Created by Randy Ingermanson - "the Snowflake Guy"
America's Mad Professor of Fiction Writing

Your Best Writing Conference Ever

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in Writing Conferences

You might have heard that a writing conference is the best place you can possibly go to make the connections you need to succeed as an author. 

I’ve said this many times, and it’s absolutely true. There is no better investment you can make in your writing career than to go to a writing conference. 

But you might have heard other writers with a different opinion. Here are some of the things you might have heard:

  • “I went to a writing conference and it was awful. The editors and agents all stuck to themselves, and all the writers were novices who knew absolutely nothing. It was a complete waste of time and money.”
  • “I went to a conference and I felt so intimidated, I spent the whole time crying in my room. The food was worse than rat poison, and nobody was at all friendly. I hated every minute.”
  • “I made appointments with 2 editors and 2 agents at a conference. The agents shot me down and the editors both asked me to send them something, but then I didn’t hear anything for 6 months. When they finally contacted me, they sent form rejections. The whole thing was pointless.”

Yes, Bad Things Happen at Conferences

It’s true that bad things happen at conferences. Those terrible experiences I listed above really happened to real people. Not just once. Not just a hundred times. They’ve happened to tens of thousands of writers. 

But great things happen at conferences too. Of my 5 closest friends outside my family, I met 2 at writing conferences, I met a 3rd through 1 of those 2, and I met a 4th through a writer’s email loop that I learned about at a conference. (I do have 1 close friend I met at work, so not all my friends are writers.) 

And I have hundreds of friends I met at conferences. Yes, hundreds. They’re not all super close, but I’ve shared good times with each of them, eating meals, talking fiction, hanging out at the bar. (I’m famous for always ordering milk, but most of my friends can’t handle such strong drink and have to settle for something with alcohol in it.)

But yeah, I’ve been to conferences where I felt incredibly intimidated. I’ve been to conferences where it was super hard to get access to the editors and agents. I’ve been to conferences with awful food. I’ve been to conferences where every agent or editor I talked to wasn’t interested in my writing.

But every single conference I’ve ever been to has been a great experience. And I’ve left most of them thinking, “Wow, that was the best conference ever!”

What Makes A Great Conference Experience?

You may be thinking that I must be taking some sort of happy-chemical to make me think awful conferences are actually great. 

Sorry, I don’t. Great conference experiences don’t come out of a pharmacy. 

Great conference experiences come from aligning your expectations with reality and then acting appropriately. 

Here are the 3 realities of a writing conference:

  • All the editors and agents are overwhelmed with a flood of wannabe writers trying every possible trick to get their foot in the door. Which means that every agent and editor is playing defense every second, just to keep their sanity. They literally have to be on guard against manuscripts being shoved under the door of the bathroom stall. 
  • Most of the writers are at their very first conference. They are scared to death of the editors and agents, but at the same time, they’ve been told that this is their one chance to “network” with these bigshots and make a good impression. And they are intimidated by all the other writers, because they see other writers as the competition in a zero-sum game. 
  • A few people at conferences are seasoned writers who’ve been to a number of conferences and know some of the editors and agents. In fact, the editors and agents welcome talking to these writers because these writers are not acting desperate. 

Here’s the secret to having a great experience at a writing conference: Make friends with writers you resonate with. 

Yes, it’s really that simple. And yes, I said to put your focus on other writers. You will eventually also make friends with editors and agents, but that can take a few conferences, and it takes some luck. Whereas making friends with other writers is a sure thing.

So How Do You Make Friends With Writers?

You can make friends with writers in many ways. Here are a few:

  • Ask another writer what sort of fiction they write and then ask intelligent questions about it. 
  • Ask another writer how their writing career is going. They will tell you it’s not going well and will explain at length what’s wrong. If you know something that might advance their career, tell them. Expect nothing in return.  
  • If you see somebody who looks miserable, take the time to talk to them and see if there’s anything you can do to help. 

Your goal here is not to use other writers to advance your career. If you go in with that kind of attitude, other writers will see through you right away. Don’t be That Writer.

Your goal is to be a decent human being who helps others with no expectation of any kind of reward. 

I guarantee that if you talk to even 10 people at a conference with the goal of helping them, 1 of them will resonate with you. You’ll discover that you have a lot in common. By the end of the conference, you’ll be friends. And you’ll leave the conference feeling happy at what a great time you had.

And I guarantee that if you talk to 50 people, you’ll find someone who will turn into a life-long friend. And you’ll leave the conference thinking it was the best time you ever had in your entire life. 

