The Hope Behind Writer's Conferences

I have vivid memories of my first writer's conference.  I had been on the road for more than six months, was staying in Santa Cruz and feeling pretty cocky after my DIY book tour that wasn't making me any money.  The Conference was in San Diego and the agents and editors there were pretty brutal and, as I was to find out later, more honest than they often are at conferences.  I remember the conference because the intensity of hundreds of writers wanting something from a handful of agents and editors really caught me off guard.  

As a self-published author at the time, I knew plenty about setting up a booth in art and craft fairs, coffee houses, storytelling naked in hot springs, and selling the book at random.  I knew plenty about how draining it is for the writer to sell her own work, developing a thick skin when dozens of people walked by not giving a damn about me pursuing my dream, thought my stories sucked, and learning to live for the "Yes" from those who bought my book and found my stories intriguing.  I also knew to NEVER tell the agents and editors I had self-published.

But I knew nothing about the business end of publishing.  When I went to classes about how to pitch, how to query, how to write a synopsis, I felt the presenters were speaking in a foreign language and they treated me as such.  Since 2006, I've been to several conferences and have come to realize that my dreams aren't necessarily going to come true because I'm meeting these people face to face.  I've also learned that these events are challenging for the agents and editors listening to us pitch in our eager-beaver-ready-to-make-my-dreams-come-true kind of way.  Writers spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars going to these each year for the opportunity to meet industry insiders face to face.  The main advantage is promotion of our writing from being an "unsolicited query and/or submission" that either gets rejected outright or left in the limbo of the slush pile for months to "Requested Materials from Such and So Conference 2010" that will get rejected most of the time, but at least the writer is guaranteed a look-see.  At the conferences, the speakers encourage us to build our writer's community from these events, stressing that leaving with a pocket full of cards from other writers is the most important thing we can hope to accomplish there.  And they're right.  The better conferences have classes that give a lot of useful information that you won't find in Writer's Market or on the Internet because the information is coming from the horse's mouth.  For example, I heard about Miss Snark at a conference.  I recently learned new techniques to engage the reader's emotions that I never knew before.  I have learned to pitch, query, and write a synopsis from these, enough that I'm calm talking to the agents and editors who responded by complimenting my pitching style as "perfect."  I know this doesn't mean I'll get published, but I feel ready enough to throw my writing into the ring.  I've already received 4 rejections from cold query letters, one with a partial to an agent I'd met 3 years before.  That rejection hurt my heart a little.  But I still have 5 partials out to 3 editors and 2 agents as well as one query with 10 pages to 1 agent.  That doesn't mean I'll get representation or a publishing contract.  Maybe I'll get one offer.

  

And I'm dreaming that I will.