Meet Holly Lorincz

$cholarship sponsorship needed

I've  been teaching writers for 20 years now and in this profession I try to act with a lot of generosity since I've never forgotten the writers and teachers who have opened doors for me. Most whom (or is it who?) I  never properly thanked. 

Five years ago I created my writing conference Summer in Words. You might have guessed that the conference  is not a big money-making venture. In fact, it barely breaks even.  It's mostly a labor of love because I love to teach and I love to bring writers to the coast for a giant boost of inspiration. And I meet the loveliest people during this venture.   

Every year I give a scholarship to an underemployed or unemployed writer to attend Summer in Words. This year, I need your help since I already awarded a scholarship to the upcoming conference and then was told about a writer who especially needs to attend the conference.

Her name is Holly Lorincz and she's the kind of motivated and gifted teacher we wish our children and grandchildren could learn from. Here's the brief version of her bio: 

 

"Holly Lorincz grew up on the Columbia River and now lives on the north Oregon coast. She can't seem to get away from water. She has taught high school language arts for 15 years at Neah-Kah-Nie High School while at the same time coaching an award winning speech & debate team. She was the Oregon Speech Educator of the year in 2007 and has twice received Outstanding Educator awards from the National Federation Of High Schools. She helped the speech team grow from zero to forty in a school with only 200 students, achieved three State Championships with seven of her competitors earning individual State Champion trophies, and served on the Speech State Committee for ten years. Somewhere in there, she was lucky enough to trick an amazing man into creating an uber-funny baby boy with her and occasionally cook dinner.

Two years ago, Holly was forced to step off the gerbil wheel when she contracted mononucleosis. The underlying Epstein Barr Virus has morphed into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, leaving her to battle physical and mental fatigue -- a language arts specialist with a virus attached to her communications and short-term memory brain bits. No longer able to teach. The first year was spent in bed, wallowing in depression and self-identity crisis. Now she gets up, gets dressed, sometimes showers. Most importantly, she writes. In order to survive, she redefined herself as a novelist, hoarding the creative juice she once freely poured on her students, sometimes able to write only a sentence a day, sometimes a paragraph, but she writes.She dabbles in short story and poetry, loves writing children’s books with her six year old. And she just finished her first fiction novel, Smart Mouth."

Her longer bio is here

Holly's Blog is here:    http://hollylorincz.blogspot.com/

Despite Holly's health problems she's teaching a writing camp for teens at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita this summer. Summer in Words is having a raffle to benefit the the Hoffman Center and the fabulous Write Around Portland organization. As usual, I'm scrounging for raffle items (those related to writing especially appreciate, although we never turn down a bottle of wine.)We will also accept financial donations and pass them on to these worthy places that teach writing and keep the arts alive.

The cost for the conference is $265 and I'd like to also provide some feedback on her manuscript, the cost ranging from $45 to $350, depending on how much we raise.  

I see my role in life to inspire and help writers.

Could you please help me?Any amount will help.
Contact me about the raffle items.

Donations can be made through PayPal using either of my email addresses (link is at the bottom of this blog) and by sending them to Summer in Words, P.O. Box 820141, Portland, OR 97282-1141

As always, thanks to everyone who visits this blog and my site. Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

In Case you Missed it...

Fifty of the Most Inspiring Authors in the World

by Poets & Writers

Fearless, inventive, persistent, beautiful, or just plain badass—here are some of the living authors who shake us awake, challenge our ideas of who we are, embolden our actions, and, above all, inspire us to live life more fully and creatively. Add your favorites to the list in the comments section below. 

And Neil Gaiman's commencement address to The University of the Arts class is here: "Make good art."

Let's do it. Make good art.

Linked in For Writers

I'm awake at dawn with my head buzzing with all that needs to be accomplished in the next month before Summer in Words. In case you're wondering, there are still openings available. The weather has turned rainy, skies dismal, with patches of sun breaks and drizzle. It is no longer distracting, luring me into the yard for one more session of planting, weeding, or compost spreading. This means I can focus on an editing job and the conference. If you're a writer, you know that focus is your true-hearted ally.

