Tag: writing exercises

Mt. Pleasant Literary Festival – Cathy Pickens’ Writer’s Workshop

I had two delightful experiences last Thursday at the first day of the second annual Mt. Pleasant Literary Festival in Mt. Pleasant, North Carolina. The public library staff and The Friends of the Mt. Pleasant Library are real go-getters!

Mt. Pleasant is a quiet little town, more of a village than a town originally settled by German immigrants in the mid-1700s. It is in eastern Cabarrus County.

The Bernheim Literary Society (named for the literary society for the students of Mont Amoena Female Academy, located in Mt. Pleasant from 1859 until 1927), The Friends of the Mt. Pleasant Library, the Cabarrus Arts Council, and individual and commercial sponsors make this annual literary festival possible for the public – free of charge.

Schedule for the 3-Day event

This second annual event attracted such authors as Kate Quinn and Meagan Church! I understand some authors have already been signed on for next year’s festival. I can’t wait to find out who’s coming!

I was too late registering for Kate Quinn’s presentation. Lesson learned for future festivals!

The first event I attended on Thursday was a 90-minute Writer’s Workshop with author and professor Cathy Pickens. She has an impressive history as a lawyer, a professor, and a writer, so I was privileged to have the opportunity to finally attend one of her workshops.

Cathy Pickens, teaching a Writer’s Workshop at the Mt. Pleasant Literary Festival, March 19, 2026

She led us through a systematic series of writing prompts to help us clarify the roots of our creativity and why we want to write what we want to write.

Workshop attendees were in various stages along our writing journeys. The first thing she had us write about was our “pinprick.” What was the pinprick that set in motion my desire to write the story I want to write? I knew immediately what the pinprick was for the series of historical novels I’m writing. It was a banjo from Africa.

(That’s all I will tell you about that banjo for now. You will need to continue to read my blog posts and subscribe to my e-newsletter if you want to find out later just how that came about. It seemingly came “out of the blue,” but maybe it is deeply connected to the historical fiction I want to write.)

Back to the workshop… I was able to quickly write an entire page about that banjo as my inspiration or “pinprick” as she called it.

Ms. Pickens talked about how it was sometime between the ages of eight and eleven that something happened that influenced the paths our lives take. Whether or not we are aware of it at the time, something happened that set us on a path to writing.  Our worldview begins to shift, and you start to try to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. She asked us to write down everything we could remember from those years of our life.

I was surprised at how many things I remember and in minute detail and how each of those incidents made me feel. As I wrote, it became clear to me that my lifelong interest in the colonial era of United States history and what unbeknownst to me put me on the path to majoring in political science and minoring in history in college started when I was in Miss Judy Ford’s fourth grade class at Harrisburg School in Harrisburg, North Carolina.

Miss Ford made Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg come alive to us, although we lived a long way from those places and had no hopes of visiting them in the foreseeable future. I’ll never forget that Colby Cochran’s father, Dan, built a pillory for the class so we could in some small way experience what that public form of punishment and humiliation was like for our nation’s colonial ancestors.

As you can see, Ms. Pickens’ questions and writing prompts triggered a flood of memories for me and helped me piece together why in later life I want to write historical fiction.

She talked about how creative young children are, but usually when we are in our teens peer pressure kicks in and most of us begin to stifle our creativity. We’re told to pursue occupations or fields of study to lead us to a way to make a living.

Being a writer is not the occupation one should choose in order to make a living!

CREATE! by Cathy Pickens

Ms. Pickens talked about the writing process. Different participants in the workshop shared what their process is. She asked us what holds us back in our writing. (No one was pressured to voice their answers to any of her questions; it was a very relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.)

Ms. Pickens recommended that we set a goal to write a certain length of time or a certain number of words each day. Even if it’s only 15 minutes, slow and steady seemed to be her advice.

I recently revealed in my February 27, 2026 blog post (My new discovery: I’m a binge writer!) that I’d had the epiphany that I am a binge writer when it comes to my novel(s). I find it easy to work on a blog post or two each day, but when it comes to writing fiction I have not been able to discipline myself to write every day of the week.

