A varied topic mixture of writing opportunities, insights, and changes in publishing

There are a few things that have either come into my inbox or across my proverbial radar screen that I think others would benefit from and hence this post.

My friends Jordan Rosenfeld and Becca Lawton are sponsoring "playshops" to help inspire the creative spark in writers. It is a philosophy where enjoyment of the writing process with a sense of play is emphasized over the traditional terminology of "workshops." Plus you do not have to turn anything in, it is simply to help inspire your innate creative energy.

Here is their description:

Month-Long Write Free Playshops: Playing toward Publication
Join us each month for Write Free Month-Long Playshops in which you exercise your creative chops and aim for your publishing dreams. These month-long, self-paced Write Free Playshops begin on the first Monday of every month. Every weekday for four weeks (20 days) the following activities will be sent to you in a daily e-mail (except for the Weekly Message, which will come once a week):

• Write Free Writing Prompt to jumpstart your own personal freewrite for the day
• Quote on Attraction to inspire and align you with your best creative life
• Word of the Day to spark your imagination
• Exercises to work new writing muscles
• Weekly Message from Jordan and Becca on writing craft, practice, and community.

All this for $19.95-less than $1/day for the whole month!

There was a nice write up about the program in a column recently in my local paper.

To sign up for the playshop, click here.

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For those who live in Northern California, the San Francisco chapter of the Women's National Book Association is sponsoring a "Meet the Agents and Publishers" event this Saturday, March 28th. There are eight publishing professionals who are confirmed to be there ready to hear your pitches. Both fiction and nonfiction are covered.

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My friend Lee Lofland has an incredibly useful blog for those who have any aspect of police procedurals in their writing. It is not my genre, but I still find the posts fascinating.

Yesterday, Lee's post showed that he can be just as nitpicky as I am. He dissected a television episode into ten separate segments for analysis. He judged the veracity of various details à la American Idol style. Simon Cowell features prominently.

I have never watched the show in question, but I found Lee's take (and/or spit take) on the show to be highly entertaining.

On the same day, Lee showed a different side when he did a guest post "It's Not All Donuts and Paperwork" on Terry Odell's blog. Lee starts out calmly describing how he started in law enforcement, but his story gets harrowing when he describes how he handled a crisis situation which could have easily gone horribly wrong.

I hadn't known that story before, and it increased my admiration of him.

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I haven't seen much discussion about this recent publishing news and was wondering if any academics reading this blog might chime in with their thoughts.

According to the online Publisher's Weekly:

The University of Michigan Press sent shock waves through the academic publishing field Monday when it announced it is switching to a primarily digital format to publish scholarly monographs. The press expects that within two years, most of the 60 monographs it publishes each year out of a total 140 new releases will be published only in digital editions. A POD option, however, will be made available for all digital books, said University of Michigan Press director Phil Pochoda. He said the press’s regional titles and its ESL list will continue to be released primarily in print editions, though select frontlist, as well as backlist, will be made available in digital formats as well as print. Print runs consequently will be more conservative, to cut down on returns. “We’re going to try to keep [initial] print runs close to orders,” Pochoda said, with more of a reliance on offset printing for smaller print runs.

My question is: How will this impact university libraries? Will they start purchasing PDF files of those academic monographs and will they be easily accessed by professors and students?

Or will the libraries wind up using the print-on-demand (POD) option?

These types of cost cutting changes can have far ranging consequences and I wonder if everything has been thought through prior to "going digital" and abandoning the printed page.

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And that brings me to a recent blog post by Tess Gerritsen.

She wrote about what might be a similar trend by publishers in regard to galleys.

Tess is a New York Times bestselling author who will write blurbs to help up and coming writers. (Lee Lofland is one of her grateful recipients of her Karmic generosity.)

However, there is a limit to anyone's generosity. Recently she received an email from a publisher who announced they were no longer going to produce printed galleys.

She understands that it is cheaper and greener, but she doesn't want to read a novel at her computer nor does she want a handheld reader.

Tess loves being able to read galleys in bed, on a beach, on vacation, etc.

She feels so strongly about this that she wrote:

I think that printed galleys are part of the cost of doing business as a publisher. If you don’t print galleys, you shouldn’t expect to get any cover blurbs.

Wow.

