Wrapping my head around the writer's conference.

So here I sit, trying to prepare for the four-day writer’s conference that starts tomorrow.  I just got back from a road trip to attend to varied family matters last night after midnight.  This is my one day to get my head around the sessions I want to attend and to make sure I know what I am doing for my agent/editor pitching sessions.

  Why am I writing a blog entry?

  That’s easy.  I have four books in varied stages of editing, four more books waiting impatiently to be written, the characters vying for my devoted attention to their story, and a few short stories dangling off the end of the stack wishing those books would get out of the way and give them their chance at the blank page on the computer.  Aside from that, I have piles of laundry from the six days of the road trip heaped in the laundry room, I need groceries, and my house looks like a hurricane swept through.  In those moments, sometimes the only way to get my head back on straight is to analyze the situation through my preferred medium, writing.

  Laundry, house cleaning, and groceries will simply have to wait (who needs to eat anyway?).  My many characters and their compelling demands for my time must also wait.  I adore them.  I want to give them all of my attention all of the time, but the conference is another tool to help me with that and I must give it my everything right now.

  I’ve never done in-person pitching to agents and editors before.  I hope it will, at worst, be a great learning experience.  My game plan for the afternoon is to research the ones I will be meeting with so that I have a true understanding of what they have represented and skim through their blogs if they have them to get a little deeper insight.  Then I am going to take a long, critical look at what I have for a pitch.  I need to understand what makes the novel I am pitching stand out and how to communicate that to these people.  Interestingly, the last agent I sent my submission packet to has not rejected it yet, which adds a little complication if someone at the conference shows interest, but I’m willing to deal with that if it becomes an issue.

  And there it is, in black and white.  The reason I wrote this.  I now have a game plan, which is more than I had before.  Now I need to (reluctantly) turn off my music and focus on that plan.  Maybe Monday, when this is all over, I’ll post again and let you know how it went.

  Happy writing!