“But I’m An Introvert!”

You may be thinking that you can’t possibly do all this. Because you’re an introvert. Introverts don’t reach out to others. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. About 95% of writers at writing conferences are introverts. I’m a flaming introvert. Always have been. Always will be. I’m probably more introverted than you. But nobody has to know that when I go to a conference. 

Even an introvert can ask another writer how they’re doing. That’s all you have to do, and the other writer opens up. 

No, you don’t have to become friends with every single writer you interact with at a conference. You can’t possibly do that. You’ll resonate with a few and you’ll not resonate with most. The ones you resonate with may turn into friends. But you can be a decent human being to everyone, even if they’re not nice to you. 

This should go without saying, which means it probably needs saying. A writing conference is not a place to go looking for romance. 

But Shouldn’t You Be Networking?

No, you should not be networking at a writing conference. You should not be networking anywhere. You should scrub the word “networking” from your brain. Never, ever, ever think of another writer as a person who can help you advance your career. That way lies dragons—and the worst of the dragons are envy, greed, and malice. 

Always, always, always think of other writers as fellow runners in the grand marathon of life. Some are running too fast for you. Some are running too slow. But some are running at just your pace. These are your natural pack. Run wild and free with them. Howl at the moon together.

But What About Editors and Agents?

Eventually, you’ll meet editors and agents. This can happen at meals. In the hallway. In the lobby. At the bar. Or when you make an appointment with one of them to discuss your writing. 

Treat editors and agents like anyone else at the conference. After talking with a few dozen or a few hundred writers, you’ll be comfortable doing this. It’ll feel like the most natural thing in the world. 

You won’t resonate with most editors or agents. But some of them, you will. Some will even become friends. Be a decent human being to all of them, and when you find The One, you’ll know. And they’ll know. And at that point, your writing career will change forever.

How long will this take? That’s impossible to say. It could take a couple of conferences. It could take 10. Or 20. It might never happen. Not every writer is guaranteed a slot in traditional publishing. Some writers are happier acting as their own publisher. 

But every writer can go to any writing conference and have a great, incredible, stupendously wonderful time. And all you have to do is treat other writers the way you’d want to be treated. 

Who Decides if a Writer has Talent?

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in Career Management, Craft, Fiction Writing, Writing Conferences

Ever wondered if you’ve got any talent for writing fiction? Do you angst on that so much, it prevents you from writing? Is there a way to decide once and for all whether you have talent?

Wendy posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Who decides if you have talent?

I’m an avid reader and love to write, but I that means nothing if the people who are reading my short stories are just stroking my ego just so I’ll stroke theirs. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” I have read so many very bad to mediocre, and only a few truly talented, self-published authors. It causes me to wonder where do I fit inside the scale I mentioned above, and am I one of those who only thinkd they can write because their peers and critics are telling them they can. I’m quite serious, it’s not like I have no confidence, it’s more like… understanding there is a possibility I’m also egotistical to think I’m all that and a bag of chips, and should self-publish. Which now days seems to be the norm, and is fast becoming a trend, for anyone thinking they have something everyone has a need to hear. Thank you for your time.

Randy sez: This is a tough question and it’s one most writers deal with at some point in their lives. Early on in my writing career, I had a lot of angst over whether I was any good at writing fiction. That’s normal.

Does Talent Exist?

Some authors believe there’s no such thing as talent; they think all that exists is skill. For them, everybody starts out not knowing how to write. Then as a writer learns the craft, eventually she has enough skills to get published.

My own thinking is that talent seems to exist in every other field I can think of, so it probably exists in writing. There are people who have great genes for long-distance running, and people who don’t. There are people who have great genes for math, and people who don’t. Pick just about anything that requires skill and you’ll find that some people are genetically gifted to learn that skill, and some people aren’t.

I suspect that part of the genetic gift of writing fiction is having the desire to write. So if you want to write fiction, that’s some sort of evidence that you might have a talent for it. (It’s not proof, but it does carry some weight.)

Talent is Not Skill

But nobody, no matter how talented, is born skilled. They’re born with the ability to become skilled. They don’t actually become skilled until they work at it, and that takes time.

Even if you’re not amazingly talented, you can still develop skills by working at your writing.

So if you want my advice, I’d say to do the things you love doing. If you love writing, then write. If you love playing the guitar, play the guitar. If you love playing basketball, play basketball. You may or may not get obscenely rich from any of these things. The odds are long on that, but it can happen, and you might as well take a shot.