And this email came after a novelist had approached Tess and she agreed she would consider giving him a blurb. No promises, but she would try. She never guarantees blurbs because she has a lot of demands on her time and has to find some kind of work/life balance.

Now because of the change of policy by the publisher, that author's forthcoming book will absolutely not have a blurb by Tess Gerritsen.

That makes me wonder how much discussion was generated in the board rooms as to what side-effects they would have by this change in their business practices. Did they think about how it might deter their ability to generate blurbs from established authors. And subsequently how that might impact future book sales?

Did those considerations of the "human element" even factor into their debates or was this a decision based solely on the bottom line of postage and printing costs?

What makes matters worse is that email message went on to suggest recipients of printed galleys attempt to profit by the sale of ARCs on Ebay and other such sites. As if recouping a few bucks on Ebay would be worth Tess Gerritsen's time.

They also wanted her guarantee she would read the PDF galley before they would send her the file.

In one impolitic email message they not only insulted her integrity and professionalism, but they made it unlikely that she would ever provide their authors blurbs in the future.

Nice job!

It would have been far better if they had asked her if she preferred a printed galley or a digital copy because there are many people who love their Kindles and Sony Readers. She doesn't happen to be one of them.

What does the future of publishing hold if choice is not an option?

C.W. Gortner, An overnight literary sensation 13 years in the making

The Redwood Writers branch of the California Writers Club

I started this post a week ago, but have not had much chance to finish it due to visits from relatives and - ahem - home improvement projects.

On Sunday, December 7th my writers club was fortunate to have Christopher Gortner as our guest speaker. The title of his talk was: "Thirteen Years in the Making: C.W. Gortner's Personal Journey to Publication."

Before the meeting started I was chatting with Christopher and happened to mention an anecdote about one of the members of my club. As he heard her name, Christopher's eyes grew large.

"You know Persia Woolley?"

"Yes." I looked around the room, saw her and said, "and she's here today."

He told me how much he loves her book How to Write and Sell Historical Fiction and how he refers to it frequently during his writing process and that he has bought replacement copies of it over the years.

I beckoned Persia over and made introductions.

Persia Woolley and Christopher Gortner

Christopher is also a fan of her Guinevere trilogy and expressed regret that he did not have his copies with him to be signed.

Persia's books may be classified as out of print, but they continue to have an impact on readers and writers. Hopefully her trilogy will be reprinted for new audiences to discover and she should update the How-to book to incorporate the internet age and how to sift through information found by online searches.

Now onto the meat of Christopher's talk. He loves historical fiction. He loves reading it and writing it.

He has always wanted to be a novelist writing historical fiction, even when the market for the genre was considered to be "dead."

His first agent was from New York City and his first novel about Anne Boleyn made the publishing rounds. During the waiting period of hearing back from publishers, Christopher busied himself by writing another book. This one was on Juana of Castile also known as "Juana la Loca."

After his novel got some glowing rejection letters and the novel The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell was published it was suggested there would not be much interest in the market for another Anne Boleyn book at the time.

Disillusioned with New York, Christopher signed with a different agent, one who was from another part of the country.

She sent his book on Juana of Castile around, but did not have any better luck. The publishers liked his style and his voice, but no one was buying.

At one point she told him that the difficulty might be in his name. Because most buyers of historical fiction are women and it was thought that female book buyers preferred books about women written by women.

She suggested he adopt a pen name like Caryn Gortner. Or Catherine Gortner.

He did not want to do it.

For one thing, he would be hiding behind a persona and for another, how are you supposed to publicize your book if you are a man pretending to be a woman? Dress in drag to signings?

His agent was not amused.

He received one offer for his book on Juana, but there were some matters that needed to be agreed to before any contract could be signed.

The biggest sticking point concerned the ending.

They wanted it to be changed, because they wanted a happy ending.

Juana of Castile is an historical figure with a tragic life story and it is not in any form a Happily Ever After Ending.

Yet that is what this publisher wanted to have happen. They wanted this story to be a category romance with those genre expectations which are antithetical to the historical reality of the person depicted in the story.

His agent was pushing for him to accept the deal and make the changes.

Christopher was torn because he really wanted to be published and he had been through the publishing merry-go-round for several years at this point in time. He consulted a trusted friend and she told him that if he did what the publisher wanted that he would live to regret it.

