DAY ONE- NJ RWA CONFERENCE

It’s my first writer’s conference and I’m so excited!
We start off with the Newbie’s meeting. A brief conference how-to. A lovely woman named Jessica Flasher stumbles into the room as if she’s in the wrong place and begins to tell us how to work a conference. Then she tells us how to stalk agents by shoving manuscripts under bathroom doors, dumping them on the breakfast plate and shoving them under the agent/editor’s nose at every opportunity. (All big no-no’s)
Then her alternate personality, Christine Bush, gave a great presentation on how to have a successful conference. Thank you Christine!
After that it was off to my first seminar (they had lots of good ones and it was hard to choose just one). I chose Weaving in Back-story. This group had a lot of great information and broke down the different types of ways the history of a character could be brought into a story without losing the reader. I couldn’t write fast enough!
Next I chose a talk by Nick Conrad of Elora’s Cave Publishing. Nick was a wonderful speaker who gave insight on the proper way to submit. No perfume or confetti needed. Write a good book, learn the proper way to prepare a cover letter, and make sure you submit to the right place. Thanks Nick!
After that I took in Jessica Faust class on how to perfect your pitch. My little secret is I’m not ready to pitch but just wanted to meet Jessica because I read her blog all the time. She gave a great seminar and I was impressed with her candor and honesty. She listened to pitches from the audience and critiqued them on the spot. It was a great way for us to learn what to do, what not to do and how to cut right to the conflict in your book. After meeting Jessica I can definitely say she is someone I’d love to have for an agent. Thank you, Jessica! It was a lot of fun.
I’m going back today for round two. I’ll let you know how it goes.