My First Writers' Conference

This weekend I attended my first writers' conference, Love Is Murder (LIM), in Rosemont, IL. It was an extraordinary experience. LIM is a relatively small conference compared to the ones I've attended for educational publishing, but that's probably a good thing. I think I would have been overwhelmed by something bigger, such as Bouchercon. Perhaps it was divine intervention that scheduled our logs to be delivered the same weekend that Bouchercon came to Madison, WI -- only an hour or two's drive from our home in the far northern suburbs of Chicago. My inability to attend that conference prompted me to find this smaller, more local conference.

I've started surrounding myself with writing culture, hoping that doing so will get me into the right mindset and make me a more productive writer. It seems to be working. I started with writing podcasts, then joined a local writing group, and recently started reading writing-related blogs. This weekend at LIM was the icing on the cake. I was surrounded by immensely successful writers, writers who have just sold their first novel, unpublished writers (or "pre-published writers," as they encouraged us to consider ourselves in the closing pep-talk session for writers like me), and fans of the genre. I left the conference with one helluva high and my brain literally buzzing with ideas. And I learned a lot.

Lesson One: The immensely successful writers read a lot!

I used to think that I read a lot, but I've slowed my pace substantially in recent years as my schedule filled up and my life became more complicated. Compared to the normal population, I do still read a lot. But compared to these people, I was a reading sissy even in my heyday. The panels consisted of published authors, and even those authors who are writing 4-6 novels a year (!) would bring up other peoples' most recent work and comment on how they liked or disliked it. And they weren't just reading A-list writers. They were equally competent discussing much lesser-known authors who might only have a tiny handful of titles to their credit. I think I need to get busy.

Lesson Two: The fact that I even attended a writer's conference and have started the first draft of a novel makes me pretty darned abnormal.

Here are some sobering statistics:

• 33% of high school graduates never read another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book after college.

And yet...

• 80% of Americans want to write a book.
• Few of those who want to write a book will ever actually pinpoint a single writing topic.
• Few of those who pinpoint a single writing topic will ever do anything about it, including starting writing or attending a writing conference.
  

Lesson Three: Small presses are pretty darn cool.

I've always assumed that the largest publishing houses offered the best gigs. I thought the smaller presses didn't have national distribution and weren't taken seriously in the industry. But all of that is a fallacy. Small presses are actually doing some pretty cool things, like e-book publishing, that the larger houses are slower to adopt. Small presses do have national distribution and good reputations, and their marketing budget for your book is pretty comparable to large houses unless you're already a bestselling author. Finally, small presses actually seem a lot more friendly to new authors than the bigger houses. I left this conference with a list of houses that I will approach first with my first finished manuscript, and not a single large house made the list.

Lesson Four: Don't play fair. Make your writing goals so small that you're guaranteed to succeed. Beat that goal to a pulp and kick it to the curb.

I literally earned my dog tags in Novelist's Boot Camp based on Todd A. Stone's book on fiction writing, and keeping your goals small so you could kick them to the curb was a metaphor he used throughout the discussion. It makes sense. You have to make your goals small enough that they're easy to accomplish on a regular basis. Otherwise, you won't be able to establish the habits necessary to accomplish larger, more cumulative goals.

Lesson Five: Blogging isn't writing.

OK, so technically it is writing, but it doesn't count as a fiction writing activity. This was a "duh" moment for me. I knew in my head that blogging didn't count, but whenever I'd write a post to this blog (rather infrequently of late, I know, but as you can see, things are picking up), I'd still congratulate myself for writing something. I need to stop doing that. I don't intend to stop blogging, but I need to make sure I'm not doing it in place of meeting my fiction writing goals. Because, let's face it, this isn't going to pay me anything. Most fiction writers, especially beginners like me, write on spec, but at least there's the possibility that someday my fiction will earn me something. That's not going to happen with a casual blog, and I don't intend to spend the time necessary to turn this into a profitable venture.

This conference was definitely good for me, and I think I'll be making a solid effort to attend this one every year. We'll see how long this high lasts, but I have a feeling I'll have made a lot more progress on The Accidental Stalker by the time my writers' group meets next. Watch that word count over in the margin.