Because I struggle to focus, I tend to ignore the frequent dings in my email box announcing various happenings and updates on Linked in and other sites. I'm about to change that after I saw this list published at Lee Lofland's site The Graveyard Shift. Aspiring suspense and thriller writers need to check out his information on forensics and police procedures. I think you're going to agree that there are some juicy pickings here.The 20 Essential Linked in Groups For Aspiring Writers.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

"A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it." - John le Carre

Risk Taker

As we all know, it can be plenty challenging to publish that first novel. Then comes the challenge of sustaining your work and building a devoted readership. Michael McGarrity (Hard Country) did all that. A former police officer, he was the author of twelve successful police procedural novels - the Kevin Kerney series. So what did he do for his lucky thirteenth novel? He wrote the first of an epic western trilogy tracing Kevin Kerney's forbears as they shaped the Southwest. Bold? Risky? You bet. But as Michael told Bill Kenower in their fascinating interview, he's a storyteller - period - and this was the story he needed to tell. ~ from Author Magazine

Thoughts on writing by Andre Dubus III
“If you don’t put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There’s the writer and there’s the author. The author—you don’t ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care—easier said than done. Accept that the world may never notice this thing you worked so hard at. And instead, do it for it, find a job, find a way of living that gives you an hour or two or three a day to do it, and then work your ass off sending out, trying to get out there, but do not put the pressure on the work to do something for you. Because then you’re going to be writing dishonestly and for the market instead of for the characters and your story.”

“There are some beautiful books out there. But the ones that leave me cold are the ones where I feel—it’s that postmodern thing—it’s more experimentation with language than it is a deep compassionate falling into another human being’s experience.”

“I really think that if there’s any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, its self-consciousness. And if you have one eye on the mirror to see how you’re doing, you’re not doing it as well as you can. Don’t think about publishing, don’t think about editors, don’t think about marketplace.”

Thought for the Day

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

~CARL SAGAN

Last Call

L

ast call (May 17) to receive the group discount at the Hallmark Inn for the Summer in Words Writing Conference. It’s a one-of-a-kind program for training writers at every skill level, from unpublished to professional, and offers help and inspiration to writers in every phase of their careers.

Why attend  Summer in Words? We consider writing a calling not a hobby.

The Summer in Words Conference is an intimate, workshop-intensive event for serious writers of all genres who wish to either begin a novel, work towards perfecting their memoir or novel-in-progress, (while also learning to write short fiction), or focus on their craft while revising toward publication. The Summer in Words Conference will provide not only the ideal location, but a perfect mix of professional and experienced faculty dedicated to teaching writers the pragmatic craft and market skills they need to be successful.

The Summer in Words Writing Conference is for aspiring authors and writers exists to: 1) teach participants advanced craft and technique 2) enable participants to learn the inside of publicizing their writing, a necessary skill in today’s marketplace, 3) combine the advantages of a larger conference with that of a small group workshop; and 4) provide a setting conducive to accomplishing all of the above (the endless blue of the Pacific as a backdrop).

The faculty: Sage Cohen, Chelsea Cain, Jessica Glenn, Cathy Lamb,  Jessica Morrell, Naseem Rahka, Bruce Holland Rogers

Where it Happens: The Hallmark Inn & Resort

Located in midtown of charming Cannon Beach, Oregon.  It offers premium lodging in a beautiful oceanfront resort. Hallmark Resort-Cannon Beach overlooks the sentinels of Haystack Rock and Tillamook Lighthouse is within view, it creates a splendid backdrop for spectacular vistas and stunning sunsets

Haystack Rock:
Towering 235 feet above sandy Cannon Beach, Haystack Rock is the third largest monolith in the world. This popular attraction shelters a marine garden at its base, which is home to marine creatures in tide pools open for gentle exploration by the public.