Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending my first writer’s conference – the fifth-annual Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, held at Hollins University in Roanoke Virginia. The conference did not disappoint.  As noted on the conference page: “two dozen classes, taught by over 25 professionals, a round-table discussion, a Friday evening reception with two speakers and Saturday lunch are all included in the $60 tuition. The conference will feature a number of successful authors, journalists, designers, marketers and academics, as well as an accountant and a lawyer to help students with the practical end of their profession.”

I was both inspired and intimidated by the level of expertise at the front of the classrooms and in the chairs around me. This is a conference for people who are passionate about prose. The sessions busted myths and brought reality to our brains. We heard about theory and idea development mixed with practical pointers from those who have proven themselves as writers and experts in the field of publishing. I pulled a couple of overarching themes from the sessions.  The speakers and topics brought to life the advice you can find across the blogosphere:

• If you want to do this, you’ve got to really want it badly.  There are no half-ass attempts.  Do it or don’t. It can be done, but you are really going to have to bust your butt.
• The writing itself is probably the easiest part of the process.
• There is a lot of debate between self-publishing and traditional publishing. And although conference organizer Dan Smith admittedly was a proponent of the traditional route, the conference did a good job of balancing both approaches.
• Regardless of how good you [think you] are, invest in an editor. If you can’t afford an editor, get yourself into a critique group.  This is especially critical for self-publishing writers.

Due to some familial engagements, I missed the opening sessions on Friday night, but I got there early on Saturday.  The first session I attended was Mike Allen‘s The Last Redoubt: Writing Short Stories for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Markets. To date, my works have been non-fiction and a full-length novel. But since all of my outlines for future fiction works seem to consistently wind up in the spec-fic areas, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Mike’s passion for the genre and the craft was very obvious from the moment he started. He provided us with a practical approach on how to get your short spec-fic work published. He toured us through some of the most well-known online publication references like Duotrope and Ralan. Mike’s approach was very casual – he engaged us in a conversation instead of lecturing at us. He answered several questions about the genres and the technical approach to the craft and how to get your short stories, flash fiction and novellas in print in the spec-fic publications. I’ve never tried flash fiction before, but last night, after this session, I jotted down my first.  Who knows…maybe it’ll show up in Weird Tales or Mike’s own Mythic Delirium collection someday!

Following Mike’s session, I stuck around in the same room for a double-shot of Spec-Fic advice with Rod Belcher’s session called: Selling the Sense of Wonder: Writing, Marketing and Surviving Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror. Rod recently sold his first novel to Tor books. Rod pursued his passion with a traditional publishing route, “pouncing” on an editor at Tor during a writer’s conference. Rod’s session was a great reality check for those of us who have a low tolerance for waiting. His was a multi-year journey of persistence, agonizing re-writes and lengthy hurry-up-and-wait exercises.

The last morning session I attended was Marketing Your Self-Published Book. Conference organizer Dan Smith introduced the topic but quickly relinquished control to Rachael Garrity, a local editor, and Janeson Keely, an internet guru. This session was a non-stop stream of technical advice for perfecting your self-published work (USE AN EDITOR, NOT YOUR MOM!) and promoting it online through tools like a blog, facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. The content was good, but honestly, I didn’t write much down in this session because I am already doing all the things they suggested.  Yay me! : )  The speakers strongly recommended one book: John Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!, so that one is now on my to-do list.

After a great lunch in the Hollins University cafeteria, my first afternoon session was author Brooke McGlothlin‘s: Self-Publishing: The Whys and Hows. Brooke is a very successful self-published author of several non-fiction works for women and mothers. She is strictly e-books, no print, no POD (at least for the foreseeable future). Brooke attributes her continued success to social media and hard work. She established a community of interest early on and continues to advance by keeping the conversation going.  She uses social media to draw her audience in as friends and not customers. She recommended that you establish your platform BEFORE you start promoting your work.  In addition to social media, Brooke also recommended using an online newsletter platform, like aweber.com, to keep in touch with your audience. Brooke uses extensive giveaways to coincide with her book releases and each time, she more than recoups any investment. For social media novices, she recommended Amy Porterfield’s Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies. Brooke prefers to focus on the craft of writing.  She relies on a network of other talented people to design her covers and format her works for e-book publishing. She created an awesome list of  resources on her on website for others to use.

After Brooke’s great case in favor of self-publishing, I headed over to Babcock Auditorium to hear from Gina Holmes, the very successful traditionally-published author of Crossing Oceans and Dry as Rain. Gina wrote five novels before finally landing a publishing deal with Tyndale House. Persistence, both in the writing itself and the self-marketing and writers’ conferences and the like were what paid off for her. She recommends setting yourself up with a writing goal (1000 WPD is reasonable). And she, like the others before her, stressed the invaluable insight of a real editor, regardless of your genre or your publishing route. Be ready for painful rewrites and remember that you do not always have to say “yes” to recommended changes. And make sure your first work is absolutely top-notch. The average length of most début novel submissions are 80-90K words.  Anything more than that is just an easy opportunity for them to say “no”. Gina recommended several resources to improve your fiction-writing skills:

• Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Brown and King
• Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
• Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

After Gina’s session, I headed over to Amy Gerber-Stroh’s Getting Your Story in Motion: Film and Screenplay Writing. I love movies and who doesn’t picture their written work turned into a cinematic feast someday? Amy, an assistant professor of film at Hollins University, provided a brief but interesting history lesson on film adaptations. The biggest tidbit I got from this session was how vastly different screenplays are from novels. Screenplays are on average 90-120 pages total.  (1 page = 1 minute)  Yikes…that’s some serious cutting for those of us in the novel-writing arena! The easiest way to do this is to cut introspection to a minimum.  Replace it with good acting to help convey background, tone, emotion, etc.  Personally, I am going to shelve the movie idea until I can get a couple of novels off the ground first. : )

Overall, this conference was excellent.  Not only did I glean much salient information, I got to do it in an atmosphere of camaraderie. As far as I could tell, egos were checked at the door and there was a tone of encouragement throughout. If you are in southwest Virginia and you are a writer (published or not!), check it out next year.  I’ll see you there! If you attended this year, please let me know what you thought.  How were the sessions that I missed? Did you catch the same stuff I did from the sessions above?  Let me know if you post your own review – I’d love to hear from other attendees!