He would be savaged by the critics for changing history and he might get steered into becoming a category romance author. He prefers writing about complicated historical figures with tragic fates. That is not the formula for category romance success.

Christopher declined to change the ending. His agent then dropped him from her list of clients.



He tried again with a third book, this time about Catherine de Medici. He signed with an agent at the Jean V. Nagar Literary Agency and once again he had a book making the rounds.

Christopher said that each book seemed to take about 2 1/2 years of submissions and received about 45-55 rejections. Many of the rejections described how much they loved his work, but mentioned all the difficulties in the marketplace, including the perception that historical fiction was a dying genre and the tremendous challenges in launching an unknown author in the genre.


During this time, his agent left the agency and wanted to take him with her. There were some contract unraveling that needed to be done, but he chose to stay with her rather than try to have his book "adopted" by another agent.

He decided at one point to chase writing trends and he spent countless hours in a book store studying the market. It was because of that experience that he wrote a short "thriller" set in the Tudor Court and with a male protagonist. Christopher said that he would not recommend anyone trying to follow trends because by the time you finish writing your book and if it makes the publishing rounds and gets picked up, you are talking a couple years from when you did your initial research. By that time, that trend may no longer be in vogue.

The situation with his third agent deteriorated and after a final round of submissions for his Tudor thriller, they parted ways.

For years he had been excited when he talked with his literary friends because he had an agent and his work was "making the rounds." He was anticipating good news. The years of repeated rejection had begun taking its toll on his psyche.

He avoided the literary community, because he did not want to admit he had given up.

He stopped writing for eight months and went through a period of depression, until his partner gave him a swift kick in the backside and instructed him to start writing again.

Christopher decided that his writing deserved an audience and if New York publishers could not find their way to publish his works, then he would himself. He started researching various POD publishers such as iUniverse and AuthorHouse when he met someone who was planning on starting a small publishing house. This guy knew of Christopher's writing reputation and offered to publish a book without charging him any fees.

He chose the short Tudor court thriller as his first test case. The Secret Lion was all set to print and he received a call saying that there was trouble with the cover. His name was giving them fits because of its length.

It was "the name thing" again.

Christopher asked them to try his initials of C.W. and see how it looked.

That worked.

And so, due to cover art considerations, he adopted the pen name of C.W. Gortner.

Using the strength of the internet and his own networking of friends and associates, he wound up selling around six thousand copies of The Secret Lion online.

He followed up that success by self publishing The Last Queen and had sold about a thousand copies of that title within a month when he received a phone call from Jennifer Weltz at the Jean V. Nagar Literary Agency. He had talked with her during the process of leaving the agency to follow his previous agent and she remembered him when she came across his name while looking at The Secret Lion at Amazon.com. She asked about his sales record as well as wanting to see his manuscripts. Christopher sent her everything she requested and signed with her, but he did not allow himself to get his hopes up.

He had been through this dance three times before.

Then in a few months, Jennifer called with good news. She had an offer, but other houses were considering the manuscript and she wanted to notify them that an offer was on the table. To everyone's surprise, the book ended up going into auction.

In the end, he had a two book deal for six figures with Ballantine.

Huzzah!

Christopher Gortner and Linda McCabe

The Last Queen is a wonderful book. I loved it.

I knew from the book trailer that Juana suffered a tragic fate, but I was unfamiliar with her life story and did not know how it would end.






Christopher has painted a vivid picture of how limits felt by women of the time and the motives of those surrounding her were predicated upon political power.

If you are looking for a Christmas present for someone who loves historical fiction, I heartily recommend C.W. Gortner's The Last Queen.

By the way, he has a great blog as well.

It is time for Champagne

I shall be celebrating this weekend properly with a bottle of champagne.

It is not my own good news, but that of a friend.

The late great Molly Ivins said during a commencement address:

"(M)y second piece of advice....you must have fun. You must work at having fun. Let me tell you, you can't put it off. You've gotta have fun while you're fighting to fix the world, because first of all, we don't always win, so it might get to be all the fun you'll ever have, and second of all, it's a better way to live. If you don't have fun while you're fighting to make a better world, what's gonna happen is you're gonna get tired and bitter and cynical and burnt out and just wind up a complete waste to everybody. So just put fun on your list."

I did not attend that particular commencement, but I had the good fortune to see Molly Ivins speak in person on more than one occasion. She mentioned that advice often because she felt it was important.

