Question: What does it take to get the most out of a writers’ conference?
Answer: “What it takes is a whole lot of being nice.”
I put that response in quotation marks because I heard those words from another author. Sabrina Jeffries giving an uplifting talk at – you guessed it – a writers’ conference.
Summer is conference time. Small retreats and huge gatherings punctuate June through August for many writers. Civilians – as in non-writers – are off to the shore or the mountains or the campsite. But we pack up our notebooks and our hopes and head for a convocation of scribes.
What most of us are hoping is that we’ll find the key to getting our work published or better published. I say that isn’t the most important thing we find at these gatherings whether they take place in a grand hotel or a modest cabin or anywhere in between.
The most important thing we find is each other. We make the most of a writers’ conference by maximizing that discovery. We writers are our own most natural allies. Why is that so true? It’s true because we understand one another from the inside.
We understand what it’s like to labor in the formidable publishing marketplace. We understand what it’s like to struggle toward getting our work published and keeping it published. We know how it feels to suffer rejection and disappointment. We also know how it feels to experience the joy of our accomplishments whether they’re large or small.
We also understand we need support in these hard struggles we’ve chosen. We understand that because we need the same support ourselves. With this understanding comes an obligation. Our obligation is to reach out and give what is needed – a little bit of niceness to our writer friends.
All it takes is a few words in a few sentences of encouragement and kindness. Over the several days or even the single weekend of a conference these few words at a time will add up to what Sabrina inspires us toward – a whole lot of being nice.
Our need to succeed tells us to be nice to the max to the agents and editors and instructors we line up for to pitch our projects or sit in front of taking notes. We long to recruit them to become our allies on the inside of the publishing world. In the meantime let’s not forget the allies we already have on the inside of the writing world.
Give what you can. A word of advice or a commiserating ear or a shared laugh – and definitely a hug. As you scurry from class to class or from appointment to appointment take a moment to touch another writer ally with your own whole lot of being nice. I guarantee you will experience a whole lot of feeling good in return.
RR
P.S. My biggest writers’ gathering gig this summer will be teaching a course titled How to Stop Shooting Career in the Foot. Six sessions of sharing everything I know about how to get out of your own way and get what you need out of writing and publishing. That happens July 24th through 31st at the International Women’s Writing Guild 38th Annual Summer Conference in Litchfield CT. For more information visit www.iwwg.org.
RR
My next novel is A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launching with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel and I couldn’t have done it without a whole lot of being nice from my author allies. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.
“All it takes is a few words in a few sentences of encouragement and kindness.” I couldn’t agree more. I sure hope I give this to all of my students.
Love the titles of your books. Do you have any interest in doing an author interview at Writer Advice, http://www.writeradvice.com? The issue stays up for 90 days and you’d be on the home page. Thanks for considering it. Please let me know, okay?
http://www.writeradvice.com
Dear Lynn. Encouragement and Kindness. You are exactly right. They don’t cost a cent to give. They mean everything when received. And – yes- I’d love to be interviewed at your Writer Advice site. I will email you separately. Thank you so much for the gracious invitation.
Dear Lynn. You have commented on my blog posts in the past. I invite you to explore my most recent series. It is titled “Oh No I’m a Caregiver – Dementia – Our Cautionary Story.” These posts are of special significance to me. Dementia appears to be a reality destined to assault all of our lives in one way or another eventually. I believe that the story I have to tell – through my initial post and others yet to come at https://www.aliceorrbooks.com – has valuable insights to offer. For this reason, I hope you will read it and pass it on to others so that they might benefit from what I am learning and from those insights.
For example… My husband Jonathan, who has recently been diagnosed with dementia, is actually quite fine at this early stage. He is engaged in lots of cognitively powerful activities. He writes original memoir pieces that are very good and says this is the result of sitting in on so many of my writing workshops over the past forty-five years. He now finds more joy in writing than the drawing and music that were his usual creative pursuits in the past. This is good because, as you know, portraying characters and composing scenes require a deep level of focus and detail concentration which is very beneficial for him. He also loves jigsaw puzzling – the 1500-piece variety. Again much concentration is required plus he has fond memory associations of doing puzzles with his mom when he was a boy. He also reads a lot – challenging books, as well as his favorite New York Times articles. He does regular physical exercise and has also begun gardening at our church which has a large planted space in sore need of attention. Medically, he is taking a basic drug that has disappeared his brain fog for the timebeing. We also have excellent medical professionals on our team and on our side.
Dementia is not like the tv commercials portray it to be. Their purpose is to ramp up fear and sell very expensive, very dangerous drugs. There is a long, gradual period before extreme changes begin, and the aggressiveness these ads emphasize can often be mitigated with simple mood medications that are harmless and affordable.
Meanwhile, there is a real-life story to be told here of real-life experience. I hope you will read and share it. Dementia is a reality for many of us and, unfortunately, promises to be a reality for many more. Truth is our best armor against being cast into despair by the prospect. I hope to add a little to that sustaining truth. Dementia is one of the many ways all of us will evolve from this life into whatever may lay beyond. Passing on is our universal destiny. Some of those passages involve discomfort and unpleasantness. We can perhaps be a bit better prepared if we understand realistically what to expect.
That is what our story – Jonathan’s and mine – is meant to do. Help others – in an honest and caring fashion – to be prepared. Love and Blessings. Alice