Conferences

The last few weeks I’ve been obsessed about e-pub vs. print and self publish vs. traditional houses. Over at Bark I blogged about how I learned that the term “self-published” is too filled with negativity, so the hip new term is “indie author.” I also wrote about how a writer friend emailed me Jim C. Hall’s very funny cartoon to get me to shut up about the whole thing. Well, I’m happy to report that I’m not longer obsessing. The Rose City Spring Intensive has renewed my enthusiasm for writing, given me new hope about getting published, and shown me—yet …

I’m at another conference this weekend. My second visit to the Emerald City Writers Conference (ECWC) is turning out to be even more fun than when I first visited it two years ago. Tomorrow I’m pitching to two editors and two agents and tonight I’ve fine tuned my pitch until the wee hours of the morning. Here’s my final version. Would you read this book? Twenty-six year old freelance forensic artist Molly Nyland doesn’t want anybody to know that the reason she draws such great composite sketches is because she can tell when what people say doesn’t match what they …

We so often put writing last on our priority list. We feel guilty for “stealing” writing time from our day job, our family, and our friends. Taking the time and the money to go to a writing conference seems selfish. After all, we can learn writing techniques and marketing tips from books and blogs, so why spend the money? Isn’t the time you’d spend at the conference better spent on writing? Sure, you can spend that time on you writing; slogging away at the keyword, pulling the prose out of your soul while you worry about all the other things on …

Haven’t been posting for a while, but that’s because I’ve been busy with new and wonderful things. My friend Jere and I traveled to the beautiful Whidbey Island for their writers’ association’s annual conference—and what a great conference it was. The fantastic nature, the excellent volunteers, and the intimate and casual atmosphere made this my favorite conference ever. One of the reasons I’m so partial to it is because while pitching for an agent, I got my first FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUEST ever for Paved Paradise. So, that’s what I’ve been working on. Even though the manuscript was completed and reviewed …

I went to my first writing conference ever last week, the PNWA conference. The whole writing group was supposed to go (all three of us) but my two partners chickened out. Actually, they had really good excuses for why they couldn’t go, but I had already paid my registration fee. After some mishaps about parking—the hotel wasn’t prepared for so many people driving their own cars—I settled in for my first workshop. What I was expecting from this conference was a bunch of already established writers looking down their nose at us plebs that were trying to get an agent …