Ms. Pickens advised us to be very specific in categorizing what we are writing. She pointed out that the Library of Congress categorizes books in more specific details than the Dewey Decimal System. She suggested that we look inside the front covers of books in the genre in which we write to familiarize ourselves with how the Library of Congress labels books.

She suggested that instead of asking a writer, “How long did it take you to get your book published?” a better question is, “How long did it take you to get your book publishable?”

The road to traditional publishing is typically years and years long.

Ms. Pickens ended by saying that the secret to success is discipline – time, place, and goal. To read more about Cathy Pickens, visit her website, https://cathypickens.com/. She has written a Blue Ridge Mountains series of cosy mysteries, a book of Charleston mysteries, nine true crime books, and CREATE! — a book for writers.

Tune in tomorrow for my blog post about author Meagan Church’s presentation.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Mark de Castrique’s Mystery Writing Workshop – Part 2

Today’s blog post is a continuation of my blog post on October 19, 2016, about Mark de Castrique’s Mystery Writing Workshop I attended last Saturday at Lanier Library in Tryon, North Carolina.

lanier-library-in-tryon-nc-001

Picking up where I left off on October 19, today I will start by talking about the first of two writing exercises we did during the workshop.

A Writing Exercise

The most challenging part of the three-hour workshop was the first writing exercise. Participants were instructed to do the following in 20 minutes:

  1. Create a character who was a police officer or detective
  2. Think of (or write, if we wished) a bio for that character
  3. Place that character in a single setting
  4. Write a narrative scene in first person
  5. End the scene just before a body is discovered.

Each of us read our work aloud. Mr. de Castrique gave everyone positive feedback. I was amazed at the talent in the room. Mr. de Castrique did a good job making us feel like we were in a safe, non-judgmental place. He put all of us at ease.

Carolyn Wheat’s Four Arcs of a Book

Mr. de Castrique recommended How to Write Killer Fiction, by Carolyn Wheat. Ms. Wheat says a book has the following four arcs:

  1. The beginning
  2. The middle
  3. The place where the detective in a murder mystery faces something that seem impossible to overcome
  4. The ending.

Mr. de Castrique described each arc. He talked about novel endings that work and endings that fail.

Amateur Sleuth

The next thing Mr. de Castrique addressed was putting an amateur sleuth in your book. He talked about the advantages and disadvantages of doing that.

Theme

Mr. de Castrique said the theme is “the thing in a book that will haunt you.” He cautioned us that a book can turn into a sermon if the author tries too hard to drive a point home. (He gave Stephen King credit for having said that, but I paraphrased it.)

Group Writing Exercise

The workshop ended with a group writing exercise. It was a great idea and should help me to think of future story ideas. We had to be in agreement on our choices throughout the exercise, but it would certainly work for a writer working alone. Here’s what we got to work through together:

  1. Select a closed setting, such as a shopping mall
  2. Select six individuals whose occupations would place them at that closed setting without other people being there
  3. Assign an age to each of the six characters
  4. Decide on a secret that each character has
  5. Which one gets murdered and which one is the killer?

Five Takeaways

Five points that I took away from the workshop are as follows:

  1. A good book is one where at the end you liked the world the writer created so much that you would read the book again.
  2. If you can take a scene out without hurting the story, it never should have been there to begin with.
  3. The reader should forget she or he is reading.
  4. Every reader brings his or her own life experiences to the reading of a book, so it’s no wonder that you might hate a book but someone else might say it is the best book they’ve ever read.
  5. When stumped on what to write about, I should refer to last Saturday’s group writing exercise.

After the workshop, Mr. de Castrique autographed my copy of his new book, The Singularity Race. It was an enjoyable afternoon and well worth the cost and time invested in attending the workshop.

Until my next blog post in a few days, I hope you have a good book to read and, if you’re a writer, I hope you have productive writing time.

Janet