I agree.

We all need to make it a point to celebrate positive events in our lives.

I will also use positive events in my friends' lives as an excuse to celebrate as well.

Why not?

Life is filled with disappointments, we should revel when things go right.

A dear friend of mine, who I have known for nearly fifteen years, had told me that she wanted to write her memoirs. I know enough about the genre to know that it has its own particular rules and that I did not know enough to be of much help in the writing of the book.

I gave her links and suggestions regarding the genre and thought that she would benefit from a ghost writer.

I helped match her with a fabulous and experienced ghost writer who had worked on many high profile biographies. Unfortunately, the timing did not work out for their partnership.

The ghost writer is a new mother and she tried to step back into the writing life too early, and the demands of motherhood overwhelmed her.

So my friend decided that rather than try to find another ghost writer that she would write her life story herself.

And what a powerful story it is. I helped her with the book proposal, mostly by changing formatting. I also suggested shuffling a few things around, condensing, and some minor editing.

I knew that ultimately, even if it was not rock solid, letter-perfect that it would be the strength of her platform that would make agents (and I am sure publishers in the very near future) work quickly to sign her.

In fact, she had five agents vying to sign her as a client.

Then again, she has been the recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for her leadership on an issue of global significance.

That leadership is what had also led her to befriend Alice Walker, be a guest on Oprah Winfrey's show, and the distinction of writing and performing her own piece in the Vagina Monologues.

Soraya Miré is a survivor of Pharaonic circumcision, the most severe form of female genital mutilation and she has dedicated her life to opposing the practice.

She made the critically acclaimed documentary film Fire Eyes that was featured at the Sundance Film Festival, the International Women's Conference in Beijing and given the award for Best Documentary at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.

Like I said, Soraya has a platform that would make just about any agent jump.

She interviewed five agents over the phone, and chose the one she felt most comfortable.

I wish her all the best in the world.

I know in my bones that her book The Girl with Three Legs is destined for the best sellers list.

Once she signs with a publisher, I shall celebrate with champagne again.

In case anyone wondered, I try to always have a couple bottles on hand for when Life is Good.

Linda

On Criticism

I've been trying to think of what to write for my next post, and had felt particularly uninspired. I felt it best to be silent than to waste time by putting something frivolous on the blog.

Then I read an entry on one of the agent blogs that I follow. Jessica Faust wrote about giving honest critiques to writers at a recent conference.

BookEnds, LLC — A Literary Agency: Critiques

It was a negative experience for both parties involved. She was trying to convey her professional opinion to a writer who voluntarily chose to submit their work for critique.

Unfortunately the writer did not like hearing Jessica's criticism, and became hostile.

That is not the professional front that you should put forward with anyone in the publishing industry.

I understand the human reaction from both the writer's point of view as well as the person presenting the criticism. I've been on both sides of that equation. Well, except that I've never been an agent with fifteen years experience.

On the receiving end of criticism.

I remember vividly when I was a freshman in college and sat next to my professor's desk while he reviewed my paper. I stared at his red marker hovering over my words scratching them out repeatedly as he diagrammed all the failings he saw. Try as I might, I could not stop the tears from flowing at the sight of my paper being defaced in such a manner. After he finished his critique, he handed me the paper covered in crimson marks and declared that "he liked it." I was given an "A" on the paper, but was numbed by the ordeal. I staggered back to my chair with no idea what he said to me. I felt like a patient given a terminal diagnosis and couldn't focus on anything said past hearing the words "brain tumor." Even though I did well, I felt humiliated, and this was an Honors level class.

I tried reassuring myself that I couldn't have gotten into the class if I hadn't shown some talent. I could help others restructure and improve their papers, but his class made me feel inadequate when it came to my own.

The professor was an old man with a gray pallor who stood in front of the class hunched over like a vulture. He played with the keys on his belt while he lectured and I can't remember a single thing I learned from him. The only things I took away from his class were my fear of his red pen and the conviction that he was a human bird of prey.

Since I was a science major, I couldn't allow myself to become distracted from my core studies by obsessing over general education courses. The reason why this bothered me so much is that writing comes from your soul and your intellect. Writing is a permanent reminder of what your thoughts and how you articulate an argument or simply tell a story. It is not the same thing as learning to plug numbers into a mathematical equation and turn a crank to get a result. Writing is a reflection of the author, and when professors responded negatively to the product of my intellect, I decided to withdraw from submitting future work to their scrutiny. I took a test and "comped" out of my third term requirement for English. Those negative experiences in college class stifled my muse for close to five years of my life. I can't let that happen to me again.

