Surrey International Writers Conference 2009 logo

I went to my first Writer’s Conference this week. The 17th annual Surrey International Writer’s Conference (SiWC) is being held at the Sheraton Vancouver Hotel in Surrey, BC, Canada (it’s running from 23-25th Oct 2009).

I’ve been to business conferences before, but nothing could quite prepare me. I only attended on Friday but I manage to pack in a lot into those few hours and came away with a renewed sense of purpose. As a warm-up to the Conference I went to a Master Class with Donald Maass (from the Donald Maass Literary Agency on Thursday night entitled “The Irresistable Novel”.

What makes a Master Class?

I’m probably not qualified to answer that, so instead I’ll tell you what I took away from it. Apart from a slightly numb posterior (3+ hours on a dining chair can do that to you), this was definitely a hands-on and Mr Maass really did what he said he was going to do. He took us through a series of exercises intended to help us identify what *we* found to be compelling in our own favourite books. Then he took us through another set of exercises where we self-analysed our current work and showed how it could be changed to become ‘irresistible’.

There was a lot of audience participation and it was intense work, but I found it to be very rewarding. Some of the suggestions weren’t relevant for what I’m doing at the moment, and I was pleased to see that some of the things I’m already doing. When I’m writing my next book (which will be very soon – NaNoWriMo FTW!) I will definitely be referring back to the notes I made and incorporating elements into my writing.

Raymond Maass was very personable and humorous in his presentation. He is very widely read (as you would hope a very successful agent would be) and illustrated his points with examples from many books. Well worth the money and time.

What the Conference was all about

Writing! And writers, agents, publishers, illustrators…everything to do with the business of books. The opening keynote speech, by author Anne Perry, was very inspiring, and from then on it was non-stop with workshops, appointments and connecting with fellow conference-goers. There were several workshops running simultaneously all day so there was enough variety to please even the most fickle person. While they were going on there were also Pitch Session with agents and publishers, and Blue Pencil sessions with experienced authors.

I’ll talk about the Pitch and Blue Pencil sessions in my next blog post. They were very interesting and I can confirm – agents and publishers are real people, too! That, in itself, is worth finding out for yourself

For now I would like to congratulate the organisers for a such a wonderful event. There was a great atmosphere and a palpable feeling of work being done. I made lots of connections and it was liberating to be among so many other writers, sharing stories of query letters, rejections, Twitter, making time to write….If you are heading there tomorrow then I wish you all the best (and wish I could be there). I’m already making plans to attend next year and I hope to go for the whole weekend then.

Links:

SiWC website

SiWC on Twitter (they are using the #siwc2009 tag)

The June Agent Contest has been announced this morning on Query Tracker (QT):

Here are the contest details:

* Entries will be accepted by entry form on the main QueryTracker.net site.
* You may submit your entries during the 24-hour window beginning at midnight tonight MST and ending at 11:59 Tuesday night.
* Acceptable genres are adult fiction, YA fiction, and narrative non-fiction.
* Entries should be brief 1 – 3 sentence pitches and take less than a minute.
* Ms. Glick will select the top ten winning entries. Winners will be invited to submit a partial manuscript to Ms. Glick!

An elevator pitch is a short speech that encapsulates a product in a couple of sentences. For writers it would be the speech you would give if you were fortunate enough to be in an elevator with an agent and they actually wanted to a) talk to you b) listen to you tell them about your book (it helps if you can suspend disbelief. The chances of you recognising an agent and them not pressing the ‘emergency’ button the instant you reveal you are a writer with a book are, of course, very slight).

A great opportunity

Having a partial read by an accomplished agent is a brilliant prize, and Mollie Glick has years of experience (more details in the QT article and on her agency website). And more than this, creating an elevator pitch is a useful exercise. The next time one of your friends or family introduces you as a writer to someone new you will have something to tell them!

Query Tracker is a fantastic site for all book writers in the throes of querying literary agents and I am using to keep a track of all the queries I have sent and the replies I receive. 

Get writing – there is only a 24 hour window for this starting at midnight TONIGHT!

It’s also hard work. But mostly, it’s fun. Today we published Chapter 3 of “Turning Left at Albuquerque” on turningleft.podebean.com. You can either go directly to the podbean site or you can listen to it via the podcast player on the right here, in the sidebar. 

More updates every Monday and Friday

We decided to keep the episodes short. I wrote short chapters because the story lends itself to that – each chapter is another little snippet from Jason’s life. It helps to move the story along and makes it easier to read. And also read out, as it happens. I love to listen to podcasts but I find it very difficult to listen for more than a few minutes at a time. This is for many reasons not least the fact that I can’t listen and work at the same time. So I decided that having short episodes might suit those people like me who like short podcasts. And I know that there are some people listening whose first language is not English. I’m not able to offer translations but shorter podcasts are easier to stop and replay, so I hope that is helpful.

