I went to my first HippoCamp in mid-August. It’s a conference for creative nonfiction writers of all types and levels of experience, held in Lancaster Pennsylvania, presented by the remarkable people at Hippocampus Magazine & Books. I was looking forward to getting fresh perspectives on structure, process, and other tips to help me as I grapple with the right way to write about some of my long-held, long-hidden topics.
I also had the pleasure of presenting. It was a session on Sunday morning on how writers can create an effective brand and content strategy.
It was nice that Jill came with me. She has relatives in Lancaster she hasn’t seen for a long time, so she was able to go off with them while I was at the event. The first thing we did was stop by the Central Market and pick up a shoo-fly pie to bring home. Priorities are important.
Then the conference started; here are some of the highlights:
Friday evening began with a reception where I met a bunch of very nice people, interrupted by a table mysteriously collapsing sending glass and food everywhere. It is generally understood that a haunted table mysteriously collapsing is a good omen for a conference, especially one involving writers.
Then we had readings by Madhushree Ghosh (Khabaar), Suzanne Olmann (Shadow Migration), Sarah M. Wells (American Honey), and Stephen J. West (Soft-Boiled) from their debut creative non-fiction books.
Madhushree, the attack on Salman Rushdie earlier that day on her mind, was moved to read a riveting passage about the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.
Suzanne and Sarah read passages that offered competing – complementary? – views on love and family that were funny and charming and honest.
Stephen took us along on his initial, and amusing, meeting with a private detective where he felt completely out of his depth, which was an illustration of how sometimes real life plays like a scene in a television show.
Saturday began with flash presentations. Aimee Christian talked about finding a writing group that works for you, and Dawn Leas suggested ways to get yourself unstuck if you’re struggling. Both the kind of advice that you need to hear periodically!
Vicki Mayk considered the art and craft of book reviews. She says they’re good to write, and I agree. Kate Meadows shared examples of various CNF frameworks: meditative, braided, hermit crab, counterpoint; it’s good to put names on things sometimes, to make them palpable.
A fascinating talk from Brandon Arvesen on fact-checking family stories involved a mystery he was trying to solve about his father and illegal gambling in Indiana, which was so entertaining I was ready to buy that book on the spot even though it isn’t published yet.
Then a day of breakout sessions began. With four sessions happening simultaneously I could only attend one of them in any given time slot, and many of those choice were hard! Having so many excellent choices is the mark of a good conference.
Some shop talk from Julie Artz and Suzette Mullen who walked us through a query package that is actually ready to go out, rather than one we might just think is ready… I know from experience that they are right, pulling the trigger too soon is something to be avoided at all costs.
I heard tips from Dave Pidgeon on how to improve our photography, since if we’re going to be posting on social media we might as well apply as much care to our IG images as we do to our text. In his business, BTW, he elevates the mundane, often trite genre of student athlete photos into expressive images.
A cross-artform presentation from Lillie Gardner compared interpretation, balance, dynamics, and more in music to their use in writing. (Pulling insights from one medium to another always leads to interesting paths. She inspired me on the spot to concoct my session proposal idea for next year’s conference.)
A comparison of different book approaches offered by Dorothy Rice was based on works by HippoCamp presenters and attendees. A reminder that we have a lot of options and can make up our own. The examples were so provocative I wrote down four new topics for essays I want to write.
Lawrence Knorr of Sunbury Press talked about how his independent publishing house goes about its business and why a lot of our assumptions about the field are probably misinformed. The publishing biz is sort of inside baseball but it is an interesting subject right now. I had five pages of notes.
After dinner was a terrific keynote by the compelling Carmen Maria Machado, who talked about her memoir In the Dream House as something she had to do, rather than wanted to do.
Sunday opened with a panel of CNF editors Dinty W. Moore (Brevity), Steph Auteri (Hippocampus), and Alexis Paige (Vine Leaves Press), moderated by Athena Dixon. Good stuff (but it ran long and made the start of my session late! The horror!).
My session on “Building a reputation framework: Personal brand strategy for writers” was very nearly full, which I was happy about. I suspect a lot of people thought I was going to give much the same advice that they often hear about the things they could/should do to build their digital presence. Many were probably surprised (pleasantly I hope) to hear that my point was quite different! (A personal digital brand strategy is actually about protecting your time, energy and resources, about wiping options off the table, to help you focus on what will be the best investment for you and what you want to accomplish. It isn’t about digital marketing; it is about extending your core work and interests into the digital online space.)
After my talk I caught Allison K. Williams presenting multiple story structures that could be applied – maybe mixed and matched? – to fiction and nonfiction. Cool examples from books and films. Everyone in the room was excited by the possibilities. (There are so many published story frameworks, they’re like consulting methodologies — they can be helpful to work things through, but if you step back you wonder if all it takes is to create a catchy name and a unique diagram and jam a few examples to fit and you have a framework of your own!)
Finally, Kelly Caldwell offered thoughts and exercises on finding the right way to end a story, involving breaking things down, looking at them from other angles, and then putting them back together again. An apt way to finish out the conference.
Through it all I was in awe of the terrific job done by Donna Talarico, Rae Pagliarulo, Kevin Beerman, and the others who put the event together. This sort of thing is a giant undertaking with a million details and all of them could potentially go wrong if you don’t stay on top of them. But it went smoothly – despite that haunted collapsing table.
One final pleasure on the way home is that we stopped off in Wyomissing to meet up with my sisters Beth and Nancy and their husbands. We had a bite to eat and spent a few hours chatting and catching up. A great way to end the weekend.