Writing Conferences

Getting ready to attend a writing conference is a multi-faceted jewel. It's exciting to look forward to on one hand, but it can generate a lot of nerves.

The Annual Conference of American Christian Fiction Writers will be held in Dallas beginning Thursday evening, September 21. I'm getting to go this year. It will be my third ACFW conference in four years. I missed last year in Nashville because I was going on vacation soon afterward and hadn't saved up enough money to do both.

I found ACFW (then it was ACRW - R for Romance) in early August of 2002 when I was looking for writing conferences to attend during an Internet search. The conference that year happened to be in Houston. So I arranged for a personal business day from school, paid my registration fee and ACFW membership fee, and took off for Houston.

Her Home or Her Heart had been published in July, but I still felt like such an amateur. I still do! I missed the Meet and Greet on Thursday evening, got to the hotel at 1:00 a.m., and walked into the breakfast room about 20 minutes before the first session was to begin. I was there alone. I knew no one and felt sure all the other women walking around were multi-published writers leaving me the low man on the totem pole. They weren't all heavily published by the way. Most of them hadn't even had one book published.

Attending conferences is nothing new to me, except that all the conferences I'd ever attended were teaching conferences. I had entered a totally new territory. My writing partner had chosen not to attend with me. It was up to me to represent us and our writing. I signed up for a personal critique, a meeting with an editor, and a meeting with an agent. I walked away with a request for a proposal from the editor and with the excitement of an agent who wanted to represent us as a writing duo and as individuals.

What has happened since then? We were rejected by the editor, and the agent represented us for over three years but never sold anything. Just six months ago she emailed us and said that since she hasn't done us any good she was releasing us from our contract.

I managed to get my friend to attend the ACFW conference the following year in Denver, but she didn't enjoy it. Not her thing. So here I am once again going solo to ACFW. But that's okay. I have more confidence in myself as a writer, and I feel as though I should be going. Good things are going to happen.

I'm nervous about the Early Bird Session which will be held all day on Thursday prior to the opening Meet and Greet session at 6:30 p.m. Two well published authors, Deb Raney and Colleen Coble, will be conducting the workshop and have in their hands twenty pages of a novel I have started, plus my synopsis and a three sentence hook for the book. I'm supposed to leave that session with all the tools I need to polish the synopsis, the hook and prepare the first part of the book so that it is editor ready as a proposal. I understand that my writing will be shared with the rest of the class. What have I let myself in for?

Oh, well, it's too late to back out now. The only thing I could do is not show up for the session. But then I'd be wasting the $35 extra I had to pay, and I'd always be a coward. I might never finish the book. So I'll go, grit my teeth, and wait for the results. I'm just praying they will find it salvageable, and that I won't pass out before they finish with me.

kmparis