Monday, September 14, 2009

Writer Conferences

At the Querytracker Blog I found an informative link entitled SCBWI 2009: Why Your Manuscript Got Rejected from a recap of Delacorte Press editor Wendy Loggia's keynote address at the SCBWI conference. I always get excited when I come across a blog about someone's conference experience or an article about a conference workshop. Writer Conferences are enlightening and exhilarating, and if you're at the right stage in your writing, there are few better places for getting ahead in your career. 

Writer conferences are exciting. Being able to listen to an author give a talk or hear a panel of agents discuss the market, or even sit across from an editor at lunch and chit-chat about the wonderful time we're having made me aware of an often overlooked point in forums and blogs: despite the rejections and all the snarky comments we read about, people in publishing are some of the nicest people around! They truly are! I met nothing but highly enthusiastic, helpful people who wanted to find new authors and wanted to help. They want a great manuscript! They want one so bad that they spend endless hours of their free time reading through submissions in the hopes of finding one.

The afterglow of the New York conference lasted a long time, especially since a pitch session with a phenomenal editor led to my first full request (it was for that first book that should never have been queried/submitted in the first place...but still!). I know that we're "not in this business for rejections, glowing or otherwise," (Janet Reid, agent extraordinaire) but that was a pretty terrific letter, and it led me to understand where my voice truly lay. 

If you have a polished, ready-to-submit manuscript, a conference is a fantastic place to make contacts, learn and have fun!

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for mentioning the Query Tracker blog! I'm glad you found the information useful.

    Come on over to my Shooting Stars blog - I'm having an award party and you can pick one for your blog!

    Suzy :)

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  2. Hi Suzy, I'm kinda starstruck because I ADORE the Query Tracker blog, thank you for your great posts and for visiting my blog here!

    And thanks for letting me know about your award party, I love it!

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  3. I love reading about conference experiences. I follow quite a few author blogs, and it's always interesting to hear about things. It's interesting to read about it on agent blogs, too, because I think it gives so much helpful insight into what kind of things you should and shouldn't do.

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  4. Me too! It's interesting getting different perspectives on conferences...sometimes it sounds exhausting for agents and editors, who are giving workshops and doing pitch sessions, often back-to-back! Not to mention the humorous accounts of unpublished authors trying to sneak them manuscripts or pitching to them in the bathroom!

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