Confessions of a Conference Virgin: Day 1 of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference

I have to admit to being nervous about the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. It’s the first conference I’ve ever been to, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Plus, I planned to pitch to an agent there, so I carried the knots in my stomach until my appointment time!

Day 1 of the conference was great. In a highly inspirational opening speech, author Solomon Jones stressed the idea that words matter by sharing how writing literally saved him from a life of addiction and homelessness.

The 3-day workshops have been equally informative. There is a little something for everyone: Memoirs, Poetry, Flash Fiction, Nonfiction, Romance Novels, Contemporary Short Stories, Screen/Play Writing, Novel, and YA.

I have heard good things about most of the 3-day workshops, but I have only experienced 3 of them myself. In Novel: Plot, author Kelly Simmons explored a non-outlining way of approaching plot – her list of 7 Cs: Combustion, Coordination, Conflict, Character, Conclusion, Completion, and Commitment.

In Novel: Character, author Gregory Frost explored what it takes to create compelling characters. Today we talked about the importance of “telling details” to show what the character is like instead of reverting to intrusive author explanation.

I had to leave in the middle of Greg’s class to go to my agent pitch. My nerves almost got the better of me while I was waiting, but once I met the engaging and enthusiastic Sarah Yake of Frances Collin Agency, my fear vanished. I count that as a successful pitch, especially for my first time pitching!

Then it was on to the YA workshop, where author Catherine Stine spoke about the different levels of children’s literature from picture books through upper YA, and how writing for those markets differs from writing for adults.

Finally, I took one of the single-day workshops: Jennifer Holbrook-Talty’s Perfect Pitch/Query. She pounded this cardinal rule into our heads: Who is your protagonist, what do they want, and why can’t they have it? This is the beginning of every successful pitch of any length.

The one-day workshops also cover a wide variety of topics: Pitch/Query; Libel, Privacy & Censorship; Writing for New Media/Webisodes; How to Get Your Own Column; Beating Writer’s Block; Op-Ed; Marketing Your Work; 13 Tips and Tricks; and a Closing Panel – Publisher’s Insider View.

My head is spinning with so much information, but I can’t wait for Day 2 and 3!

New Ventures

First, I’d like to announce a new group blog I’ve joined, called The Author Chronicles. This is a group of five writers from different genres facing inner demons and navigating the ever-changing world of publishing. We’ll be sharing what we learn along the way about craft, business, and the writing life. We’re very excited, so come on over and say hello!

Second, tomorrow starts the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. This will be my first conference and I am a little nervous, but very jazzed. I always find that hanging out with writers sends my creativity through the roof, so being around so many writers just might send me into outer space. If you see a human silhouette flying across the moon this weekend, it’s probably me!

I have a lot to do to prepare for the conference, so this will be a short blog post. I’ll be back to let you know how it turned out. I’m sure I will have wonderful information to share from the many workshops I’ve signed up to take. The lineup is fabulous!

Look for more on the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference here in the coming days!

Navajos Wear Nikes book signing

Join my author friend and classmate Jim Kristofic at his booksigning this Saturday, 5/21 6-8 pm at the Doylestown Bookshop. His awesome memoir is Navajos Wear Nikes.

If you can’t make it to his signing, pick up the book at your local bookstore!

Read more about it below:

LIFE ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION… WHAT’S THAT LIKE?
An Evening of Storytelling and Booksigning with Navajos Wear Nikes author Jim Kristofic
WHERE: Doylestown Bookshop
WHEN: May 21st, 6-8 p.m.

Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life

When Jim Kristofic’s family moved across the country to Ganado, Arizona, his life changed forever. Ganado was a “Rez-town” on a reservation the size of West Virginia. More Indians lived on the Rez than anywhere else on earth. White people called them Navajo. They called themselves Diné—The People. For Jim’s mother, living among the Navajo was a childhood dream come true. For Jim—who’d just learned barely learned to tie his own shoelaces—it was the end of the world and the beginning of something new and unforgettable.

In this memoir Jim Kristofic introduces readers to the complex world of the modern Navajo Nation, where Anglo and Navajo coexist in a tenuous truce. It is a place of spirits, where witches haunt the valley at night and the supernatural is part of everyday life. But his friendships with local boys lead Jim to understand the wit of the Navajo language, how to make fry bread, how to find hózhó, a beautiful harmony. He shares tales of rescued “Rez-dogs,” a captive hawk, a gang-style murder, an Indian Boy Scout troop, a fanatical Sunday school teacher, a sheep butchering in the middle of the school day, and his friendship with the Navajo bull rider and artist who becomes his stepfather. After the births of his Navajo sister and brother, Jim’s family moves off the Rez to an Arizona border town, where he and his family struggle to adapt to the Anglo society that no longer feels like the home he left behind.

