2008 San Francisco Writers Conference

Last year I wrote a post about why anyone should go to a writers conference as well as my experiences having volunteered at the 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference.

I volunteered again this year, and had an even better time than before.

I carpooled down to The City (which is what San Francisco is called by people in the Bay Area - NOT Frisco or San Fran) with my friend Cindy Pavlinac. I have known Cindy for several years and she holds the same position on the board of directors for the Marin branch of the California Writers Club as I do on the Redwood Writers branch.

Cindy and I arrived early Friday morning wanting to hear Kemble Scott speak at the opening session. That was important because we wanted to introduce ourselves to him since he will be our guest speaker at a joint meeting for our two clubs in April. He had been a speaker at Litquake last fall with my friend Erika Mailman talking about their experiences as newly published authors.



His session was great and he gave several anecdotes demonstrating his business savvy. His book is entitled SoMa which is a nickname for the gritty South of Market Street neighborhood of San Francisco. He made Youtube videos of the areas in his novel helping to publicize his book.

One thing he did not plan on was being attacked by a local online critic who hates everyone. At first Scott was taken aback, but then he realized that it was great publicity. People were learning about his new book and it increased sales.

His book has gone on to become a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Not bad. Not bad at all.

He has many reviews listed on his website, but this one seems the most intriguing to me:

"I read the first page of SoMa and never put it down until I read the last page. Then my housemate took it from me and read it in a day. It flows through your hands like water, yet it shocks, awes, repulses, exposes trade secrets, and illuminates the deep motives for extreme behavior. I know people who are less real than these characters. I laughed out loud. Kemble Scott is one sick bastard."

— Joe Quirk, best-selling author of The Ultimate Rush and Sperm are from Men, Eggs are from Women.

I had a great time meeting and schmoozing with Kemble Scott. I think he's a great guy, even if Joe Quirk thinks he's "one sick bastard" from his novel. It was nice that Scott hung around the conference all three days, and not just there simply for his session and leaving afterward. I even was fortunate enough to go out to dinner with him, Yanina Gotsulsky and Ransom Stephens on Friday night. We had a great time laughing, telling tales, and enjoying each others company.

I haven't read Scott's book yet, but I shall make a point of doing so before his talk at our joint meeting.




At our arrival I ran into Bryce Holt and his brother Kyle. I had met Bryce the previous year and had corresponded with him a few times over the past year. It was nice to see him again and to hear about his progress to publication in the intervening time.

I was surprised when I looked up and saw someone who had been a member of my writers club, but had moved to Oregon. I was happy when I was able to immediately come up with his name. As it turns out it was his first writers conference and being greeted by an old friend at its onset helped set his mind at ease.

Here's a picture of me with J.S. McDaniel as well as the glamorous Yanina Gotsulsky.


On Saturday morning as I was on my way to the first session of the day I crossed paths with J.S. He was on his way downstairs to the lower conference rooms. I asked where he was going, and he told me the name of the session he was planning on attending. I shook my head and said, "No. You need to go hear about Pitchcraft. Trust me." Then I redirected him to attend the session by Katharine Sands of the Sarah Jane Freyman Agency. J.S. had paid to participate in the Speed Dating for Agents on Sunday morning, so I knew he needed to hear what Sands had to say.

He did thank me, by the way.

I knew J.S. from the Redwood Writers meetings, and for some reason he always reminded me of Ransom Stephens. Here's a picture of Ransom and I mugging for the camera.



Yes, Ransom and J.S. are both white guys with black hair, about the same height and around the same age, and are both writers. However, Ransom has a dry, acerbic wit which is far different than J.S.'s style of humor.

I wanted to introduce them to each other because if for no other reason than they are both friends of mine. I had forgotten that both used spirituality in their novels. (Then again, I have only talked with them about their writing and without reading their stories, so I have an excuse for not recognizing that commonality.)

They hit it off with each other and I am hoping they will develop a correspondence and their own friendship.

That leads me to what I feel is most important aspect of the conferences. It is not the workshops, but it is interacting with the people there: the speakers, the organizers, and the attendees. It is in exchanging of ideas and expertise about various aspects of the craft of writing and the business of publishing that allows you to expand your circle of literary friends.

One of the best summaries I have ever read of how best to schmooze with others at a writers conference was written by Beth Proudfoot the past chair of the East of Eden Writers Conference.

She urges everyone to embrace any and all lines at conferences as opportunities to speak with people, exchange business cards, and establish friendships with people who share your interest in writing.

In my volunteer duties I saw myself as a roving ambassador to help answer questions about what to expect at the conference as well as offering tips for blogs, websites, etc.

I worked the Editors Roundtable session on Saturday afternoon. There were about ten editors participating and each sat at their own table with nine seats for participants to ask them questions. Each person had two minutes.

The volunteers had two minute egg timers to enforce the two minute rule.

Two minutes is not a lot of time to pitch your book and have an editor form an informed opinion about your book that you have spent years agonizing over each fine detail. We did not want individuals to try and monopolize time with the editors and cause others at their table to be given the short shrift. Overall, I think it ran pretty smooth.

The volunteers were allowed to choose which table they preferred working at and I picked Ten Speed Press. That is because of my time spent as a bookseller at Barnes and Noble and my being impressed with not only their titles but their organization as a whole. They are one of the largest independent publishers which produces about 150 titles each year. (That tidbit is from their website.)

