WHAT IF…?

Almost all our stories are an answer to the question “What if…?”

What if an orphaned adolescent discovered that his parents were wizards? The Harry Potter books.

What if an orphaned girl with red hair and a personality to match was adopted by a brother and sister in Prince Edward Island? The Anne of Green Gables books.

Our Icelandic heritage provides us with all kinds of ‘what if’ questions to answer in a wide variety of possible genres, from memoirs and non-fiction to fiction (children’s and young adult, fantasy, science fiction, historical, romance, and mystery.)

Any of these might be a story you want to write, but you don’t know how to start.

“What if…?”, a writing webinar for Icelandic Roots members, might be what you are looking for.

The webinar is scheduled for March 15 at 7.00 p.m. Iceland time and will be led by Icelandic Roots volunteer Sharron Arksey.

Sharron, along with fellow volunteer Alfreda Erickson Duffy, co-leads the Icelandic Roots Writers’ Group, a new group of IR volunteers that began meeting late last fall.

Sharron has more than 50 years of experience, both as a newspaper and magazine writer and as a writer of fiction and poetry. She and her husband now live in Winnipeg after retiring from the family farm at Langruth, MB, in 2018.

Her novel “The Waiting Place,” published by Turnstone Press of Winnipeg in 2016, was a finalist in both the First Book and Woman Writer categories at the 2017 High Plains Book Awards.

The upcoming webinar will include tips and suggestions culled from the workshops and seminars Sharron has attended over the years.

She will begin with ideas on how to prepare for your writing project; the work you can do before you even start writing that will make the project flow more easily. This will be followed by suggestions for staying on track once you have started and finally a look at what you can do when you’re stuck and don’t know what to do next.

Also included will be some tips on research and the invaluable role that the Icelandic Roots database can play. The presentation will last approximately one hour, with time afterward for a question-and-answer session. The Zoom link will be sent out to Icelandic Roots members closer to the date.