LCHS grad comes home to help writers navigate the publishing industry in 2-day workshop
As a girl growing up in La Cañada, Laurie Gibson always believed in the power of words and storytelling.
Her parents were avid newspaper readers and as a La Cañada High School student, she’d spend hours in the public library, surrounded by books and periodicals that piqued her interest in the world around her.
“I saw the importance of stories and journalism every single day,” said the now-San Diego-area resident. “It was role-modeled by my parents.”
Gibson took library studies courses at Pasadena City College and earned an English degree at CSU Northridge that led her to a brief dalliance with community journalism and eventually a career as a self-employed editor, copy editor and book reader.
Now the lifelong wordsmith is helping writers navigate a vast and complicated publishing industry in order to get their own stories heard. This weekend, she returns to her hometown to lead a two-day workshop at Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse.
On Saturday at 2 p.m. Gibson offers “Publishing 1-2-3,” a class that aims to dispel some of the popular but unhelpful myths people have about bringing their books to the marketplace. One of the most popular misconceptions, Gibson says, is that the writing stops when a book is completed.
“The myth of the bestseller is that all you have to do is get it out there and readers will flock to the book,” she said. “A lot of first-time writers don’t understand how pivotal marketing and promotion is to their books.”
Participants of Saturday’s workshop will engage in prompts and creative exercises designed to get them thinking more critically about their own writing process.
Sunday’s 2 p.m. workshop “Authors and Editors: Holding Hands or Butting Heads?” hones in on the editing process and aims to educate writers about where to find editors and proofreaders, and developing a pathway to publishing that is mindful of their ultimate goals.
It’s important for beginners to understand editing as a naturally cooperative process, rather than a battle of wills, according to the credentialed copy editor.
“Editors become editors because they love words and stories,” Gibson said. “It’s not just the nasty grammarian with the red pen — it’s people who are serving the story with the best of their skills and talents.”
Gail Mishkin, organizer of the Flintridge Bookstore event, said she was thrilled to be able to offer local residents a peek behind the curtain at the sometimes mystifying book-publishing industry.
“We get a lot of people approaching us about doing writers workshops here, but this is the first time, in my experiences, anybody’s approached us about a publishing workshop,” Mishkin said. “It’s one thing to write a book, but to get it published is an enormous hurdle.”
Gibson said she’s delivered her workshop more than 80 times at locations from San Diego to San Francisco, and participants run the gamut from artists looking to produce a self-published work for just 40 family members to authors whose hopes reach all the way to the New York Times Best Sellers list.
Among them is Jodi Pratt, a resident of Aptos, Calif., who first took Gibson’s workshop in Monterey in 2014 and again the following year, when she wanted to segue from a career in banking to writing a suspense novel.
“Before meeting Laurie, I was so overwhelmed with the unknowns of the entire process — the writing, the editing, whether or not to get an agent, whether or not to seek a traditional publisher or do something on my own. It was keeping me from even starting to just write,” Pratt said in an email interview. “With Laurie’s information, I was able to start to see the path of where to go once I had my story written, which in turn freed me to actually start writing.”
Now, Pratt has finished a draft of the book and is working on an epilogue in advance of having it professionally edited. She said Gibson’s taking the mystery out of publishing and providing a few resources helped remove her writer’s block.
Helping aspiring authors like Pratt overcome their hesitation is part of what inspires Gibson to continue her personal passion for crafting stories into finely polished gems, though she herself has no interest in putting her own book out into the world.
“This program that I give is my version of a book,” she said.
FYI: Editor Laurie Gibson leads a two-day publishing workshop July 8 and 9 at Flintridge Bookstore & Coffehouse, 1010 Foothill Blvd., La Cañada. Classes run from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. both days. Cost is $25 for one session, or $45 for both. Reservations are strongly encouraged, as space is limited. Attendees will receive a professional edit of five pages of their manuscript. Call (818) 790-0717.
Twitter: @SaraCardine
