Funding Your Bliss Grantwriting Seminars

After a long absence, I’ve decided to periodically post updates on Funding Your Bliss. Like many others in this recent downward economy, it’s been a struggle to keep funding my bliss. It’s been a treading water time for me trying to maintain as I’ve waited for opportunities to return. As many independent artists and creatives, I’ve been exploring other means of revenue as well as seeking grants and fellowships.

One unexpected source came from a Kickstarter-type project through United States Artists to help support expansion and distribution of my local radio show. Another has been to focus more locally and to reach out more to the community as I gestate my ideas for a national project. It’s also been a time of getting back into freelancing chops by producing feature stories on national radio shows.

But the main source of funding for my projects has come and will always come from writing grant proposals and getting public agencies to fund my work. This site has played host to many of my grantwriting tips. I’m more formally offering small group seminars to help others sharpen their writing, pitching and promotional skills when it comes to seeking funding.

Check out my Funding Your Bliss Grantwriting seminars on two different weekends in July 2012. If you’re in the Portland, OR area and would like to attend a small group group of six people to hone your writing/fundraising skills, let me know!

The dates are July 8th or July 21st at 1-5pm in my office/studio in SE Portland (where I took the above photo). Find more here.  And if you want to make a weekend of it, I’m also offering the popular ‘How To Make Stunning Interviews” seminar on interviewing and professionally recording.

It’s just six people and me. The $100 seminar fee through MediaRites Productions also includes one free grant critique after the seminar. So far some great people are attending, and I’m looking forward to working with them.

It’s time for me to come back to this topic and to talk with you again. Please let me know what topics you might like to explore!

Take care, Dmae

 

Filling Those Seats!

For the last few weeks, I’ve been preparing for a debut reading of my new memoir-in progress, Lady Buddha and the Temple of Ma on November 11, 2009. It’s part of a Multicultural Symposium titled “Mixed: The Politics of Hybrid Identities at Lewis and Clark College here in Portland. I visited the venue for the reading yesterday and was overwhelmed to see so many seats to fill!

A great part the success of my work in radio and theater has involved knowing how to promote. For theatre it used to entail sending out lots of postcards and posting flyers of the production and calling newspapers and radio stations in hopes of getting mentioned or interviewed. In my national radio documentary work, it used to involve sending out postcards and cassettes and more recently CDs to station managers and program managers with hopes of getting airplay. We still send out CDs but also offer stations the option to download the audio directly for broadcast.

Now there are so many options to getting the word out that doesn’t involve spending a great deal of money especially if you don’t have much of a budget. For this reading event, I asked a graphic designer to make a postcard but also come up with a graphic I could send out online. Then I sent out evites and set up an event page on Facebook. I’ve been following this up with emails to my email list. I got a free trial at Constant Contact to see how I like it. There is a bit of a learning curve but I’m finding it to be good way to send out your email list.

Though I send out a few postcards, I generally opt to have a lot of postcards or small flyers I can take with me throughout the day or to events. That way if I see a friend or meet someone new, I can hand them the info about the event or radio show.

I also have been having good response to tweet messages about events and radio programs particularly my weekly live arts show, Stage and Studio, on KBOO 90.7 FM. I performed a short reading from a different part of my memoir-in-progress on my radio show and let people know about the upcoming public event.

I’m really excited about debuting this new work and the Templeton Council Chamber is a warm inviting space so I’m looking forward to reading and performing my work! I haven’t spent a ton of time publicizing this but hopefully I’ve reached a lot of friendly faces who will be in the audience. Together with the colleges promotion, we’ll fill a lot of those seats!

Anyone else have success with low to no-cost promotional ideas for your artistic work? Please share them if you do!

And if you’re in Portland come see my reading/performance November 11th at 7-8pm. I’d love to see you!

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Blogs for Writers

Office Kitty Kiki says read these blogs...

It’s Friday, I’m trying to work on my memoir but darn it people keep sending me interesting tweets with writer’s tips. So here are some blogs with practical hard-hitting advice for professional writers.

At the Hawaii Writers Conference, I met Literary Agent Kristin Nelson and have followed her blog, Pub Rants. Kristen has a no-nonsense approach that’s fun complete with music accompaniment.

Willamette Writers brought in Jane Friedman, publisher and editorial director of the Writers Digest brand community. Her blog, “No Rules,” carries quite a punch, too.

The Swivet has tell-like-it-is advice on dealing with rejection. Colleen Lindsay, a publishing consultant and literary agent maintains the blog, another one I’ll definitely be following.

