Maybe it will turn out that we need a separate area.

For more information go to

Tulsa, OK has one called Conestoga.

I stand corrected. Thanks Kathleen.

Writer's conferences, conventions in an area that would spend that much on rodeo? I think not.

Man, I hate this town.

http://www.condfw.org

I MEANT something like a nice safe BYU-legal root beer, or milk. Maybe a nice helping of funeral potatoes or Jell-o on the side?

that's www.write-across-europe.com

http://www.leprecon.org/lep31/

and CopperCon in September:

http://www.coppercon.org

Colorado has MileHiCon in October

http://www.milehicon.org

and there are three in Texas listed at

http://www.secfi.org/concarolinas/

which will be in Charlotte, NC, June 3-5 this year.

has got this going on:

quote:

---

The writers' organization I co-founded with another writer last spring, Backspace, is sponsoring a one-day writers' conference in New York this summer on June 2, to coincide with BEA (Book Expo America). I've got an amazing program lined up: literary agent Richard Curtis is our keynote speaker, I've got other agents and editors conducting a workshop and sitting on panels, and we're also having a panel of thriller authors - so far David Morrell (creator of Rambo) has said yes, and Lee Child and Barry Eisler have given me a tentative yes (they still have to check their schedules).

http://www.BackspaceWritersConference.com[/quote]

IP: Logged

The ones I'm planning to go to are Oct, Richmond, VA, and Sep, Columbus, OH. Not summer, and that seems like a shame -- but I haven't found any earlier conferences where you can meet with agents. If anyone knows any, please post.

1. The Annual Writers Institute July 21-22, 2005. This conference offers 3 writing contests, seminars, and time slots with agents.
http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/lsa/writing/awi/index.html

2. Write by the Lake June 20-24, 2005. This offers a wide array of seminars and small group sessions.
http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/lsa/writing/wbtl.htm#5

Wbriggs, the BookExpo conference may not be in summer, but it has a pitching session. I hope to be in Columbus, too. Maybe GZ will be there again and we can all touch bases.

One writer/speaker at the conference based his whole presentation on marching to the “invisible hand of art” as opposed to “the invisible hand of the marketplace,” although an agent later clearly disagreed when she advised the opposite, proving -- as I have firmly suspected -- writing really is a crapshoot.

It is also a business, and it was pointed out that agents have their own agendas, namely, to consider their reputations and relationships with editors and publishers. Basically, every writer and work they pitch has a bearing on that, so they’re going to choose their clients and projects carefully.

Writing is also a strange business, in that most books fail. Even most bestsellers fail -- a rather odd thought, I thought, but there is too much product out there and too few readers. The result is a “culture of disappointment” that writers must get past by viewing all aspects of their writing careers as positive, i.e., really really wringing every bit of enjoyment and encouragement from any even marginally positive things that happen.

Nancy Kress spoke on genre fiction, and the genre that she seemed to note most for exceptions to the rules was SF. For instance, the protagonist doesn’t always have to win in SF as opposed to most genre fiction.

I found it interesting when Jon Karp, in listing ‘tenacity' as a necessary trait for a writer didn’t go for the obvious, as in keep sending out those manuscripts, but connected tenacity to ‘rewriting,’ which he further explained as a “combination of inspiration and cold-blooded calculation.”

Peter Almond quoted Saul Bellows as saying that “a writer is a jealous reader.”

The pitch session was too short, or there were simply too many of us conferees. I got to actually pitch only once, although two agents requested material -- one by default. There were a handful of us still waiting for her when the session ended, so she gave us her card and told us to send our material to her and she’d be sure to look at it. She definitely went up in my estimation.

I was particularly pleased with myself because I was pitching with a handicap that afternoon. While sitting at the speaker session before lunch, I reached down beside my chair for my water bottle and threw my back out.

Big-time pain.

And then I had to give up sightseeing to hole up in my hotel room, hardly able to move without serious distress. I still think the flight attendant didn’t believe me the next day when I insisted I couldn’t lift my carry-on into the overhead compartment.

So if you remember nothing else from this, remember that bottled water in New York can be dangerous.