There is just so much that I could post right now thanks to the conference. Talk about brain overload. Between the knowledge, workshops, discussions, panels and people's names, my brain is exhausted. If I saw most the people I met there (with a few exceptions) a week from now, I don't think I'll remember them because it was just too many names for one weekend. But I still loved it. This post is a general, this is random stuff that happened. There will be specific posts with things I learned at the different activities. The ones I really enjoyed and got the most out of will get their own posts because I took notes for you all.
It was so crazy that I don't know where to begin. So, I'm going to do this. I'm going to list the events I went to, small bits of advice I learned but don't want to dedicate a whole post to the topic and then tell you all the books I bought (9 of them, all signed).
The Workshops
I went to several workshops, though some were hard to choose from because two or three really good ones were held at the same time. I missed the first editors panel, for example, which had the fantasy/sci-fi editors because there was no way I was going to leave my front row seat (people sat on floor even) in Kristin Nelson's query workshop. What I went to at the conference:
Welcome to RMFW - Getting to Know Your Characters - Neworking: Sowing the Seeds of Success - It Gets Complicated: Dealing with the Middle of Your Novel - Rhythm and Cadence and Beats, Oh My! - Agent Panel One - As Miss Piggy Says, It Has To Go Somewhere - Searching for Harry Potter: Key Elements of YA - He Said, She Said: Writing the Opposite Sex - Writing Worlds That Work - Say Goodbye to the Slushpile - Editor Panel Two - Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness - The End is Near! Now What Do I Do?
Yep, I went to all those.
Random Advice
With Marketing Self: Consider the people you need to make a career from writing, write those down and then across from them on the list write down what you could give them in exchange.
From Revision Workshop: Write in scenes. Scene changes occur when POV shifts, skipping time (hours, days, etc), or sudden moves of location.
Also, Show v Tell. Tell draws a conclusion for the reader, instead of letting them come to their own conclusions.
Pitch (query workshop) - The pitch should have the catalyst, which should be located in the first 30 pages. (Not the big, near the end part of the conflict, which is what I had been doing. Good to know.)
There will be much more advice over the next week or so. I'm going to post one blog entry on my own advice for attending conferences along with doing posts using the information I received at the workshops. And I will even post the stuff I wrote during the query workshop, which is really bad. So, you can see my horrible attempt at the pitch part of the query (people were struggling to get under 10 lines and I barely managed to get 5 lines, just saying).
Books I Bought:
Two books signed by authors specifically to me.
Dooms Day Book by Connie Willis
Heart Mate by Robin D. Owens
Book on Writing (signed)
Wild Ink: How to Write Fiction for Young Adults by Victoria Hanley
General signed fiction.
Cowboy Trouble by Joanne Kennedy
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Violet Wings by Victoria Hanley
The Witch of Agnesi by Robert Spiller
The Gods of Fate: Foresight by Sherry D. Ficklin
And the last one is different. I picked the book up because the cover interested me with the atomic type symbol and earth in the middle. The story information sounded information, involving a physicist so I took the book to the register. Turns out the books first printing had a slight error on the front cover. Instead of saying "13th" the front says "13", which according to the ones selling the books makes it a collector's item. And it was the only one they brought to the sale. Quite the little surprise.
The 13th Power by Terry Wright
Now, I need sleep because I've got work tomorrow.
3 comments:
Sounds like a great time!
I also think that as long as you put effort in to them, conferences can be a huge boost to your writing efforts.
I attended the Pacific Northwest Writers conference at the end of July, and am still digesting good material.
It seems you had a great time. How i would love to be able to go to one of them lol. but they don't usually have them in casper wyoming.
Bryan - It was a great time and very encouraging. And, (i'll post this in one other post but here it is as well) one presenter had statistics that said going to conferences and such shortened the average number of years it took authors to get published.
Summer - Indeed, none in wyoming in general. The first one I went to was in Vail Colorado and this one was Denver. You'll probably have to go to Colorado if you want to go to a conference.
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