I have developed a thicker skin since then, but I still understand how callous and careless criticism can wound rather than help.

Now, years later I seek out critique of my work in the hopes that errors that I cannot see will be spotted by a fresh pair of eyes. I also need perspective to know if I am achieving the emotional reactions from my readers that I am striving for in certain scenes. I want to know if the dialogue rings true, and if my pacing is too fast or too slow.

It is nice to receive accolades, but if there is something structurally wrong with my story, I need to hear it while I can still do something about it.

I've belonged to a critique group for several years now and it has for the most part worked well. However, you should never just take someone's opinion as a mandate to change things. You should always take people's suggestions as just that: suggestions.

A few months ago after a critique group meeting I found myself in a terrible funk. It was because one of the members gave me criticism that I not only found unhelpful, but damaging to my psyche. I started doubting my own ability to construct a sentence.

I was suffering from what my engineering friends would say is "analysis paralysis."

I felt as if everything I wrote or attempted to write was dreck. Now, I knew it wasn't true, but this was the level of the funk I found myself.

Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird refers to it as listening to KFKD radio. (Think of KF**KD).

As I read Anne Lamott's book looking for inspiration, I realized that she has some massively long sentences. Her style runs counter to Strunk and White's Elements of Style by a mile. One sentence was 94 words long. That can't possibly be thought of as concise. Yet, herbook is one of the most frequently cited favorite reference books by writers, even though she eschews concision in her writing. Why? Because she's funny.

A sentence is supposed to convey a thought, and sometimes thoughts are complex which then will need time and space to be developed adequately. Writers are also advised to have a variety in their sentence structure. Too many short sentences in a row are read as staccato and can be jarring to readers. Does this mean that from now on I will be emulating Lamott's use of humongously long sentences? No, but I'm not going to hang my head in shame if I write a sentence having more than X number of words.

One of my friends told me that he tries not to have sentences longer than 14 words. He literally counts the number of words in each sentence. I am not about to follow that practice. Instead, I shall gauge the effectiveness of my sentences by whether or not the meaning is lost by its end. If the logic train derails in the deep woods, the sentence needs revising. I shall also take into consideration the overall flow of the piece. If the narrative becomes snagged then I'll revise, but not because it went past an arbitrary word limit.

Giving out solicited criticism

I have offered my feedback to other writers and have thankfully not gotten such a visceral response as Jessica Faust received.

My critique group is structured so that we send our writing samples to the other members ahead of time. It allows us to print out and read the submission and make line edits. It also allows for us to have a broader view of the piece rather than a few sample pages being read aloud.

One of my strengths is in spotting continuity errors. That generally comes about when a writer has made some changes in a story, but forgot to incorporate those changes throughout the text or when the writer hasn't thought through all the implications of a plot choice. I questioned the age difference between two characters once because I didn't think that things added up correctly and my friend admitted that he had changed the little sister's age, but forgot to update it throughout his novel.

I've also given critiques to members of my writers club when they ask for my opinion on their writing. Recently I read the first attempt at short story writing by someone who has only written technical papers. He had become inspired by interacting with fiction writers and wanted to try his hand at it.

I had started reading his story and made some line edits before coming to the realization that structurally the whole thing simply didn't work. There was no conflict and therefore no drama. He had two talking heads in a room that were discussing a political issue. Neither character was defined, it was simply a way to have dialogue exchanged which allowed political beliefs to be espoused.

Nothing happened in the scene. It was only an excuse to dress up a position paper as fiction and use quotation marks in the hopes of informing people through entertaining them. It failed because it did not entertain.

I've written political essays in the past, so I know full well the urge to put forth my positions on issues that I am passionate. However, I also know and love drama. If you wish to mix drama and politics, the dramatic needs of the story must always come first.

I wound up explaining those differences to him and suggested he read Audition by Michael Shurtleff which I find indispensable when thinking of dramatic conflict. I also made a few suggestions of how could put his characters in peril. Then, he could slowly draw out the information in a police interrogation, should one of those characters choose to use methods other than peaceful, civil disobedience to further his political goals. By the end of our discussion, he thanked me for my time and my insight. I didn't give him any of my line edits, because I knew that very little of what he originally wrote would survive any second drafts he made on that story.

