<\/p>\n

As a fundraiser, the event was very successful.\u00a0 The museum raised $8,000, which will be used to put books in the hands of kids, and Deseret Books donated a sizable portion of that.\u00a0 As a workshop, the feedback from attendees was very positive.\u00a0 The mood was light and supportive, and everywhere there was a real sense of community.<\/p>\n

Some highlights:<\/p>\n

1 – Getting a cool mini harmonica from the Treehouse Museum.\u00a0 It’s what their volunteers wear.<\/p>\n

2 – Being introduced by Shannon Hale.\u00a0 Shannon Hale! (She’s one hilarious MC)<\/p>\n

3 – Using a commonly accepted expression for bad first drafts, which contains a swear word, in front of a group of attendees, getting some laughter and also possibly scandalizing the grandmother of one attendee.<\/p>\n

4 – Seeing my friend DaNae<\/span><\/a> there, who bravely stepped out of her comfort zone and brought her picture book manuscript for critique.\u00a0 Go DaNae!<\/p>\n

5 – Assisting Brodi in reenacting the time a woman hit on her at the SCBWI conference in LA.\u00a0 You see, Brodi was dancing at the Blue Moon Ball and… wait, you know what?\u00a0 She tells it much better<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

6 – Having dinner afterward with a group of writers I admire, and realizing that I’m pretty lucky to be a part of this community.<\/p>\n

To cap things off, here’s a picture that was taken of all the presenters.<\/p>\n

\"photo
photo credit: Gailon Tucker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little while ago, I posted about the Writing for Charity Event at the Treehouse Children’s Museum in Ogden, Utah.\u00a0 I was invited to take part in the workshop as a debut author, and I think I was the “newest” writer at the event.\u00a0 It also happened to be my first time participating in something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literacy","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-bv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1972,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}