But there’s more…

I do listen to longer podcasts (like the Knights of The Guild) but I have to put time aside for them. I know many people like to listen to podcasts and audiobooks when they are traveling/commuting. For these people lots of short episodes might not be as good, so every 5 episodes we will be doing an omnibus. The first omnibus, with Chapters 1-5, will be released on 22nd May. The omnibus releases will also feature some new extra content from our patrons, British Radioweb Entertainment Worldwide.

Do you Podcast? Do you want to?

I’m new to this, and I’m really interested in how other people are going about setting up their podcasts, creating promos, how they started and why. Let me know if you are a podcaster or are considering it and we can share experiences.

What is a Podcast?

A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to answer this. To me podcasts were something alien that you probably needed an iPod to experience. Thanks to some schooling from, among others, Tabitha Grace Smith, I now know differently.

From Wikipedia:

A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually digital audio or video, that is made available for download via Web syndication. The syndication aspect of the delivery is what differentiates podcasts from other files accessible by direct download or streaming: it means that special software applications, generically known as podcatchers (such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes or Nullsoft’s Winamp), can automatically identify and retrieve new files associated with the podcast when they are made available, and that these files can be stored locally on the user’s computer or other device for offline use.”

Why is this of interest to writers?

There are two main reasons:

Firstly, the people I mentioned above have become published authors because they have given their work out for free in podcast form. Some have given out free PDFs of their work, too. They gave it away and they still landed publishing deals.

Secondly, reading your work out gives you a very different perspective on your writing. I had read advice that told you to you should read it out loud but I hadn’t tried it before. I have been busily editing my novel (more about that soon) and wanted to try this technique. Let me tell you – it really works! If forces you to really read the words and pacing, intonation and style really come through. I also picked up basic typos that I had completely missed before.

Launching a Podcast

If you want to look into Podcasting I’ll be writing more about it next week with references and useful websites. In the meantime I’m editing and preparing to launch my new Podcast. It will be the first five chapters of my novel plus an omnibus. Each chapter is short – about 5 minutes long –  so it will be ideal for a quick hit of humour! I have a reader, music and now all I need to complete is the promo. Exciting times!

Having completed my novel I am now at the painfully delicious stage of deciding what to do with it. There are various options open to me but I am concentrating on finding an agent for the moment.

What does an agent do?

There are many, many agents out there. But why would you want one? One really useful website, AgentQuery.com sums it up neatly on their ‘About Literary Agents’ page:

“A literary agent is exactly that—an agent for literary works. Literary agents represent books. They do not represent stage plays, screenplays, or television scripts. You find those agents in Hollywood, and that’s a whole ’nother website. Yes, it’s true that books become movies (usually bad, bad, very bad movies), but that’s because your literary agent, who sold the publishing rights to a major publishers, also successfully sold the movies rights to a major Hollywood studio. Again, whole ’nother website. 
What’s important to know is that literary agents function as the middleman between you—unknown unpublished writer of a brilliant first book—and the Major New York Publishers. Literary agents have the contacts in the New York publishing world (and beyond) to get your book sold. Literary agents negotiate publishing contracts, sell subrights like foreign rights and media and electronic rights, and just plain manage your financial and business affairs so you can focus on your literary business of writing. 

AgentQuery.com is a fantastic resource for all writers and I recommend you spend extended amounts of time reading up on how to write queries, find an agent and avoid common mistakes. And remember – no reputable agent will charge you an upfront fee. They make their money by receiving a commission on selling your work to publishers. AgentQuery.com also have information on how to spot a potential scammer. After all the hard work of writing a book you don’t want to lose out, so make sure you know what to look for.

How do you find one?

When I was researching I found the author Ben Woods’ website. He has written a sci-fi book called “The Developers”. During his quest for an agent he kept a record of all the agents he contacted and what the response (if any) was like. This is really useful because it helps to:

1. Underline that finding an agent is a serious business that needs to be approached in a professional manner
2. Show the incredible variety of response times you can expect
3. Highlight agents you might want to contact/steer clear of

Now, agents are human (yes – really!) and anyone can have a off day, so I would use this list as a starting point, not a template. But Ben should be applauded for sharing this because it is an insight into the efforts required to find an agent. To find the right agent you need persistence and research skills. 

Agents who blog

There are many agents who actually go the extra mile and share hints and tips about how you can maximise your chances of finding the right agent. Rather than give a long list here I suggest you go and read ‘Pub Rants’ by Agent Kristen. This blog is choc-full of practical advice, tips, hints and insights into how Agents go about their business. There is a listing of other agents who blog on her site, so there is plenty to sink your teeth into.

And now?

I have a list, I’m reviewing and finessing my query letter, and making sure I have everything in place so I can start the next phase. And I also have another plan. In addition to finding an agent I will be marketing my book in another way. More details soon, but it’s exciting! And if you have any resources you would like to share please let me know.