Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 10, 1 October 2009 — Writers conference inspires young scribes [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Writers conference inspires young scribes

By Raquel Badayos, Ariel R. Navares and Ashley Warman Amultitude of cultures gathered for the 2009 Hawai'i Writers Conference, held at the Sheraton Waiklkl and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel over the Labor Day weekend - a range of talented individuals from Nā Hōkū Hanohano award winners to New York Times best-selling authors, and even nationally acclaimed poets. We were fortunate to attend the Hawai'i Writers Conference as part of the Young Writers program. We attended sessions about fiction writing, slam poetry, children's books, lyric writing and even the essentials in writing a novel, and all of them had something valuable to offer us. Speakers eame from different backgrounds and different genres of literature. But listening to their trials, tribulations and journeys to success, we found two eommon threads: the importance of having faith not only in yourself but in your work as well, and just how important it is to be passionate about what you are doing. The mana'o that eaeh presenter had to offer the puhlie was just as moving as it was useful. All the sessions seemed to tie in with eaeh other: write what you feel, write what moves you, write something that everyone ean connect to. When it comes down to it, we are all human beings. Those experiences, those feelings are things that we ean all connect to in some way or another - and you can't go wrong touching another heart. From this conference, we didn't only learn lessons about how to improve our writing and how to get published - we learned life lessons.

Some presenters explained that even the greatest books could be rejected from publishers. We instantly connected this to life - sometimes you have to fail in order to succeed. We also learned that any writing has potential; no matter how rough, there's always a start, and anyone ean be a writer. We learned a lot at the conference and had more fun than we ean even begin to explain. It made us realize our passion for writing. Even if writing a novel or becoming a songwriter wasn't in the plan, after experiencing this conference, some parts of us want to take that step and let our fingertips explode onto the paper. In the words of Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle: "Trust yourself, and you will know how to live. Trust yourself, and you will know how to write." So let us all write our stories. ■ Raquel Badayos, ArielR. Navares and Ashley Wannan are collegebound seniors at Kamehameha Schools-Kapālama. Badayos is an aspiring journalist and novelist at work on her first novel. Navares writes news and fiction, and Wannan is at work on a novel and hopes to study journalism at the University of Oregon. All three write for Ka Mō'i, their school's student newspaper. The Young Writers were part of the conference's Voices ofHawai'i program, whieh also included presentations by slack key virtuoso Makana, slam poet Kealoha and Nā Hōkū Hanohano award winner Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole and his 'ohana. Other high schools with students in attendance were 0'ahu's Campbell, Honolulu Waldorf Island Pacific, Kaiser and Maui's St. Anthony.

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Young Writers from Kamehameha Schools-Kapālama pose wilh Voices of Hawai'i presenter Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole. From left, Raquel Badayos, Kanaka'ole, Ashley Warman and Ariel Navares. - Photo: Courtesy of Raquel Badayos