In any event, money isn’t everything, so if writing fiction makes you happy, then why wouldn’t you want to write fiction?

And anyway, writing talent might not actually be measurable.

But writing skill is.

Who Can Tell If You Have Writing Skill?

If you want to get your level of writing skill evaluated, that’s easy. Go to a writing conference and get your work critiqued by a few writers. Many conferences give you a chance to meet one-on-one with a professional writer for fifteen minutes or so. You may think fifteen minutes isn’t enough time for someone to judge your writing. Sure it is, if you don’t spend the whole time talking. If you just give the writer a few pages of your work.

Most professional writers (or editors or agents) can tell in about three paragraphs what your level of skill is. They may, out of politeness, keep reading for a whole five pages, but they know pretty quickly. Even if they don’t read your category of fiction or understand your category, they can still tell good writing from bad. And they can tell great writing from good.

It may be a bit of a trick to get them to tell you the unvarnished truth. Anyone who’s ever worked at a critique table knows how easily crushed a writer is, so they may be hesitant to say, “This piece of writing is awful.”

They will not be hesitant at all to say, “This piece of writing is amazing,” if it really is amazing.

Most writing is neither dreadful nor amazing. I’ve looked at hundreds of writing samples at conferences over the years, and most of it has been pretty average. (It would be kind of strange if most of it was far above average, right?)

How To Get a Truthful Evaluation

It might help to read my article on this web site titled, “Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Author!” which talks about the journey all published authors go through. Everyone starts out as a “freshman,” with lots of enthusiam but no real skill. Writers who persist will eventually move up to being “sophomores,” and then after more work, they’ll become “juniors,” and if they continue learning the craft, eventually they’ll become “seniors.” And then, when they least expect it, they graduate. I don’t know of any exceptions to this writer’s journey.

So if you ask a professional writer or an agent or an editor for a critique, you might also ask them to tell you if they think you’re a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior. Even if they haven’t read my article, they’ll instantly get what you’re asking. And when you phrase the question that way, it takes the pressure off them.

It’s easy for them to say, “You’re a freshman, but here are three things you could do to become a sophomore.” That’s way less painful than saying, “Your writing is terrible.” And it’s much more helpful to you.

Writing conferences cost money, and you don’t absolutely have to go to one to find somebody who can give you a critique. Conferences are the easiest place to do that, and they’ll typically have dozens of competent people who could tell you where you stand. And conferences are geared to doing that, so it’s an easy environment to ask. (Most writers and agents and editors are busy and can’t simply do evaluations on demand—otherwise, they’d never get anything done. But at conferences, that’s the reason they came—to spend a few days doing nothing but helping writers.)

In the meantime, focus on learning the skills of fiction writing, and don’t sweat too much the question of talent. If you look at my Randy Recommends page on this site, you’ll find links to a number of books that I believe are helpful to writers in learning the skill of fiction writing.

Have fun!

 

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

Should You Go Indie?

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in Fiction Writing, Indie Author, Publishing, Writing Conferences

Should you go indie, or is the traditional route to publishing the right way for you? How do you make that decision? How do you know for sure it’s right?

Amber posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have been the BIGGEST advocate for traditional publishing, mainly because I thought indie publishing was for writers who either have huge followings/audience or who know in their guts that their work is not high-quality enough to be traditionally published. But I think I’m changing my mind…and considering independently publishing my debut novel. My main hesitation is that I don’t have a huge following (email subscribers/social media/real-life contacts). I have been doing my best to grow my social media followers and have recently written a story that I am serially posting on Wattpad. (I want to accumulate as many email subscribers/Wattpad fans as possible regardless of if I go indie or traditional).

My change of heart has come after querying over 300 agents for three different manuscripts over the course of the last 2-3 years and barely getting anything more than form rejections…the kind where I can tell the agent didn’t fully read my query or get to the sample pages or synopsis. From the query letter to the synopsis to the genre…I just feel like I’ve done months and months of revising, off and on, an still nothing gets me responses from agents. I’ve worked with beta readers, critique partners and hired multiple editors and a couple industry insiders, including a former agent. I get the same response: my book is very well-written, the premise is very interesting, I should just publish it myself since I’m not getting anything from the agents I query. I’ve been extremely stubborn and resistant because I do believe that I could have major success as an author and I don’t want to cheat myself out of anything. But I’m finding that having an agent represent me just might be out of the cards for my particular book/writing style. (By the way, I write thriller/suspense and contemporary romance.) I’ve also been realizing that since nowadays publishers really rely on authors to promote themselves/their books, I might as well publish my book myself and take a higher percentage of the profits since either way I will be doing the promotion myself. Besides distribution (because of my lack of audience) I’ve starting to become convinced that indie publishing is for me. Actually, I think I’ve always sort of known indie publishing would fit my books, but not ME. That’s the main battle I have daily.