With compelling honesty, Navajos Wear Nikes tracks a modern life on the Navajo Reservation, from childhood to manhood. Kristofic recounts the painful, fascinating history of Ganado, Arizona and tells the story of a boy trying to understand the truth of a people and the truth about himself.

Jim Kristofic has worked on and off the “Rez” for more than ten years as a river guide, journalist, and oral historian. He has written for The Navajo Times, Arizona Highways, and High Country News. He and his wife currently live in eastern Pennsylvania with—of course—a rescued dog.

CURRENT PRAISE FOR NAVAJOS WEAR NIKES

“Jim Kristofic combines the spirit of Joseph Campbell and J.D. Salinger to give readers an intimate look at the complexity of life in Navajo country. I rarely have tears when I read the last chapter of a book… with this book I did.”
Martha Blue, former Indian country attorney and award-winning author of Indian Trader: The Life and Times of J.L. Hubbell

“This is a story told on many levels. It can be brutally frank, irreverent in places, and funny in others. But it is so serious that it will hold the reader’s attention from beginning to end. It brings to Native life a strongly personal and emotional aspect seldom seen, and it will persist in memory long after a first reading.”
David Brugge, historian, anthropologist, author of The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute: An American Tragedy

“Few regionally tied autobiographies have shown as much wit and keen observation as Navajos Wear Nikes by Jim Kristofic.” — Arizona Daily Sun

“Many years ago, a coworker and I thought about preparing a `primer’ for non-Navajo newcomers needing to learn the rights and wrongs about living on the Navajo Nation. This book could be used as such a primer.”
Ed Chamberlin, National Park Service curator of Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site

“The story of how a minority overcame prejudice and made lifelong friends in the process will resonate with many teens.” – Booklist

Guest Blog on STET!

I am proud to be guest blogging on Backspace’s awesome blog STET!

I’m addressing how our manuscripts are like our children, and how we can channel those protective maternal/paternal feelings into productive actions.

Come visit! I’ll be there through Wednesday!

Prologues: Thumbs Up or Down?

I just began another workshop with authors Jonathan Maberry and Marie Lamba. This one is called Write Your YA Novel in Nine Months. Its focus is to get at least a first draft completed in nine months, as well as gathering and polishing marketing material we will need to sell the book once it is complete. We will also discuss craft as it specifically pertains to YA and Middle Grade.

Our group is a lively one, and we got into an online discussion about Prologues. While I had been under the impression that agents and publishers did not look favorably on them, others pointed to a plethora of prologues in current books.

We also discussed whether or not readers actually read prologues. I always do. Another person in the group admitted to never reading them. I have found this split among my friends, too. It seems to be a stark black-and-white policy—no one “sometimes” reads prologue. It’s all or nothing.

So today I open the floor to those of you who have been around the publishing block a few times, as well as the readers among us:

Thumbs up or down on prologues? Why?

Change Is Good, Right?

First off, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to my fellow Irishmen and to all those who wish you were!

Second, my Act Like a Writer workshop ended last week, and I have had some time to think about the things we’ve learned. One of the biggest things about the workshop was facing your fears. Honestly, if you step back, what’s the worst that can happen if you flub a pitch or a panel or a reading? Dreadful embarrassment, most likely, and that has never killed anyone.

Even though our logical mind tells us this, fear is not logical. We spoke about our fears in the workshop, and they were familiar. Fear of babbling or stammering or not being able to speak at all. Fear of fainting or throwing up or falling down. Fear of embarrassment or insulting someone or provoking a confrontation. Fear of looking like a fool.

All of the above are very real fears. I share all of them, as do most people. They all stem from that little voice instructor Keith Strunk talked about, the one that whispers to us, “You’re nothing special. You’re not good enough. Just who do you think you are? Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say?”

I’ve heard that voice. We all have. But those fears, prompted by that voice, are not the fears that paralyze me. Face it, you don’t reach (mumble, mumble) years of age without having actually had many of those fears manifest themselves. Although those incidents were deeply uncomfortable, I’m still here. They didn’t kill me.

So what is scaring me so much?

