October 2018 Boosting Creativity with Sara

We were delighted to have Sara Sargent, Executive Editor at HarperCollins lead her workshop, Sparking Creativity, at our 2018  Children's Writers of the Hudson Valley fall  event.  She was enthusiastic and fostered a fun learning environment. Below is a sampling of some of the topics that we discussed.

 Before you start writing, think about what you are writing, why are you writing it, who is it for and what is your goal. We talked about why writers get stuck and how identifying what makes us stuck is the answer to solving it. If you are feeling mired in your writing progress below are some ways to stimulate your writing muscles.

Some external ways to boost your creativity include changing your environment, create a vision board of the story you want to write, help someone else with their project and get your brain off your problems to name a few.

Internal ways to spark creativity include journaling or seeing a therapist to awaken that inner child or stir that pot! These were only two of the multiple suggestions. I picked my favorites.

Sara discussed elements for a good beginning: sense of intrigue, strong sense of place, compelling voice, good writing, compelling character and one good device.

Other topics discussed were how to fix your beginning, errors on the first page, tangible and emotion objects of the story and writing exercises to encourage creativity.

I left with three pages of handwritten notes and a three-page handout from Sara that also included additional writing exercises.

Thank you, Sara, for spending your Saturday afternoon with us. We received numerous compliments about your workshop and look forward to having you as an encore presenter in the near future.

The CWHV team also thanks our local writers for their continued support of our conference.

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