Writers Conference Advice #1: Research!

Hi, friends! As I mentioned in my last post, in early June, I had opportunity to attend the Write to Publish writers conference in Wheaton. The conference was quite successful for me: I won the Editor's Choice Award from Brimstone Fiction, and also was asked for a manuscript proposal from the other editor I pitched to, Sarah Grimm of Harbourlight Publishing.

I am far from an expert on writers conferences, having only attended one of them in my life. But I did pick up a few things along the way, thanks in large part to the advice given me by more knowledgeable people. If anyone is interested, I'd like to pass some of that advice on in a series of blog posts.

Please note that most of my advice pertains to seeking a publishing contract, because that's the main goal I had in mind in attending WtP.

#1: RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH!

Besides doing everything I could to prepare my actual manuscript, this is the thing that helped me most. Research EVERYTHING.

When I was prepping for WtP, I started the in-depth work a couple weeks beforehand. My first step was reading several blog posts with general advice about writers conferences and writers conference prep. One really good venue for this is Cindy Huff's blog. The page I linked to has some general tips, but she also wrote a series of posts with in-depth info on everything from apparel to -- guess what? -- research! Honestly, it's probably more worthwhile to find her posts and read them than to continue following my advice on the subject. But just in case you ARE interested, here's some more stuff about researching!

Go beyond general research and move into specifics. Find a list of all the professionals who will attend your conference, then research each and every editor, publisher, and agent to decide who you want to pitch to. Research the freelancers, too, if that's what you're going for. Go to all of their websites and see what they publish. Look for their preferred form of submission and make notes on it. When I was preparing, I printing out the official list of attendees (with their pictures!) and jotted notes in the margins. I put a start next to the ones I REALLY wanted to pitch to, a question mark next to the ones I wasn't sure about, and other symbols to indicate other degrees of interest. Seriously, I can't stress enough how helpful this was. It enabled me not to freak out and blank when I was actually meeting with them.

Also, research the classes you're hoping to take, to decide on what's the best use of your time for your particular interests. And research other things to, from the correct format for a manuscript proposal to the correct format for business cards. Utilize the conference's website for all of this. It probably has some good advice and lots of links to the websites of the attendees. For Write to Publish, there were even a series of blog posts with general submission and interest information about the attendees. I wish I'd discovered that BEFORE I spent hours digging through the interwebs to find said information.

Have a good evening, friends! I'll hopefully be back with the next post either tomorrow or Wednesday.

Here's a picture of a llama freaking out because he didn't do his research. Bad llama!