A lot of people I come across have the mindset of “just put it out there.” I’m the most impatient person I’ve ever met, but just putting it out there is not my style. I want my book out last year, but if I’m going to do it then I’m going to do it right. So I guess my question to you is how do I know if going the indie route is the right decision?

Randy sez: These are great questions, Amber. I think many of my blog readers will be asking the same questions. Just to make sure everyone’s up to speed on basic definitions, here’s a blog post I wrote awhile back on what we mean by the terms “indie authoring” and “traditional publishing.” (I hope there are no people left on the planet who confuse either of these with “vanity publishing.”)

Making Traditional Publishing Work

I was raised on traditional publishing. I started writing my first novel in the spring of 1988, and finally got a novel published in the spring of 2000. During all that time, traditional publishing was the only game in town, for all practical purposes. Even back then, some entrepreneurial writers were self-publishing their work, but I never considered self-publishing because it just seemed like too much work.

And so I did what you’ve been doing, Amber, which was to write hard, go to critique groups, query agents, and generally work the system, hoping for a break. I also went to writing conferences, and that’s where my break finally came. Amber, you don’t say if you’ve been pitching your work to editors or agents at writing conferences. If you’re trying to make it in traditional publishing, conferences are the way to go.

Yes, conferences are expensive. No, you probably won’t break in right away. Definitely conferences can sometimes be incredibly discouraging, if you go in with the wrong mindset. But conferences are also the place things happen. Most of the published novelists I know got their first break at a conference—usually not their first. And of my twenty closest friends, probably eighteen are novelists, and I met every one of them at a conference.

That’s why I’ve taught at many conferences over the years. Because they connect writers with publishers better than anything else.

Conferences are not cheap. Between the conference fees, travel expenses, food, and housing, you’re looking at a thousand dollars or more for a large multi-day conference. But if you want to go the traditional publishing route, then going to good writing conferences will dramatically boost your odds of getting published.

That’s the path I chose and it worked for me.

Why Some Authors Go Indie

But ultimately I found that traditional publishing really wasn’t working for me. There are some good reasons for that. I write about themes that are mostly of interest to Christian readers. But the traditional publishing Christian industry doesn’t really do well with the kind of books I write. It took me a few years to see clearly that this was a problem.

The solution was to quit writing for that industry and go indie. And that’s been working out very well for me. My first traditionally published novel, Transgression, only sold about 6,000 copies in its trad-pubbed edition. I re-released it in May of 2014 as an indie e-book and made it permanently free on all the major retailers. As of this morning, I’ve now given away 157,632 copies. Books 2 and 3 in that “City of God” series are selling well and earning much better than they did in their first editions as trad-pubbed novels.

So the indie way has been good to me.

Amber, you’re correct when you say that most traditional publishers will expect you to do most of the marketing for your books. And you’re also correct that trad-pubbed authors earn only a fraction of the net revenue for each book sold. Indie authors earn it all. That’s a huge advantage in favor of the indie, and it’s the reason so many indies are earning tens of thousands of dollars per year. At a retail price of $2.99, the indie gets right around $2 per copy, which means that an indie only needs to move about 5,000 copies in a year to earn $10k. And that’s very doable. It’s much harder to earn $100k per year, and it’s very difficult to earn $1 million per year.

Should You Go Indie?

The core question you’ve asked is how to decide whether to go indie. That depends on you and what you want in life. Here are the main diagnostic questions to ask yourself:

