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The meat of the conference was Saturday.  With a lineup of 25 speakers, there were
plenty of classes to chose from. In fact, I had a hard time picking what to go
to, which brings me to my first complaint, and let me emphasize it’s a minor
one.

Obviously if you have good speakers and good classes you’re going to run into this situation, but I think the conference was a little top-heavy.
I wanted to go to every class that first hour. It started off with a bang, but I felt like I missed out. Fortunately, I work with Mike Allen, and he’s friendly enough to let me bug him in the beak room, and I met Mollie Cox Bryan during lunch at the conference. She was friendly and encouraging.

If I were the one organizing–and I recognize it’s always easier said than done–but if it were me, I would organize each hour into themes and paths. So for one hour there would be a publishing theme with paths for the self-publishing route and the agented route. There would also be speakers who would describe some part of the publishing process.  Basically, it would be nice to look at each hour and see a clear path for what I think my goals are.

Which brings me to my second complaint, also minor. There are no real descriptions of what you’re getting. Now granted, there are titles, and they are descriptive, but I have found both this year and the other year I attended, the what I assume the class is about based on the title is not always what I get.

This year in particular, I think there was some confusion over the difference in “Advice from Literary Agents, Part I” and “Advice from Literary Agents, Part II.” The latter of which turned out to be about non-fiction.

On the other hand, I can see where even if the itinerary were more descriptive you could very easily get into the class and it turn out to be something other than what you thought. A lot of the classes were question based. Rod Belcher’s class was like that. He started out slow, but after several questions he found his zone and though not what I expected from the title, was very informative.

Which leads me to the role of the attendee. I honestly  believe that no matter what class I attended, I would have gotten something out of it. That’s not to say that every class was excellent.

For example, I went to the “Advice from Literary Agents, Part I.” Nat Sobel was a wonderful speaker, but being someone who’s been researching and reading advice from literary agents for a while now, he didn’t say anything I hadn’t already read before. Does that mean I wasted 45 minutes listening to him? Absolutely not. It never hurts to hear good advice more than once.

And I went to Roland Lazenby’s class, “The Six-Figure Book Sale,” which was about non-fiction book proposals. I don’t write non-fiction, but this turned out to be my favorite class of the day. I loved his advice. He was speaking about the proposal, but it can apply to your first page, your  query letter, anything really. Write so good that you “Make them wet their pants.”

If you attend a conference or workshop, you have to be open to what’s being said. You have to listen intently to what’s being discussed and actively look for how it applies to you. Don’t expect to be spoon fed. Expect to get food to chew on.

Some of my takeaways from Saturday’s conference:

• Write! The more you write the better you are.
  Learn the craft.
• Look for ways to get published. Check out
  literary reviews and the writer’s market. Short stories can be a great way to
  get noticed.
• Do your research. Learn the business.
• Be driven. If you want it, work for it. Put your
  time in.
• Nurture a list of ideas to write about. Look for
  the big story not being told.
• Make colleagues. Look for critique groups.
• Engage the reader. “Make them wet their
  pants.”