This past rainy weekend I went to my first Atlanta Writers Club meeting. I am super excited to have found this community of fellow writers where I can network and advance my writing skills. I love the fact that the meetings are free and you don't need to sign up to attend.
For the September meeting they had acclaimed author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Mark Victor Hanson, present to the group. He was very humorous and a good storyteller; however, he basically was there to pimp his $1000 writing bootcamp to get authors published. He did offer a lot of value but I was shocked at how many people were actually signing up for program. This is not the first inspirational speaker to do this - I had the pleasure of seeing , James Ray, co-author of The Secret. He led a great event at a local church and I was very motivated until the very end when he started selling the audience on this workshop they HAD to sign up for that was critical for them to meet their goals and succeed in life. People were literally running up the aisle to sign up as he offered a discount to the first few people to register. I think James and Mark have the same business coach because they employed almost identical tactics to sell their respective workshops. I would love to hear from any of these participants if the experience met his/her expectations. I sincerely hope it did but I have my doubts.
The highlight of my weekend was the next speaker: Kathryn Stockett, break-out author of The Help. She mainly spoke about how she got published, her background, a little about the process of writing her book, and then she very candidly answered audience questions. She was such a breath of fresh air and so authentic. You could tell she was also very humble and still seemed surprised herself at how successful her book is doing. She is definitely an author that I will be following in the future and I wish her nothing but success. I look forward to my next AWC event.
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