  1. How much do you want the validation of being traditionally published? Some writers don’t feel like they’re “real authors” until they’ve been trad-pubbed, and this includes some successful indie friends of mine.
  2. How entrepreneurial are you? As an indie, you and you alone are responsible for making the book happen. The indie way requires you to do four things that your trad-pubbed cousin doesn’t have to do:
    • Hire a freelance high-level editor to do a “macro edit” of your book. (No author can do this for herself, because you don’t know what you don’t know.)
    • Hire a graphic designer to create a professional cover for your book. (Very few authors have the graphic design skills PLUS the marketing savvy to create a good cover.)
    • Hire any copyediting, line-editing, and proofreading services you might need for your book. (Many authors can do some or all of these tasks for themselves. You know if this applies to you.)
    • Format the book into an e-book. (Almost all authors do this themselves, and it’s an easy task with the right tools, but you can also hire somebody if you need to.)
  3. How much of a self-starter are you? Some writers must have a deadline imposed by a big corporation in order to motivate them to write their book. If that’s you, then the indie way is not for you, because nobody makes you do anything.
  4. How many books can you write in a year? Only a few trad-pubbed writers can publish more than a couple of novels per year, because their publishers don’t want them “competing with themselves”. (Cynics have argued that the trad-publishers actually don’t want the writer competing with the publisher’s other authors.) As an indie, you can write a book every week if you want to, and it’s not uncommon for indies to publish five or six books per year, or more. If you’re hyper-productive, you might want to go indie.
  5. Which way just feels best to you? Your instincts are often right.

Make A Decision And Run With It

I don’t believe there’s any one right answer. The indie way works well for me. The trad way works extremely well for some of my friends. I have other friends who take the hybrid route, publishing with both traditional publishers and as indie authors. It’s possible to succeed all three ways. Please be aware that the odds of great success are against you, no matter which route you take. There are just over a hundred authors of any stripe who earn more than a million dollars per year.

What’s not possible is to be certain that you’re making the right decision. Life is the art of making decisions with incomplete information. Learn all you can about your options. Make the best decision you know how. Pursue your chosen path with all your strength. Then do a reality check every year or two, and give yourself the freedom to change your direction.

Good luck, Amber!

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

Writing Conferences and Your Allies

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in Writing Conferences

Later today, I’ll be sending out my e-zine with an article on the importance of having Allies.

What are Allies? Allies are your writing buddies. They are your equals or near-equals. They are the people who understand you better than anybody except your closest family members. (And they understand some things about you better than even your closest family members.)

You can’t succeed in publishing these days without Allies. You need them to bounce ideas off of. You need them to weather the storms of rejection. You need them (probably most of all) when you get successful, because a real friend can tell you when you’re starting to get full of yourself.

Where do you get Allies? You get them wherever you can find them. I made a list just now of my nine closest Allies. Of these, I met seven at writing conferences. The other two I met online, but I really only became Allies with them after meeting them in person at conferences.

I’ve often blogged about the importance of conferences, but usually I’ve talked about the fact that you meet editors and agents there, you learn how to behave like a professional, you get great training, and eventually you meet exactly the right agent or editor and make exactly the right pitch at the right time and you get the break you need and suddenly you get published.

But the unspoken secret that most professional writers know is that writing conferences are where you meet Allies. Allies are combinations of friends, professional colleagues, mentors, and shoulders to cry on. All in one.

Allies are typically writing in the same general niche that you are. The writing world has many niches. Romance writers. Mystery writers. Science fiction and fantasy writers. Etc.

Not everyone has exactly one perfect niche that they could fit into, but most writers do find one where they can belong. And most of their allies will also identify with that niche.

My own niche for most of the time I’ve been a writer has been the world of Christian fiction. It’s not the perfect fit for me. Given how weird I am, nothing could be the perfect niche. But Christian fiction has a lot going for it (including double-digit growth in market share for most of the last two decades).

It’s been a good place for me in many ways. My most recent book (WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES) doesn’t fit that niche, and I have some novels planned for the future that also won’t fit that niche, but that’s OK.

Most of the teaching that I do is still at Christian writing conferences (although this has also been changing in the last few years).

I have two favorite conferences, the two places where I’ve consistently met with my Allies and found new ones: The Mount Hermon conference (in the spring of every year) and the American Christian Fiction Writers conference (in September of every year).

I taught again at Mount Hermon this year and it was incredible, as always. Mount Hermon is where I met my coauthor John Olson, and it’s where some of my happiest memories in writing have happened. I had a great time this year, teaching a mentoring track with five students, hanging out with friends, meeting many new people.

I’m already gearing up mentally for this September, when I’ll be teaching a major track (on that pesky Snowflake Method of writing a novel) at the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) conference.

ACFW is an exceptional organization. It’s roughly modeled on RWA (Romance Writers of America) in its organizational structure. ACFW now has about 2500 members, many of whom are published novelists.

Last year, the ACFW conference had about 600 attendees, and we expect more this year. It was terrific last year and it looks to be even better this year. You can make appointments with any of 26 different fiction editors. Or with any of 17 different agents. Just about every Christian publisher and every Christian literary agency tries to send somebody to ACFW.