I really appreciate these professionals taking the time to blog useful tips about the hard realities of the literary world. Kudos to them for helping us in our efforts to fund our bliss!

Send me your suggestions for professional blogs that have helped you!

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6 Tips on Conference Mapping

Here’s part three of my Summer of Conferences posts.  In Part 1 I talk about Fishtrap. Part 2 was about Willamette Writers and the Hawaii Writers conferences.

View from Hawaii Writers Conference

After attending both public radio and writers conferences for a number of years, I find a positive experience really depends on your attitude and the preparation you do ahead of time. I’ve gone to conferences generally to network, promote my latest projects and learn something new. Here are some tips I can offer if you’re thinking about investing time and money to go to a conference:

1. Open your mind and let go of expectations. Don’t assume everyone is dying to hear about your project or book. Think about meeting people and learning about them as people, not rungs on a ladder to success. Do your best to promote yourself and your passion but set the bar low on expectations. You’ll leave yourself open to getting more out of the conference.

2. Study the schedule and presenter bios and photos BEFORE the conference.  A good many interractions happen in the hallways, events and after a workshop or session. Be very choosy about which session you’ll attend. Try to learn as much as you can while you’re at the conference.

3. Be prepared to meet anyone, not just people you THINK may be helpful to your career. I don’t know how many times people have been rude or have ignored me when I meet them at lunch and then later I’ve presented at a panel and they’re friendly after they find out who I REALLY am. That’s just plain silly. Don’t be a conference snob. Be nice to everyone!  The worst case scenario: you’ll make friends!

4. Prepare a postcard or small flyer ahead of time with your project or book idea. Have the title, your name/contact info and a short book/project blurb in 25 words or less. Include a great photo to draw attention to the idea. It’s simple and something you can do and print out in color at home. You don’t need a lot of copies. Just enough to hand out when you meet people.

5. Practice your pitch at home in 25 words or less. Write up your blurb and then paraphrase it. Say it in front of the mirror or with a friend. It can’t sound memorized. Just conversational. I even added a bit of Hollywood to my pitch about my memoir: It’s “Joy Luck Club” meets “Terms of Endearment.” And an editor at a prominent publishing house loved it!

6. Have fun! People love hanging out with people who are having fun. Don’t you? Guaranteed, if you’re having a good time, people will want to meet you. That’s just human nature.

Check out the flyer for my memoir that  I took with me to the last writers conferences. And send me your tips for getting the most out of conferences!

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Conferences Part 2 – Portland and Hawaii

I’ve been going to two different conferences the last couple of years: Willamette Writers in Portland, Oregon and the Hawaii Writers Conference, formerly in Maui and now in Honolulu. Because my “track” has been non-fiction memoir writing, I’m going to speak from my personal perspective about the value of both these conferences.

Sunset on Waikiki

While the Willamette Writers Conference is a  conference covers screenwriting, fiction/non-fiction, the strongest aspect of the conference seems to be the screenwriting workshops and sessions. Under the leadership of Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb, WW has brought in some top names in the industry. I think WW has done a better job with the caliber of agents and producers they’ve brought in from Hollywood than the Hawaii Writers Conference. However, the non-fiction track was limiting and not as helpful to professional writers who make a living from their work. I found the legal consultant session extremely helpful though. Overall the agents I talked with were a mixed bag too and given how many women are working on memoir, I would have wanted more memoir sessions. The non-fiction track isn’t as strong as I would have liked it to be this year. Yet it’s my understanding WW has a good record of authors getting their books published through the conference contacts. Certainly as a smaller conference, there is more chance for interaction between gatekeepers and writers.

Royal Hawaiian Hotel at conference

The Hawaii conference has brought in Michael Arndt (screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine), I didn’t see many film agents and producers listed. I’d recommend the WW conference for screenwriters and filmmakers over the Hawaii Conference.

Overall, the Hawaii Writers Conference (formerly the Maui Writers Conference) held the strongest non-fiction/fiction publishing track at any conference I’ve attended. The list of presenters was impressive this year. I found the sessions really fit together well. You could stay in one room for the next session that followed through with the literary track. The sessions flowed well into each other and built on each other, so that at the beginning of the day you could learn about query letters and proposals and by the end of the day you’d be well versed in publishing contracts and rights issues.

And it is Hawaii after all. Though I preferred the Maui location because there was more interactivity and (come on, it was Maui!), I found agents, editors and publishers even in the Honolulu setting were friendly and didn’t mind you approaching them. Still everyone was welcoming and positive. Even in my consults, agents and editors walked out the door with me to give me their final words of wisdom.

