News And Announcements

Our Spring Summit will take place Memorial Day Weekend, May 26-27, 2018 at the Sunriver Resort Lodge, located at 17600 Center Drive, Sunriver, OR 97707. For those unfamiliar with Central Oregon’s high plateau, Sunriver is situated 15 minutes south of the city of Bend. If you plan to fly in, the Redmond Municipal Airport (RDM) is only 40 minutes away, and is serviced by Alaska Air, American, Delta Airlines and United carriers. Shuttle service to and from the airport is available to those staying at the resort.

Memoir & personal narrative, substantive story building, and scripting the commercial screenplay are the emphasis of our Spring session. As always, craft is where it’s at. There are three tracks to choose from:

1. Into the Deep: Mining Substance and Shaping Narrative with author and internationally renowned writing provocateur Judy Reeves >>MORE

Sometimes a writer skates on the surface of a story, or tiptoes around its edges, hesitant to dig into its depths. Or maybe she doesn’t recognize the markings of a vein, rich with possibilities. Another writer may know exactly where he’s going, but he’s in such hurry to get there he doesn’t take the time to slow down and look around. His story may move from plot point to plot point, but the piece doesn’t hold any surprises, for him or for the reader. This workshop is for writers of all stripes willing to dig deeper to truly reach the reader.

2. Screenwriting from Scratch: Why, What, How with award-winning screenwriter, director, documentarian Michael Steven Gregory >>MORE

Be it features, network TV, premium channels, streaming original networks such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Studios, or even self-produced YouTube or Vimeo videos, today’s screenwriters have more opportunities than ever to get their work in front of audiences. The movies and shows that catapult careers, however, those whose whole remain greater than the sum of their parts, are built upon bedrock on which every good picture is anchored. This workshop will focus on writing the commercially viable script. Your script. That’s it.

3. Your Legacy in Print: Writing and Publishing Your Life Story with author/acquisitions editor/freelance editor Jennifer Silva Redmond >>MORE

“I’ve got a kick-ass story to tell, but I’m not a writer!” Don’t worry about it. You have a memoir-worthy life story and no idea how to get it written? You’ve maybe even started writing (or even written) a memoir and need to get it ready for publication? No problem. Your legacy should be handed down with pride—the book may have a larger audience, but no readership will ever matter more than its true audience, your family and its future generations. Learn how to craft your memoir and get it into print for both commercial and personal purpose.

Geared to address the specific needs of those attending—where they are now with their material and how best to get where they’re striving to be—each track is limited to 20 participants and advance registration is required.

Give your work the attention it deserves. Your words are worth it. You’ve earned it. Join us!

Discounted pre-registration now open.

—Michael Steven Gregory
Executive Director, SCWC/Sunriver Writers’ Summit

Perhaps the most vexing question any writer must answer (other than, “Have I read anything you’ve written?”) is: How good is good enough? So often working in isolation, bereft of empirically qualified feedback on what they’ve written, writers must summon the gumption to conclude—unequivocally and without independent assurance—that the book they’ve written is ready for consumer consumption. Certainly, given the overwhelming number of poorly produced, even cringe-inducing books available today, good enough should be just that. Thing is, it’s not.

Aspiring for mediocrity does not a good writer make. And good writing doesn’t necessarily equate to good storytelling. A good writer understands this. A good writer respects the expectations of her reader, aims for awe and settles only for exceptional. Unfortunately, most writers don’t discover their work’s far from good enough until it’s been rejected by agents and editors. Or worse, after their book’s been self-published and too late.

Why a Summit?

As with our annual Southern California Writers’ Conference (SCWC) events in San Diego and Irvine, CA, respectively, the primary emphasis of the Sunriver Writers’ Summit (held in Oregon) is craft and execution. The distinction, beyond being a more intimate gathering, is that it’s track driven, exclusively focused on narrative storytelling for market and raising the bar on what really qualifies as “good enough.”

While the SCWC has amassed an impressive record of first-time author success stories over the past 31 years, the fact remains that for every individual writer who comes to a conference with rightfully high expectations of being discovered—and is—many others arrive equally confident only to discover their work still needs a lot more work.

Our goal with the Summit is to get writers ready for prime time; to better communicate the story in their mind to a stranger across a printed page, whether that stranger is a peer, an agent, an editor, a publisher, or—the ultimate goal—the book-buying reader.

Regardless of which path to publication you’re considering, whether you’re writing commercial fiction, genre or memoir, craft matters. Period.

—Michael Steven Gregory
Executive Director, SCWC/Sunriver Writers’ Summit