Sometimes it is the global problems in a piece of writing that is the biggest obstacle that must be dealt with before you get down to the sentence structure level of spelling, punctuation, grammar, pacing, and concision.

Offering Criticism to people you don't know

I became friends with John Granger because of my responding to his open invitation in his first book on the Harry Potter series, The Hidden Key to Harry Potter. He had included his email address in the back of the book and I wrote to him via email.

It wasn't a gushy note that laid the praise on thick. Nope. I wrote him a detailed message where I started out introducing myself and told him what I liked about his book, and then I mentioned errors that I spotted including page numbers for his reference. Some were spelling mistakes, whilst others were factual errors. I then shared my thoughts where I differed with him on areas of interpretation or speculation which could not be classified as errors but instead were differences of opinion. I backed up those reasons with citations from canon, but I was not dogmatic about it. I realize that my opinions on these matters might be proven in the future to be totally wrong. Therefore, I did not try to persuade him to the absolute correctness my theories, but rather to introduce him to other schools of thought on the matters under discussion.

I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible, because I felt that it was the polite thing to do. He appreciated how I comported myself and we have since then have corresponded via email for close to four years. There are many areas of speculation that we disagree on, but we are never disagreeable about it.

Not everyone who has read his books or online essays seems to share that same sense of propriety.

Prior to the Sonorus event, I met up with John and Mary Granger and had lunch with them. John bemoaned the fact that not everyone in the HP online fandom followed what he called the "Linda McCabe school of diplomacy" by contacting someone directly before critiquing their work in public.

That discussion came up due to several online fansites I read recently with topic threads discussing the concept of literary alchemy in the HP series. There were some people who had done a lot of researching and theorizing on the issue, and had been inspired to begin their inquiry into the subject by John Granger's work. However, the difference is that they never tried to engage him in a discussion and see if their underlying assumptions had any validity to them.

Some who posted mentioned his work in unflattering terms and dogmatically stated that he was incorrect in his interpretations, and that they knew how these things worked.

I've read enough on the subject to realize that alchemy is a complex subject that cannot be fully understood in an afternoon's worth of reading or even a month or year. It can and has been the lifelong pursuit of many people over the centuries. Alchemical symbolism is deliberately complicated and understanding it is not like simple mathematics where you place numbers in an equation and churn out a result. Nope, it is more like higher mathematics where there may not yet be a solution to given problem, but the trick is to try and focus your intellect on how to approach solving the problem.

Which means that when you are trying to predict future plot lines using the various characters in a series following a literary alchemy framework isn't as easy as it looks, and there are many, many ambiguities which can be resolved in multiple if not an infinite number of possibilities.

Only J.K. Rowling will truly know what influences she drew upon when she made her detailed plot of the series. Only JKR knows what details in her story such as the mention of the herb dittany is there for symbolic meaning or simply there to dress up the narrative.

She is like a magpie with mythology and takes things from a myriad of sources and then twists them to fit her own plot needs. She is not bound by any rules that force her to follow any predetermined formula. In fact, having unforeseen plot twists is exactly what her fans have come to expect from her. Expect the unexpected.

John decided against posting a rebuttal post in that forum to defend his scholarship in this area for he felt that the standards of polite discourse had not been followed. If they had tried to engage with him from the beginning in a discussion about Harry Potter and literary alchemy, he would have responded. Instead, they simply attacked him in a public forum and put forth their own interpretation as if it was the only credible possible explanation.

I enjoy having layered symbolic meaning to stories. It adds a richness and depth to its meaning. However, there can be more than one meaning derived from symbolism and it is wise to remember that.

Later, while reading my literary blog subscriptions, I came across a link to an article written about how best to approach people you don't know by email. There are a lot of good points in the article and I would hope that these precepts would soon become a standard part of netiquette.

San Francisco Writers Conference

I volunteered at the San Francisco Writers Conference this year. Kate Farrell, Tyler Stanley, Pat Tyler, as well as Marlene Cullen and Ransom Stephens were all volunteers as well. I felt proud to be in such company, and know were all a part of the Sonoma County writing community.

