A Workshop for Those Who Love Words

From the Daily Pilot – October 5, 2002

Joseph Wambaugh and Andrew Winer to take part in writing conference today at UCI.

UC IRVINE – Writing is the kind of craft in which anyone can participate. Doing it well, however, requires finding one's voice, carving out a niche and, if publishing is in your future, procuring a literary agent.

Writing, from inspiration to publication, including fiction and nonfiction, will be discussed at a writing conference today at UC Irvine.

The conference, sponsored by UC Irvine Extension and the American Society of Journalists and Authors, features an eclectic array of writers, including Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant and best-selling author, and Andrew Winer, a UCI master's program in writing graduate who published his first novel this year.

The conference is geared to appeal to a variety of writers – from those at the beginning of their careers to those ready to publish.

"There really is something for everyone," said Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, conference chair and writing instructor at UC Irvine Extension. "We really wanted it to be for writers of various genres and stages."

Winer helps kick off the conference as one of three panelists discussing how to jump-start your writing. For him, a career in writing was more of an evolution than an epiphany.

A former painter, Winter spiraled into a depression and clawed his way out by watching films.

"I couldn't afford a therapist so I started renting films," Winer said. "I became addicted to narrative – German, Italian, American."

Drawing on the familiar, he originally tried to make his paintings narrative, but realized the art form was not conductive to telling stories. So he turned to writing screenplays instead. Eventually, the artistic soul within him realized poetry or fiction was more of his niche and he applied to UCI's ultra-competitive graduate writing program.

"It was a life-changing experience, really," Winer said. "For those two years, you can call yourself a writer and you were surrounded by incredibly talented people – not only professors, but your peers. The quality of the work you were reading and the analysis of your own work was very high."

He started a novel when he first entered the program, and it was published four years later.

Because Winer's path to writing fiction was a challenging one, he hopes sharing his story will inspire would-be novelists to persevere.

"I hope to connect with the people there by sharing that part of it, how difficult it is and sharing a few stories of how it worked out, how I overcame procrastination," Winer said.

As conference chair, DeMarco-Barrett will interview Wambaugh. His down-to-earth, self-effacing attitude should be encouraging to writers facing bouts of insecurity, DeMarco-Barrett said.

"He has that Irish sense of humor, an upbeat way of being, like 'it's no big deal,'" DeMarco-Barrett said. "He does things differently. He doesn't do the conventional plots and outlines. Writers feel that if they're not doing things according to how they think they should be doing, then they're not doing it right."