I was impressed with the writers who pitched to the editor from Ten Speed because I think for the most part, they understood what that house published. The pitches were succinct and well received. I was surprised when Jo Ann Deck actually took sample pages, book proposals, etc., from writers. In the past I have seen most agents or editors refrain from taking anything, but instead handing out their business card to those people whose projects interested them.

She left that night with an armload of information and had made connections with a lot of writers who had promising sounding books.

And they did it in under two minutes. Incredible.

I was given another task which was to serve as a greeter at breakfast. Basically I was there with another woman to assure that those walking in for the coffee and pastries were paid conference attendees and not just people staying at the hotel who wandered downstairs and thought, "hey, free food!"

We greeted the bleary-eyed writers who were in desperate need of caffeine. I tried reading the badges for the home towns of the attendees as they walked by and saw that they were from all over the country. I remember seeing Florida, Virginia, New York, Nevada, Michigan and Hawaii. The one that surprised me the most was Zita Weber, a writer from Australia. She crossed seventeen time zones (!) to attend that conference.

Now that is commitment to your career.

On Sunday morning I not only worked as a breakfast greeter, but I worked the Speed Dating for Agents session. I was stationed outside in the hallway and did my best to answer questions of those who standing in line waiting to go inside.

Here I am trying to calm their jittery nerves.


If you squint you can see the logo for the California Writers Club on my tote bag. Yes, I was a walking advertisement for my writers club.

The one piece of advice that I tried to impart most often was to not immediately launch into a pitch upon sitting down in front of the agent, but instead to take a moment and make eye contact and smile. Make a human connection first before you start talking.

I also warned about complaining about anything, especially about not getting the full amount of time (three minutes) should the person in front of you not get out of the chair when they were supposed to.

You do not want to be perceived as a Client From Hell.

Agents are looking for professionals whose writing excites them and are a pleasure to work with. They do not want temperamental primadonnas.

I had read an agent's blog a year ago where an anecdote was related about two different writers at a Speed Dating session. The first writer grumbled and complained that they only got two and a half minutes and not the full three minutes (meanwhile wasting valuable seconds while whining.) The second writer sat down, cast a knowing glance behind them at their predecessor and then said something like, "wow, that must have been fun."

The agent was so grateful that s/he was far more likely to ask for a partial from the second writer even if it was not a subject s/he is normally interested in. Because the second writer treated him/her as a human being and not a magical gatekeeper lacking feelings.

After the conference I saw a post on Nathan Bransford's blog and contacted Joe Ramelo who mentioned he had attended the conference in his reply. I wrote to him, and as it turns out, Joe was one of many people I spoke with while waiting in line. He felt that I was an "encouraging presence" who dispensed good advice.

Yay. It is nice to know that my objectives were achieved.

One of the high points of the conference was having the opportunity to meet and talk with Tess Gerritsen. She is an amazing author as well as a warm, engaging and witty person. She gave a fabulous key note address on Sunday afternoon in which she talked about the idea of storytelling as an organic process that is difficult to define or predict.

She has given lectures to physicians who want to become novelists and she says that many of them are astounded when for the first time in their life they are not successful. They all want to know the secret. As if there was a mathematical equation which can be described and used to allow them to simply plug variables into an algorithm and get the desired result.

It is not that easy.

She gave as an example two people who might have had the same experience. "Uncle Harry" who when he begins a story causes everyone to yawn and check their watches and "Aunt Maude" who can tell the same story and have people hang on her every word.

It is not necessarily the events that are important, but it is the telling of the tale.

I was also blessed by chatting with Tess on Saturday night about medicine, wine, archaeology, and California along with my friend Cindy Pavlinac. At one point Tess looked at the two of us and remarked with a little surprise about how open we were about expressing our opinions. She now lives in Maine and people there are reserved.

We kind of shrugged at that. Cindy and I are both Midwestern gals who now live in Northern California and we do not hesitate in speaking our minds. It is part of who we are.

Here I am standing next to the lovely and talented Tess Gerritsen. I think she must have leaned down a little, because she is statuesque, whereas I am decidedly not.



I want to thank my good friend Cindy Pavlinac for taking these pictures and allowing me to share them on my blog. (My camera was being used in Yosemite while I was in San Francisco.)

All in all, I had a wonderful time at the San Francisco Writers Conference. It was some of the best weather I have ever experienced in The City, and I got the chance to schmooze with a lot of people.

For those who are interested in hearing any of the sessions from the conference, they are available on CD as well as downloadable MP3 at VW tapes. You can also find sessions from other writers conferences including the famous Maui Writers Conference at the same site.




By the way, after I returned home from the conference I was checking my overstuffed email box. I opened my spam folder and quickly scanned the contents seeing multiple notices for my winning overseas lotteries that I never entered, confidential communiques from people requesting my assistance in transferring large amounts of money from Nigeria, offers to lengthen anatomical body parts that I lack, and advertisements for horribly spelled pharmaceuticals. It was after I hit "delete all messages" that I noticed the letters SFWC in one of the message lines.

Too late. I did not notice the name of the sender and it was gone. Forever.

So if anyone reading this post tried sending me an email after meeting me at conference, and I did not respond to you -- I apologize and request that you write to me again.

Thanks and I hope everyone muse is treating them well!

Linda

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.