This was the fourth annual San Francisco Writers Conference and it was sold out. Three hundred and fifty writers of varying levels of experience came from thirty one states and Canada.

I had several assigned tasks, but it was the impromptu interactions with attendees that I enjoyed the most. There were times when I felt like a roving ambassador, giving directions, answering questions and engaging people in conversation when people were waiting. I felt that my experience and knowledge gleaned from going to other conferences and being a CWC member bore fruit. I networked with writers, extolled the virtues of belonging to the nation’s oldest professional writers club and told them various places to find information they sought. I had printed up 20 business cards, but should have made more as I ran out before the conference was over giving them out to writers.

The conference had forty workshop sessions to attend and opportunities to talk with agents and editors. Part of the conference dealt with creating the perfect pitch. There was a morning session devoted to this subject as well as an after hours session where people were invited to practice their pitch and compete against one another. This led to a debate as to whether the ideal pitch should be 25 words or 25 seconds. I had not attended that competition, and I’m glad I hadn’t. That’s way too much pressure to put on people.

Yes, a pitch is important, but it is not the be-all-and-end-all of how to interest someone in your writing. I understand that by describing your project succinctly it might become the description an agent uses with an editor, which might later be used by the editor to sell the idea to the acquisitions team, then in a further incarnation it might wind up being used on a back cover to tempt the book buyer. So, while a pitch is important I don’t think you need to sweat the exact number of words nor the exact number of seconds it takes to say it. Egads, talk about performance anxiety.

I had read several agent blogs in the last few weeks discussing their viewpoint on the “speed date” sessions. Agents generally cringe at the mere thought of these events because they are bombarded by nervous writers desperate to make a good impression in less than three minutes. As if an entire life’s work and self-worth could be boiled down and encapsulated into three stress-filled minutes. Of course it can’t, and therein lies the rub.

The nervousness over meeting with agents and editors seemed pervasive and I did my part to try and alleviate some of the stress. I told people that they would be better served to relax, smile and show your human side first before launching into a spring loaded pitch that you’ve been obsessing over. Because not only are agents interested in your writing project, but they’re also interested in knowing whether or not you’ll be a client from hell. Being nervous or tetchy if you didn’t get your exact full three minutes will not play in your favor.

So I tried to be as relaxed as possible. Two of the three agents I met at the Speed Date session I had met several times over the weekend in my volunteer capacity, so when I sat down at their table I was a familiar friendly face. I exchanged some pleasantries before giving my pitch.

The third agent I had not met before. I had researched the different agents the weekend prior to the conference and saw a mention on her agency’s website that she liked damp castles. That description was not in the conference blurb about her, nor did she say anything about it when she introduced herself. So I started my time with her by saying that I was approaching her because of her stated fondness for damp castles.

Then I gave her my pitch.

As it turned out, I received three requests for partials. Three for three. That’s a lot better than my batting average at previous conferences.

By Sunday afternoon, I said goodbye to many of the writers that I had met and talked with over the weekend. They all said they felt it was worth their time, expense and travel to come to the conference. They were grateful for the advice and encouragement that they had gotten along the way.

And that, made me feel good.

Linda

Anyone who was interested but unable to attend the conference – you can listen to the various workshops either by CD or MP3 file. Each session was recorded and available on www.vwtapes.com That website also has recordings from other writers conferences as well.

Writers Conferences - Why Should Anyone Go to Them?

Recently I've seen a couple agents blogs mention writers conferences and discuss from their perspectives whether or not it is worth their time attending. Most of them are already swamped with query letters, and so they are not waiting around feeling forlorn hoping for potential clients to contact them.

They have also said that it is doubtful that they will actually find new clients by meeting writers at a writers conference. The one area they felt that was worthwhile was in educating writers about the business of publishing.

With the idea that many agents or editors from publishing houses do not expect that they will actually meet writers that they'll develop a long term working relationship with, why should writers spend hundreds of dollars to attend writers conferences?

Because you'll learn about the business in ways that you simply can't from reading books, blogs or websites.

Because going to conferences will help you to meet others who share your same passion for the written word.

I belong to a writers club and so I meet with other writers at least once a month and can talk with others who share my obsession about writing. However, by going to writers conferences I meet writers from geographically distant areas and have developed friendships with them.

