The Power of Attending Writing Conferences

Attending a literary or writing conference can have a profound impact on your writing, your career, your self esteem, and your over all personal spiritual health.

That's why I'm such a fan of attending them as often as time and money allow.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended the 11th LDS Storymakers Conferences this past weekend in Salt Lake City. I mentioned in that post that it was one of my favorite all time conferences. Here's why.

1. The Power of Networking
A. I'll post more extensively about this tomorrow in a post about rethinking my e-Publishing plan. But suffice it to say that through this conference I connected with 3 literary agents, several editors, and several New York Times bestselling author friends that I see mostly at conferences. Their advice changed the landscape for me.

B. I felt rejuvenated talking with so many writing friends. The more conferences I attend, especially locally, the better friendships I develop. Now I consider some of them good friends, and chatting with them always boosts my energy and ego.

But it does more than that, and this is one reason conferences are awesome: I felt really connected with the writing world. I felt part of that bigger community that we are all trying to break into professionally. And I surprised myself at how excited I was at how successful so many other people were doing. I honestly want them to succeed. Actually, that means you, too, my writing friends and associates.

You'd think I'd come away from this feeling jealous because extremely talented authors like Tyler Whitesides are making great strides. Just the opposite happened. I made a good friend in Tyler, and I'm really excited for him. And the better he does, the more excited I'll be. That's a great feeling to have.

C. I also learned about how to network with each other in a way that will increase our global reach together. The interesting thing about blogging and social networking is that it works even better when we promote each other. I have been spending too much time spinning my wheels alone when I now realize I can be so much more effective working with others and building each other.


D. I pitched to several agents, and one requested a full manuscript review and the other a 30-page partial review. Folks, that is HUGE! I am so excited! And I made such connections by being at the most laid back environment I've ever experienced at a conference. Way better than World Fantasy last fall. People here, even the national agents, were truly interested in chatting with us and offering advice and hearing what we had to say.

2. Learning
I already mentioned this in 'C' above, but I learned a great deal at this conference about marketing. In fact, I mostly attended marketing classes on the power of effective Twitter usage (I'm converted, finally, even though I still don't know how), blogging, and a horde of other things. Excellent.

3. Teaching
I taught two classes at this conference: writing for the Church magazines, and how to write back cover copy, or the secret to pitches and queries. Both classes went very well. In fact, I already have plans for improving the back cover copy class and make it more interactive, enhanced, and more my own baby. For this presentation I relied heavily on others' ideas. Now they are becoming more and more my own.

4. Love of the Game
Well, that about says it all. The writing game is extraordinary, and this conference brought that to full fruition. I talked to a number of people about their personal plans, learned much, much more about e-Pubbing and legacy publishing, and even presented at the Whitney Awards. Great times, great times.

So, more later about individual authors and about my new plans.

LDS Storymakers conference

Sorry I have been incognito this week, folks. I've been preparing for my presentation at the LDS Storymakers conference yesterday and today. This has been the best conference I have attended, bar none. It's got me rethinking my entire launch strategy. I'll blog about this extensively next week.

I met a number of agents, talented writers, and reconnected with great editors and friends. National agents Becca Stumpf, Sara Crowe, and Sara Megibow have all been charming. Great classes on marketing and the craft of writing.

And my own presentation on writing for the Church and national magazines went quite well.

If you're in the Salt Lake City area and you are a writer, do yourself a favor and come on down today. You won't be disappointed.

Whitney Awards Gala on May 7

Hi Folks,

On behalf of the Whitney Awards committee, just I wanted to send out a reminder about the Whitney Awards Gala hosted on Saturday, May 7, after the Storymakers Conference. The Whitneys recognize outstanding literature in the LDS market. Many of you know people who are up for awards. To learn more, go here: http://whitneyawards.com/wordpress/about-the-whitney-awards/

This is from the official site:

What are the Whitneys?

The Whitneys are an awards program for novels by LDS authors. Elder Orson F. Whitney, an early apostle in the LDS church, prophesied “We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” Since we have that as our goal, we feel that we should also honor those authors who excel and continually raise the bar.

The Whitney Awards honor novels in the following categories: General Fiction, Romance, Suspense/Mystery, Speculative Fiction, Youth Fiction, Historical, Best Novel of the Year, and Best Novel by a New Author. Novels can be nominated by any reader (via this website or by mail), and nominees are voted on by an academy of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others.

The awards were founded in 2007 and operate as an semi-autonomous subsidiary of LDStorymakers.

Currently you can buy tickets to the Gala at the LDSStorymakers registration:
https://storymakersconference.myshopify.com/

To all who have already registered, good for you! You'll definitely enjoy the nigh.

Thanks for thinking of us, and for passing this info along!

Josh

Storymakers Conference

I just signed up for the LDS Storymakers Conference. I'm really excited by this year's conference. Part of that is because they've asked me to teach two classes! One will be on writing for magazines--partly emphasizing the Ensign and such, but also some more mechanical things on how to craft such stories.

The other will be on writing back cover copy--the secret to pitches and queries. I'll draw a lot from a webinar I took from Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency, combined with a few other things. She deserves credit. That was a fantastic seminar that completely changed how I consider queries and such. Really opened my eyes. I hope the material will be useful for the class!

Fortunately, I've got over four months to prepare. Not to procrastinate, I hope!

There will also be other editors and agents coming. This is mostly a fiction-based conference, but it is excellent. I believe last year drew about 600 people. One of the finest writing conferences I've been too.

I also signed up to attend the Whitney Awards. I've been helping a little behind the scenes to prepare for the awards. I've been impressed with the professionalism of the committee and their efforts to ensure a quality contest. If you haven't nominated someone and think their book is worthy of the award, you have until December 31st. Better get on it!