Today was the writers conference. It lasted from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; I left at 4:15 p.m. I was (and am) very tired.
I greeted a lot of people I knew but hadn't seen in a long time. I was pleased about that. I saw again two fellow bloggers, Becky and Ms.E. Becky introduced me to a blogger at Smith Mountain Lake but unfortunately I didn't write down either the name of the person or the blog.
I knew five of the presenters - K.R., D.S., K.A., S.C., G.C. I also saw L. Adkins, who has published several books about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I interviewed him for an article about two years ago. He could have been a presenter himself.
A few other people I hadn't seen in a while were G.J., who is another freelance newspaper writer, and B.C. Also E.G., whom I knew from college.
A new person I met was Keith, who is a former editor of Omni magazine. Keith gave the lecture on blogging, which I unfortunately did not attend. At lunch he was very kind to my friend G.J., who is in her 60s and a little lacking in knowledgeable about things like blogs. She is, however, always willing to learn. I admire her for that.
I estimated the crowd at less than 100 but could be wrong. They had four classrooms going so I never saw everyone all together except for in the hallway, coming and going.
I haven't been to many writer's conferences lately so I don't have much to compare. The last one I attended was the Blue Ridge Writer's Conference at Roanoke College in about 1992. I have attended the Hollins Literary Festival since then, several times over, but since they don't call it a conference I don't think it counts.
Anyway, the good things about today's conference:
Networking
Seeing old friends and making new acquaintances
Hearing a few good talks. Sharon McCrumb's talk, which was the very last thing I attended, was worth the admission price all by itself, even if she did have a head cold.
A renewed determination to do something else with my work. In my spare time. Whenever that is.
The bad things:
There was a lot of noise bleed over from room to room; it was very distracting.
The lectures were only offered one time, so if there were two you wanted to go to at the same time, you were out of luck and had no chance to make it up.
The lectures were very much "old school" publishing. Aside from the blogging lecture, these talks were about publishing as it has been. I would have liked to have seen something about marketing yourself and your work and something about using the Internet to your advantage. I also would have liked to have seen something about research on the Internet, or maybe even "maximizing your Blackberry." Hearing about John Garner's book On Becoming a Novelist is certainly worthwhile, but then so is knowing how to find you what you want in a database.
And everyone takes for granted that people know how to format a manuscript. They talk about doing all the right things for a submission and neglect the very fine details - double space, 1" margins all the way around, use good white clean crisp paper, boring fonts (Times Roman or Courier or Arial, generally) and only one side of the paper. The old pros do this in their sleep, but I have seen manuscripts using both sides of the paper, single spaced, etc., etc. It's not that this is a hard thing; people just don't seem to know, and I suppose the lecturers just forget to mention it.
Lunch consisted of a wheat bread sandwich with cheese, lettuce, cucumber and sprouts. One of my lunch mates complained a lot about the sprouts. I didn't mind them but it was a lot of carbs.
I did not learn anything I didn't already know, but then I have been freelancing a long time. I am sure for many people much of the information was new.
All in all not a bad day, but it certainly made me tired!
I know what you mean about the one time only workshops...I used to go to week-long conferences. It never seemed to fail that the only two workshops I was really interested in were opposite each other on the schedule.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't surprised to hear about the noisy rooms and the lousy food. But I am surprised that self publishing, etc wasn't discussed more. Was this conference sponsored by traditional publishers?
And finally, you mentioned manuscript submissions being on "clean, crisp papaer". I would have thought by now that electronic submissions would be the norm.
It was nice to see you there!
ReplyDeleteSally was the SML blogger; her blog is http://smithmountainlakemysterywriter.blogspot.com.
I learned a lot from two of the workshops (and really enjoyed Sharyn's talk, too), but my freelance experience is a lot more limited than yours.
I, too, wish that some lectures had been repeated.
Since the presenters were primarily editors of local publications and writers for local publications, they would naturally focus on what they do and know.
I wish there had been a self-publishing segment, too, especially about the pitfalls of self-publishing. Too many people I've run into nowadays are looking for a quick way to get a book out, and self-publishing doesn't work for everyone.
Nice report. I met quite a few of the people you mentioned at the Book Fairs in Rocky Mount and Roanoke. Were there any journalists speaking? What was the blogging workshop like? You probably could have presented a class. I would have loved something on self-publishing too, the small press, books on demand, and all of it.
ReplyDeleteBecky - thanks for the link to Sally's blog! Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteColleen - there were many journalists speaking; at least three, probably more. I did not attend the blogging workshop so I don't know what it was like. I did meet the fellow who gave the workshop during lunch and he seemed like a nice guy.