You see, I also hear another voice, different than the “you’re not good enough” voice. (Did I mention that, as a writer, you are allowed to have voices in your head and still be called sane?) This other voice whispers, “But if you succeed, everything will change.”

Ahh, there’s the rub. Change and I, not good friends. I like my routines. Having a baby has made me a lot more flexible, but still…I like my life. If I get an agent, and we sell the book, everything changes. I go from being able to stop writing to play with my daughter to having to tell her occasionally that Mommy can’t play with her now. I go from being able to schedule my life around my family to adding in deadlines and crises (in business there are always crises—I remember that distinctly).

More than that, I go from being able write in comfortable anonymity to having to be public author persona. To have readings and signings and be on panels and do interviews, and all of those things that are so far out of my comfort zone that I can’t even see them from my spot here on the couch. What sort of an idiot deliberately places herself in situations she equates with being in front of a firing squad?

Apparently…me.

Because I want this. I want my work out there. And this is what it takes to be an author in today’s world.

I can do it, too. Act Like A Writer showed me that not only could I do it, I could do it well. And if I continue to work hard at it, someday it may even be fun.

Panels & Pitches

Last week in our Act Like A Writer workshop, instructors Jonathan Maberry and Keith Strunk staged mock panels. All of us had a turn sitting on the panel. I never thought I would say this, but it was…fun.

Part of the fun was, of course, because our little group has gotten more at ease with each other, and we felt a measure of safety in being among friends. Had it been a hundred strangers’ eyes staring at us, that might have been a different story!

I’ve never been on a panel before, real or mock. The thing I found most comforting about it was that you are not up there alone. I felt a great deal of support from having others at the table and not because we were familiar with each other—but because we were all in the spotlight together. We were all in the same boat. We were facing the audience together, so for that moment we all became comrades in arms.

In this final week, we did our pitches again—this time standing up in front of the camera with lights and a background! Like a TV shoot, only not as hectic. As I stood, all miked up and waiting, the cameraman started talking to the assembled class about some technique or other to look more natural on camera. All the while I am standing there, sweating under the lights, forgetting to breathe, and generally screaming in my head, “SHUT UP AND FILM ME ALREADY!”

When he did finally say “Action,” I thought I might faint, because I could literally feel the blood pounding through my neck veins. I figured that couldn’t be a good thing. I did finally remember to breathe about halfway through the pitch, which helped somewhat. I finished up, got kudos, and very quickly found a place to sit down!

I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I’m not worried. Why? Because in spite of the blood-pressure spike and lack of oxygen, I did NOT have the same out-of-body experience I had in the first week’s pitch session. I controlled my mouth, rather than simply listening to it babble on without me. I consider this amazing progress in just four weeks!

I learned a ton in the Act Like A Writer workshop, and I would recommend it to anyone who can take it—you can use the tools they give you for a whole spectrum of public and social situations, not only those having to do with writing. I will also be taking it again, closer to when I am going to the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, so I can practice. Until then, I will practice pitching to my toddler. If you can hold a toddler’s attention for 3 minutes, you can enthrall anyone!

I just have to remember to breathe.

The Confidence Game

“Fake it ʼtil you make it,” advised our Act Like A Writer instructor, Jonathan Maberry. Instructor Keith Strunk showed us how to use body language to hide our nervousness and appear more at ease. Although that sounds like they are teaching us deception and downright fraud, they are not.

They are teaching us confidence.

Scientific evidence demonstrates that when you act confidently and put your body in the postures of confidence, you really do feel more confident. The body positions trigger a chemical response in your brain, making your “faking it” closer to reality.

Also, with every successful public interaction, your confidence does in fact build. It layers upon itself like a pearl, accreting until your confidence becomes a real gem instead of costume jewelry.

All of us taking this workshop need confidence. That’s why we are there. But last week, when each of us read an excerpt from our work, I noticed an interesting phenomenon.

Everyone did a great job—which is not surprising, since everyone there had a good story and an obvious passion for their work. What was surprising is that every one of us—who had struggled and sweated over the pitches the week before—had fun with it.

I figured out that the reason I had such fun with my reading: I have full confidence in my work. I enjoy sharing it with people. I have no trouble letting it speak for itself—that’s when I am most comfortable. Speaking for myself, well, that’s another issue. I don’t yet have the same level of confidence in myself as I do in my work.

But then I realized something else: when I am out there as my author public persona, I am not speaking for just myself. I am speaking for my work—the work I am so proud of, the work I have such confidence in. I am a representative for that work, and I need to advocate for it as I would for my baby girl.

