Back from Another ‘Con

Yep, as I said before, conference fever has struck. But don’t worry! This one was local, so no hotel rooms, car rentals or airplane tickets. But in the end it turned out to be invaluable for me. How do you ask? Read on and find out.

This past weekend I had the enumerable fortune of attending ConCarolinas for a second year in a row. Last year I attended for only a few hours on Saturday, but this year I felt much more “in the groove” so to say and spent nearly the entire weekend going to panels, listening to speakers, cowering through workshops and having an amazing time. ConCarolinas isn’t specifically a writer’s convention, it tends to run the gamut of interests, from Star Trek and Star Wars, to Warcraft and Doctor Who. Writing is only one small part, yet they have a robust writer’s track.

One of my primary goals while attending was to participate in the “Live Action Slush” which is just another name for the Gong Show, but on a smaller scale. All of the panelists were editors at Publishing houses instead of agents but the idea is the same. And because it was a smaller venue there was a much more likely chance everyone’s page would be read. And because my page wasn’t read at the Gong Show, I wanted to give it another go. And it turned out great! None of the editors raised their hands signaling they would stop during the reading of my page and seemed intrigued by my story. And this was the unedited first draft! That gave me warm fuzzies for the next few hours. That was…until four o’clock.

Four o’clock. The second of the two workshops I wished to attend. This one was entitled: “Face to Face with the Slushmaster” It worked similar to the Slush, except in this case, students who’d had nothing but form rejections (especially in the sci-fi or fantasy genres) were invited to present their Query Letters, Synopsis and first five pages of their manuscript for scrutiny. The idea was the editor would take a look and provide individualized feedback on what was going wrong.

Naturally, this was right up my alley. I hadn’t had a chance to revise my synopsis since DFWcon, but my pages and QL were ready, and thus I presented. And what I received in return was probably the most informative feedback I’ve had to-date on my very first manuscript: Forecast. It is the only one I’ve been querying so far and I received 28 rejections before I stopped and decided to rework it. That was six months ago. And while I believe the MS is improved considerably, it is clear it still needs more work. I won’t lie, I came out of that workshop a little deflated; I’d thought I’d finally fixed this one but hearing someone read it out loud made it clear I had not. I’ll spare the details, but it was difficult to listen to. It is hard to watch someone read your baby then look you in the eye and say “no”, but at least now I have an idea why, and that is more valuable to me than anything, especially ignorance. The only way I can improve is if I know where my weaknesses are, and today I have a better idea than I did four days ago.

So now the question is: in preparation for New York, do I attempt to fix Forecast, or spend the time finishing and polishing my third work, which I’ve tentatively titled Singular? After some great feedback on my second: Empowered, it has become clear that one needs a lot of work that will completely restructure the book, and I’m not sure I can do that in two months, even if I had nothing else to do, so I think that one is out for now. It is the bane of a writer’s existence, too much writing and too little time.

In the end, it was an amazing experience where I felt like I finally got some real, tangible feedback from an industry professional that I can use to improve my works. I can’t wait for next year.