If you happen to fit into the niche of Christian fiction, there is simply no better conference on the planet than ACFW. And yes, I’m biased. I’ve been on the Advisory Board of ACFW since 2004. I’ve watched it grow from a small cadre of mostly romance writers into a massive organization of writers of every kind of Christian fiction you can imagine.

One of the high points of the ACFW conference is the awards banquet. ACFW runs two major kinds of awards, the Genesis award (for unpublished writers) and the Carol award (for traditionally published books).

These awards have grown amazingly in prestige in the last few years. Winning in one of the Genesis categories is now considered one of the best ways for an unpublished novelist to get noticed by the publishers. And winning a Carol award is now considered roughly equal in prestige to winning a Christy award.

But for me, the highest of the high points at ACFW has consistently been the time I spend hanging out with my Allies. Writing is a lonely business. It’s also a tough business, where you are only as good as your last book. Editors and agents come and go, but Allies accumulate.

As I noted earlier, my own career is trending more toward the general market. That’s just because no one niche is perfect for me. I’ll always be a multi-niche guy. The publishing world is changing and so am I. I expect that I’ll always have one foot in the niche of Christian fiction, where so many of my friends and Allies live. (I should note that some of my Allies are also trending toward the general market, so no matter where I go, I’ll never be without Allies.)

For the foreseeable future, I just plain can’t imagine missing the ACFW conference every September. Which means I’ll continue to see many of my Loyal Blog Readers there.

And for those Loyal Blog Readers who live in a different niche, it also means that there’s a good chance that I’ll see some of you as I continue to expand my footprint into other niches.

It’s a big world out there. The more Allies you have, the happier you’ll be and the better you’ll do.

You can get more info on the ACFW conference on the ACFW web site.

7 Reasons I’m Going to the ACFW Conference

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in Writing Conferences

I registered last week for the ACFW conference in Indianapolis. The dates for the conference are September 17 to 20, 2010. ACFW stands for American Christian Fiction Writers, an organization of over 2100 writers.

Why am I going to yet another conference? I can think of 7 good reasons that I want to go:

  • Writing conferences are fun. I am an extreme introvert and I don’t do well in crowds. Yet somehow, writing conferences bring out my inner extrovert, and I always meet a bundle of new friends.
  • Writing conferences are educational. I have never gone to a conference where I didn’t learn something completely unexpected and incredibly useful.
  • Writing conferences are where you make contacts. I met my first agent at a writing conference. After he died, I met my second agent at a writing conference, although at the time, he was an editor and I was hoping to sell him a book. (I did, and after he quit editing to become an agent, he called me.) Virtually all of the books I’ve sold have come as a direct result of the people I met at conferences.
  • Writing conferences are a place to serve. I strongly believe that every writer should find a way to help other writers. Normally I teach at conferences. At ACFW this year, instead of teaching, I’ll be taking appointments with writers to help them out on any question they might have. One-on-one for fifteen minutes. It’s amazing what you can get done in fifteen minutes when you’re focused. This will probably be the best part of the conference for me this year.
  • The ACFW conference is one of the best in the Christian publishing industry. Last year, there were about 500 attendees, with about 20 editors and a dozen agents. If I could only go to two writing conferences this year, I’d go to ACFW and Mount Hermon. If I could only go to ONE, I’d go to ACFW and Mount Hermon and then I’d lie about how many I went to.
  • Virtually all my friends will be there. You can never have too many friends in the publishing business.
  • I’m on the ACFW Advisory Board which meets with the Operating Board twice per year to make key decisions for the future. One of the decisions we made two years ago was to create the FictionFinder web site.

Many of my happiest memories in the publishing business have happened at ACFW conferences. At the 2004 conference, I gave a talk on “Writing From the Male Point of View” which people still talk about because I revealed a number of closely guarded Guy Secrets. I gave an updated version of that talk again at the 2009 conference. In between those years, I’ve spoken on numerous topics, made hundreds of friends, won a few awards, learned more than I ever expected, and enjoyed it all immensely.

This year I’ll be taking Jim Bell’s Early Bird Session. Jim was the guy who taught me about Three-Act Structure years ago, the weekend I first met him at — you guessed it — a small conference in Malibu, California. He’s become a good friend of mine. Jim is a former trial lawyer who now writes fiction. He served for a time as the fiction columnist for Writer’s Digest and he’s the author of Plot & Structure, one of the books I recommend most often to beginning writers. I expect I’ll learn something totally unexpected from Jim.

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