The first writers conference I attended was about fifteen years ago when I was still in my twenties and I wasn't sure exactly kind of writing I wanted to pursue. I had taken a course in screenwriting before moving to California, but I had gotten bitten by the political activism bug. I started spending more of my creative energy writing essays on political issues than thinking up screenplays. At the time I went to my first conference I had the credit of having had one op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times. It was beginner's luck where my first submission was accepted, but none of my follow up submissions were.

I contemplated working as a free lance writer on political topics I cared passionately about. So I attended sessions geared for free lance writing, but also others that piqued my interest. I also heard speeches from the keynote speakers which were informative and inspirational.

At the time, I felt embarrassed to be there as if I didn't belong because I had only one real credit to my name. I didn't realize that it was precisely because I was so new that attending a writers conference was the best thing for me. If nothing else, I realized from the sheer number of attendees that I was not alone and that I had colleagues who weren't superhuman individuals, they were just normal people.

I have since then attended six other writers conferences and at least three book festivals. Talking with other writers always inspires me, because I learn from other people. I also share with them my knowledge gleaned over the years.

Just the other day I was talking with Tom Kendrick who was a guest speaker for my writers club last December and we were discussing literary blogs. He is in the process of adapting his book Bluewater Goldrush into a screenplay and wanted to know if there were any blogs about screenwriting. I didn't know of any offhand, but the next day as I was looking for something else, I found an area on the wonderful Absolute Write Website for screenwriters. I sent Tom the link and he followed up. Within an hour he was corresponding with a successful screenwriter and learning a lot.

Sometimes I envision myself as a spider who is sending out silken strands in many directions and then joining them together. You never know when a piece of information that you hear will come in handy, and that is another benefit from writers conferences. You hear stories from industry professionals and you can hopefully use that information to help you avoid making similar mistakes that others made before.

You can also meet agents. Some of the settings to meet agents are stressful ordeals because they involve time limited "pitch sessions." It's like trying to convey to someone the essence of your book project in the time it would take to ride in an elevator.

One conference I went to seven years ago had agent and editor round tables, which in retrospect was an incredibly cruel method to perform these agent-author interactions. At each table sat an agent or an editor and writers filled in the rest of the chairs. The agent could have at any one time probably seven pairs of eyes staring at them, while one person nervously tried selling them on their book in about two minutes time. The agent would make a snap decision of "that's not the type of book that I'm currently looking for" or "here's my card, please send me a query letter about your project." Meanwhile the other writers were jockeying for position to be the next to get their turn. As soon as one writer completed their pitch, they'd vacate their seat to find an open seat at another agent's table and wait their turn to repeat the process.

Rinse, pitch, repeat.

It was stressful for me, but I believe it was far more stressful for the agents and editors to have to endure two hours of hungry looking eyes staring at them desperately seeking validation. In retrospect, I feel sorry that they were even put in such a format.

It is far more humane to have only one writer at a time sit at a table talking to an agent. Even if they are bored stiff by the individuals stammering about their Great American Novel, there would only be one pair of eyes at a time staring at them as opposed to multiple sets.

Beth Proudfoot the chair of the East of Eden Writers Conference spoke to my writers club three years ago about what writers can expect from attending writers conferences, and she has a summation of that available online here.

Due to her insistence that writers embrace lines at writers conferences as a means to schmooze, I look at them in a different light. They are a chance to network with people. Be as outgoing as possible and listen more than you speak.

One thing to note there is one line in which you absolutely should not pitch.

It is a Cardinal Sin to pitch in the bathroom line.

Don't do it.

It's tacky, and well, no one wants you to continue telling them about your book when they've closed the door or are standing at the urinal.

Talking about your novel near the shrimp cocktail is one thing - doing it in a bathroom is another.

Just don't. If you feel you must say something to an agent who is standing next to you while you're waiting in line, say "isn't this a great conference?" or "I really liked your talk at the last session." Something light and polite that does not beg for a long conversation, especially when you are liable to be interrupted by the lyrical sound of flushing at any time.

There have been anecdotes of writers handing samples of their work under the stalls to agents. Unless you wish to be the butt of cruel jokes bandied about for years by agents when they gather together at a bar.

That's about all for now. This weekend I'm volunteering for the San Francisco Writers Conference and am looking forward to having a great time.

Look for me if you're attending as well.

Linda

For the most humorous take of what attending a writers conference from an agent's perspective, here's what Miss Snark had to say.