Maui shore

(Another observation: I’d say roughly two-thirds of writers conference attendees are women. And yet as echoed by my interview with Debra Gwartney, a good of writers published are men.)

Next up some advice to make the most use of your conference experience. Remember writers, these conferences including the travel are deductible, so save all your receipts!

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My Summer of Conferences, Part 1

Flyer for my memoir

For the last year and a half, I’ve been working on my multicultural memoir based on my personal radio pieces, Mei Mei, A Daughter’s Song, The Journey of Lady Buddha and Secret Asian Woman. The working title is now Lady Buddha and the Temple of Ma and the memoir focuses on the last three years of my mom’s life as I took care of her during her second battle with breast cancer. I flash back on our turbulent cross-cultural relationship and how her tragic childhood impacted my upbringing.

I decided to take this year off from fulltime radio work in order to focus on my writing. It’s been an amazing process of relearning to write after 25 years as a radio journalist and as a playwright. In both radio and theatre, “less is more.” In writing a book, “more is best” especially more visual and emotional description.

In order to help support my work, I applied for and received a small grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council. As part of this work, I’ve been attending some writers conferences this year: Fishtrap, a writers gathering, the Willamette Writers Conference and the Hawaii Writers Conference from which I just returned. I’ll be writing about these conferences in the next couple posts and giving some insight on the value of conferences for writers. I’ve also solicited some thoughts from other writers who will be posting soon.

Dmae interviewing Rich Wanshieder, co-founder of Fishtrap

To start off this series of posts, I encourage people to listen to two radio programs I produced recently about the Fishtrap Writers program near Joseph, Oregon, in the beautiful Wallowas Lake and Retreat Center. I interviewed the founders and participants in Part One including the legendary Kim Stafford.

In part two, I talked acclaimed writers Elise Paschen (who started the Poetry in Motion program) and Memoirist Debra Gwartney. They all give insight into the writing process but also about how they support their work spiritually and how they motivate themselves.

Debra Gwartney & Elise Pachen

Let me know what you think and share your experiences with writers conferences. I’ll be posting my thoughts on Willamette Writers and the Hawaii Writers conferences soon.

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Did You Find Funding Yet?

Thanks to Harold Phillips, an actor friend who twittered he was in a webisode, I happened upon a creative fundraising and marketing tool for an indie film project in Portland. Mike Vogel wrote and directed “The Waiting List,” a feature-length comedy currently playing at festivals, as well as the bike-themed short “Claire Rides a Bike.” He is also author of the Needle Award winning novel “Isn’t That Bigamy?” and runs Front Avenue, his production company. I asked him about his funding/marketing videos.

Tell me where you got the idea for these videos.

Mike Vogel

Everyone worked for “deferred payment” on my first feature, “The Waiting List.” So the second time around, I wanted to at least attempt to secure some sort of funding. After I wrote the script for “Did You Kiss Anyone?” I made a production schedule, budget, and a handsome PDF with headshot photos and charts and all that. But then it occurred to me that I don’t know one person who would drop $10,000 to be an equity investor in a feature, let alone ten or twenty people. But I know a handful of people who might donate $20 or $50, and so if I could target those people and the people they know, then maybe I’d have enough to cover basic production costs. But in order to get those contributors engaged, I wanted to give them something upfront, not just the promise of a movie I hadn’t shot. So, inspired by webisodes like “Wainy Days” and shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” I outlined the first five episodes of “Did You Cast Anyone?” and started asking favors from actor friends.

How do these fundraising/marketing videos represent the project you want to produce?

Both the movie “Did You Kiss Anyone?” and the webisodes “Did You Cast Anyone?” are comedies. But the webisodes are much broader comedy. Goofy, silly things that are better suited for the web. The actors in the webisodes will actually be in the movie playing the characters they talk about in the webisodes. The webisodes will continue into production and post-production because it’s a good way to build an audience regardless of whether or not that audience is donating money right away. Hopefully they’ll feel more involved and will want to tell friends to go see or buy the movie when it’s available.

How’s it going so far? Has it accomplished what you wanted?

We’ve received a few donations on our website DidYouCastAnyone.com but not enough to start shooting yet. There’s a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) style of filmmaking that I think is dead. If it’s not dead, it’s totally uninteresting. DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) is a lot more exciting. Ideally, the webisodes might help us find someone who wants to invest $10K or $20K in an independent film. But even if that doesn’t happen, we’re building an audience for a movie before we even make the movie. And we’re having a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

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