At this point on my Journey to become published, every blog has at least one new discovery or landmark included. This blog is no exception. Outside of having my work published, attending my first writers conference is the most exciting landmark so far. And what could be more exciting than attending the Las Vegas Writers Conference. Las Vegas has long been known as an exciting, exotic, fun destination. It’s landscape littered with landmark casinos that offer up your choice of sin on an elaborate platter. Theres only one big problem to overcome. The Center for Disease Control is still not in favor of large gatherings. Some of our government branches are heavily discouraging these conferences to the point of criminal punishment. In the age of Covid19 most all public conventions are taking place online. The Las Vegas Writers Conference was no exception to this new, and hopefully temporary, standard. So instead of flying into Las Vegas, this time I’m required to Zoom in.
While the new Zoom cloud video conferencing platform allows for face to face interaction and the ability to attend conferences from the convenance of your own office, or living room as is often the case, it’s not without its own challenges. On top of the obvious “technical difficulties” associated with remote connection technologies from power outage, and unexpected bandwidth constraints, there’s the “where in my house should I set up so other folks are not distracted by surroundings”. I am currently limited on space in my Dallas location so there are not many options. Behind me is my kitchen area which at the moment is clean. As the conference wears on and dishes begin to pile up I start looking for other background options. I notice some of the attendees appear to be on a beach, while others have a plain background. Playing around with the different Zoom settings I find the blur background option. The blur background option makes it appear as if there is no background. With a little more investigation I find a way to import a background photo. Yes. Now I appear to be at a camp ground overlooking Lake Travis in Austin Texas with its rolling hills in the background. Dishes are done.
Now that the dirty dishes are no longer an issue I can once again concentrate on the convention itself. The virtual convention was well worth the cost of $149.00 for attending. In addition to key note speeches by literary professionals, the conference offers several workshop session options in the categories of craft, marketing, and publishing. The value of these online workshops are in the ability of the convention goer to interact with the industry professionals leading the session by asking clarifying question. The information itself can be found on line. In some cases the leader of these sessions are literary agents and publishers with the ability to help advance the writers career.
Among the workshops I felt compelled to attend were “The Perfect Pitch”, “Creating Memorable characters”, “Pitching”, “Flaming Good Dialog”, “What Publishers Want”, “A decent proposal”, “Fix That Query”, “Finding Flash”, and many, many more. The workshops were presented in an easy to implement format. Even though workshops that specifically dealt with the genres’ I am currently working on formatting and submitting to publishers were absent from this conference, I believe the information was extremely useful for all genres.
I had the opportunity to pitch my work to an agent and a developing editor during the conference which I found extremely exciting as well as a valued experience. I was able to have my pitching skills evaluated and at the same time present my work to people who could provide expert feedback. I was pleased to have my work receive good reviews with the recommendation to move forward in my publication efforts, with one exception. I know, I don’t like exceptions either. The lady I was scheduled to pitch, “The Bright Blue Ball”, too disappeared from the screen as I was reading it. I waited for her to come back but she did not. The section facilitator said she had been having the dreaded “technical difficulties” and she would see if she could reschedule. On the next appointment she didn’t show up at all. Again I was told “technical difficulties.” This time I was told that the editor in question would reach out to me on email with feedback. Since that hasn’t happened, and I didn’t notice any “technical difficulties” on any of her scheduled presentations during the conference, I can only surmise that she wasn’t a fan of the story. AS I stated before there where no experts among the faculty in the genres I’m currently attempting to publish, and since I’ve had good feedback from my beta readers, I will continue to promote “The Bright Blue Ball” to publishers of that genre.
The knowledge gained and information received from this conference, especially for an unpublished writer like myself was invaluable. I will be sharing this information in my blogs as I implement the formats, ideas, and techniques in my own journey to become published, so stayed tuned.
Now, it’s time to write.