I am not afraid to speak up for my daughter. My anxiety falls away and I do what needs to be done because she cannot speak for herself, and no one else cares for her welfare as I do. She needs me.

My work needs me, too. I am its strongest advocate. I must use the confidence I have in my work to represent it with boldness, tenacity, and passion. There is no room for fear.

Fear still comes, of course—a mere four-week workshop can’t rid me of it completely. But I am learning the tools to conquer it. Learning to put things in a new perspective. Learning to turn my show of confidence into true confidence.

I’m fakin’ it, but I know someday I’ll be makin’ it!

What was the best advice you ever got about how to tame your fear and gain confidence?

Epiphany

Okay, so I’m taking this workshop called Act Like A Writer. It’s supposed to help nervous-wreck hermit-type writers like me build their public persona and gain confidence in all sorts of public situations, from pitching agents to meeting fans. 

I was scared down to my socks.

My wonderful musician aunt told me to “breathe to the floor,” but I focused more on not collapsing onto the floor because my legs trembled so badly. Instructors Jonathan Maberry and Keith Strunk threw us to the wolves immediately—into the hot seat to pitch. And just to make our terror complete, they VIDEOTAPED us for critique purposes!

When my turn came, I could barely walk to the hot seat. I sat there on the tipping point of a panic attack. The mess inside my head whirled around like a tornado, and I thought throwing up, passing out, or having my head explode was a real possibility. The oddest phenomenon—that of sitting on my own shoulder listening to my mouth talk—capped the out-of-control sensation.

Then I was done. Until the video got posted online.

Due to technical glitches, I did not get to see my video until the day of the next class. One by one, as others watched their videos, they posted traumatized messages about how hard it was to watch themselves. I agonized as I waited—I’d been such a mess, how could this not be painful to watch?

So I held my breath and pressed “play.” And…elation! Far from being the travesty I’d expected, I looked calm. I sounded coherent. I appeared so…normal. Sure, I had things to work on, but I was overjoyed all the same. If I take away nothing else, I will take away this valuable lesson:

My external presentation does not reveal my internal panic-stricken maelstrom.

Talk about a confidence booster! The way I felt and the way I looked could not have been farther apart. I realize that my fear of the fear’s effect on my performance had been more debilitating than the anxiety itself. It was an epiphany.

Will I still be nervous when I pitch? Absolutely. I will always be nervous. But now I will not be a nervous wreck.

The Princess Blogs?

Not long ago, I read Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries. I enjoyed the use of the diary format—it brought immediacy to the action and intimacy to the character. I couldn’t help but wonder, however, if the diary format could be as successful today as it was then. 

The Princess Diaries was written in 2000—not ancient times, certainly, but before everybody and their mother had a blog/MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/etc. Kids today are highly comfortable posting their lives on the Internet, and their “diaries” are their blogs. In The Princess Diaries, Mia says that she wanted to write everything in the diary because she didn’t want anyone to know that she was a princess. That sort of secrecy would be impossible with an online journal or blog.

So, would a diary format book become a bestseller in today’s market? Possibly—kids still know what a diary is, and some may even still keep a “paper” diary. I suspect, however, that as the kids of today become the writers of tomorrow, the diary format will turn into a blog format. Will this lose some of the intimacy of the form? Kids writing on a public blog (even a fictitious one) are unlikely to be as forthcoming and honest with their thoughts and emotions. Although kids today are more willing to put themselves “out there” than most adults, they are aware that it is a public forum, and I think that will inevitably lead to some self-censorship. This could lead to some constraint of the form, some limitations to how far it can be pushed. 

A cousin to the diary format, the epistolary novel is also looking at a sea change. With letters dying out, replaced by emails, chats, text messages and the like, will epistolary novels go the way of the rotary phone? 

In her blog, Tracy Marchini notes that one of the defining characteristics of an epistolary novels is that time elapses between each letter—and a lot can happen in that time. With emails, the elapsed time between communications dwindles from several days or weeks to several minutes or hours. Granted that it only takes a moment for someone’s life to be irrevocably changed, it still brings a different cadence to the communication. 

Like the diary novel, I think we will see the epistolary novel morph into a new form—a “communication” novel involving email, chat and text. I also think this will be a smoother transition than the diary novel, because so many of the basics will remain the same. An email is, after all, often just a letter in digital clothing. 

Do you think these forms will evolve into something new, or die out altogether? Are there other formats that technology will make obsolete or change substantially?

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