I got back last night from the University of Wisconsin’s annual Writers’ Institute. After nearly fourteen hours in the car, it took my a while to get out, much less stretch the kinks out, but the long drive, the expense and the time were more than worth it.
Let me begin by saying that this was a conference for writers, not a convention for fans to meet writers who sit on panels and discuss their published work. We were there to learn – about the craft of writing, about changes in the publishing industry, about generating ideas, and about how to most effectively market our work once it’s been honed and polished, published or not. This conference helped with all of that and more.
Practically speaking, if you think your work is ready to market, conferences like this one can help you get your foot in the door. There were several highly respected agents taking pitches, some for fiction and others for nonfiction. They were frank, too, about conferences: it’s a much better way to find an agent than a cold query. Meet us, they said. Even if you don’t have something ready to pitch, meet us. Tell us about your work. What can it hurt? If it’s a great new concept, a new voice, if you have a fabulous platform, we’ll give you a card and perhaps eventually ask for a manuscript.
If your work, like mine, is still in process, this type of conference can help in a number of ways. I went to a very useful workshop on revision entitled “Ten Things Every Novel Needs.” That one helped me pinpoint where my manuscript is weak and gave me some ideas on how to fix it – though the fixing won’t be easy. Another session, “Cooking with Poetry,” helped me to understand imagery and figurative language much more clearly, and the examples the instructor gave showed how the use of simile and metaphor can enhance your writing. I also found that, even though the course title said, “poetry,” the use of figurative language applied just as much to prose. Both of these sessions, and others, will better my writing. And now, courtesy another session, I also know how to host a “plotting party.”
Several years ago a friend told me that, when I go to conferences like this one, I shouldn’t just stick to what I already know (or think I know); I should go to sessions on things I know little or nothing about, and it will make me a more well-rounded writer. I’m not sure that’s actually true (about me, I mean), but I did go to a great presentation entitled, “Book Proposal Bootcamp,” with nonfiction agent Ted Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein, like many of the instructors at the conference, was articulate and engaging as he delivered a sobering message: you must build a “platform,” and there’s no time like the present to start. If nobody considers you an expert in the subject about which you’re writing, you’re pretty much SOL. (More on that in tomorrow’s blog.)
I’m currently the president of the local Black Hills Writers Group. I’ll be bringing much of this information back to all of them, and I’ll be posting more on the conference, session by session, in future blogs. I’m glad I made the trip and, once I’ve shared with all of you out there what I’ve learned, I hope you’ll be glad I did, too.