I attended this year’s Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference, organized by hard-working volunteers to help aspiring writers. Instead of a typical picture of the hotel, here is the pool I had no intention of taking the time to use.
Before the serious stuff, here is the omelet I ordered. It had cheese, mushrooms, bacon and pineapple. Yes, that’s right. The waitress laughed at my asking for pineapple.
The main conference room. Right now, tables are designated to discuss mystery, fantasy, science fiction, romance, etc.
These three writers have all had books turned into movie or TV scripts. (Sorry, I no longer have access to the conference guide, so I don’t have their names.) Once the contract is signed and the writer is paid, the writer no longer has any control of the story. The woman on the left was distressed when the main character in her novel was killed in the movie version.
The main events for many writers were the pitch sessions. Editors and agents sit along one side of a series of long tables. Writers stand in line for the desired professional. At the sound of a bell, the person at the head of a line has four minutes to walk forward, sit down, and pitch a manuscript. The usual advice is to summarize one’s novel in thirty seconds. I took forty-five, since I had to describe the science fictional setting. The rest of the time is spent answering questions from the professional.
This is half of the long conference room
I had an advantage, in that I could say that two developmental editors had looked over my manuscript. This showed I was serious about becoming a writer (it cost over three thousand dollars), and that I was willing to make changes (I deleted three scenes).
Here are the two agents I pitched to, Katie Reed and Lydia Caudill.
One of them requested I send pages to her. Which one? That would be telling.
I recommend going to conferences where one can pitch. It can be nerve-wracking, but since I had done this before, it wasn’t bad at all.
