Work begins again. We are getting to the weeks where I prep for the new semester as both a teacher and an admin, but having just completed catching up on phone messages and emails, I figured I would take a break to write to you all. Whoops. Phone. BRB.
That was the husband calling about which Monster High lunch box he should buy for me. Which makes sense, because since Domo died the death, I have been using a Weight Watchers lunch bag, and that’s a decidedly too adult, not so fun thing.
***
I’m looking over my list of things that I have to write about, and it looks like while some of that material is dated, it might still be interesting to you nevertheless, and that in theory I shouldn’t be running out of material for a while. SO, maybe what I’ll do here is just start in with the most recent first, and go backwards.
***
After my Caribbean cruise (yes, it was excellent, thank you, and since I am regressing in time, you can’t know about it yet), I washed my clothes, packed up my gear, and headed out to Writer’s Digest in New York, where I was the house guest of Miranda Suri, awesome author, and her husband Sid, awesome author consort. George Galuschak completed the hosting triumvirate. Chia Evers ran into town to goof off with us on Thursday, and Chris Cornell made our fourth musketeer for the conference. It was a veritable Who’s Who of VP XIII. As you see.
We walked to oblivion. We were soaked and dried and soaked again. We walked the High Line and visited China Town and ate at The Spotted Pig, and visited shops and talked. Yeah, it was good. It goes without saying that we talked about writing and cool things.
I don’t know what to tell you about New York. Part of me likes that culture is around every corner and that you can find just about anything. Part of me dislikes mountains of garbage, crowds of people, and ubiquitous rats (okay, two, but for me that’s ubiquitous). The subway is an experience unto itself. At no point did I feel unsafe, but I felt pretty much like I needed to be hosed down with antiseptic at the end of the days there. I was amazingly impressed by the bits of New Jersey George took me to. Hoboken is pretty swanky, and I can add a cool new awkwardly named city to my list, right up there with Kalamazoo.
Now, what about Writers Digest?
Like San Francisco Writers Conference, I’m gonna give Writer’s Digest high marks. Again, it’s an expensive investment in your writing career, but if you think you might play well in person, pitching seems to be a better way to go to get the word out about your work. I’m pretty damned good at it. To a woman, every agent I pitched to said, “Wow, that’s a good pitch.” However, be aware that while you might make a better impression in person, if they don’t want what you got, they can still compliment you and say no. I did get one interested agent. Well, I chose to pitch Abby to two children’s book editors, and that was the wrong gamble. Paranormal Middle Grade is not a hot item right now. The other issue with the Pitch Slam at Writer’s Digest is that it is much busier than Speed Dating with Agents at SFC, which means you will pitch to less people.
HOWEVER, between the 4 of us, we came out of the Slam with 17 invites, so that should tell you how well everyone else did. AND there will be an invite to send our query to all of the agents at the Slam we wanted to talk to, but couldn’t, so Writer’s Digest tries to make good. AND attendees will be able to watch sessions that they missed on line just by virtue of being there. Writer’s Digest sincerely does its best to accommodate your needs, even though it knows you aren’t going to get everything while you are there. Can’t fault them at all.
Still, San Francisco did do some things better. There was food at SFWC, which I don’t think was a realistic option for Writer’s Digest, but was a nice touch. Another nice touch was a commonality that 4th St and SFWC shared, which was trying to have venues for authors to be social as part of the convention (ie dinner groups). There was simply more room at SFWC. Writer’s Digest really could have done better in a bigger hotel, or with better organized lines.
An agent at Writer’s Digest suggested that 38 percent of her clients were from pitches, and a mere 16 percent were from queries. That may not be true for every agent, but it does tell me that this sort of thing is a good investment in writers careers, just like the workshops that we go to. I begin to feel much more strongly that the sort of thing I should be doing is going to this sort of thing to find an agent, and more of the SF/F sort of thing to promote the books that I get published. When that happens.
After a couple of days of pitching, running around New York, and going to panels, here’s what we looked like at the end of things.
A good time was had by all, and it sounds like most of us have our submissions off to agents already.
