Conference Notes--Day 3

The first thing on Saturday morning was handing out the first sale ribbons. There were so many first sales since last conference, I lost count! I was very proud to be among them.

Debbie Macomber spoke about her journey to publication, a very emotional speech. I can understand why her books are so popular. It made me realise how lucky I've been in the support I've received from my family, especially my husband. While he would never pick up a romance novel to read, he has taken my ambition to be published in romance seriously from the start. No fuss, just steady, quiet support.

My first workshop was Lilian Darcy's Career Planning for Optimists. Lilian offered a valuable insight into the journey of a new author and pitfalls along the way. She made a very good point that the writer who has the longer journey to publication often comes out better in the long run. Once you're published, all your growth as a writer is done in public, whereas the writer who takes longer to get published has a longer period in which to experiment with style and hone her craft in private. Getting published with a book that only just makes it over the threshold might be a disadvantage in the long-run.

So if it's taking a while for you to sell, take comfort in the fact that as long as you keep writing, you're never wasting that time. I've been writing seriously for about five years, two of which were full-time. Just before I sold, that seemed like a long period. Now, I'm not so sure. I do know that writers never stop learning their craft no matter how many books they publish. Hopefully, my books will get better as I go along. I want to still be writing when I'm in the old folks' home!

I had lunch with my critique partner and expert schmoozer Denise, Kate Cuthbert from the Courier-Mail and Miriam Kriss from the Irene Goodman Agency in New York. Silently (actually, I think I might have done it out loud!) I thanked goodness I didn't have to do any pitches this conference and could talk to Miriam like an ordinary human rather than a desperate writer. I've only done one face to face pitch in my life, and that was so nerve-wracking I couldn't sleep for many nights beforehand. If you're not a natural at it, I think pitching agents is a waste of time and nervous energy. Generally, they don't remember you afterwards and you'd get the same response from sending a query letter. You also get to send sample pages most of the time when you send a query. I suppose there is the advantage to pitching that the agent has to pay attention to you right at that moment and not shuffle you down the slush pile, but that's the only positive I can think of. I'd much rather get to know an agent in a relaxed, social setting, rather than during a 3 minute pitch.

After lunch was Jane Porter's Not Just Hot Sex, which was all about increasing sensual heat without necessarily making descriptions of love scenes more graphic. I got a lot out of that session, not the least of which is Jane Porter is a very passionate speaker!

Anne Gracie spoke about emotional punch but sadly ran out of time. I'm looking forward to the reading the rest of that talk because she really did put things in a new perspective. Rather than using emotive or emotional language and describing someone's emotions, it's far more powerful to subtly show them placed in a dreadful situation. As I cried through about the last third of Anne's The Perfect Stranger I know from experience she is a master of this technique!

Oh, and Anna Campbell and I took a group for an author chat, which was great fun and a little surreal as I've been 'published' for such a very short time I felt like a bit of a fraud. Of course, our group wanted to know our respective 'call stories'. Another interesting question was whether either of us had considered e-publishing. That will be the subject of another post.

The awards dinner came that night. At the risk of leaving someone important out, I will mention a couple of the award winners. Anna Jacobs won the long Romantic Book of the Year Award (R*by). I must say, it was nice to see someone win who (apart from being a great writer) has supported the RWA and actually bothers to turn up to the awards ceremony rather than sending their publicist. The lovely Trish Morey won the short category of the R*by, which I was very chuffed about because she's such a great lady.

I won one of the unpublished contests, the Single (Title) and Loving It, but to me, the best part of the evening is always the time when the MC gets everyone who has sold a book, won a contest, submitted their work, and so on to stand up. At the end, about three-quarters of the room were standing. I think that's a ratio we should be proud of. It shows that RWAustralia members are professionals and serious about their writing.

No after parties for me, unfortunately. Once again, I took my whale-like carcass off to bed.