Write On Con

            There is nothing quite like a gathering of aspiring authors, at least from my experience. The online conference I attended last week, Write On Con, was set up perfectly to cater to the crowd it drew.

            Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked, but I did try to keep up with what was going on. I’ll try to give you an idea of what the event was like.

            The conference mostly took place on the forums, which actually opened for business long before the actual event. This was wonderful because it allowed attendees to come early, meet each other and share advice on their books and query letters.

            There were sections of the forum designed specifically for that – authors could post their query letter, the first 250 words of their book and the first five pages of their book. Because authors are such a friendly bunch, they were more than willing to step up and share their knowledge. As far as I could tell, everyone who posted something got at least one response.

            Then, when the conference officially started, the Ninja Agents came out. This was a group of agents who volunteered their time to cruise through the queries on the forums, giving advice and possibly even requesting work. Again, they were exceptionally helpful and that alone was worth attending the event for.

            The forum also had a section for authors to find critique partners. A critique partner is nearly essential for an author because, no matter how impartial you try to be, you can never be the best judge of your own work. You can also never catch all your own mistakes. Luckily I have Colleen for that, as well as my parents (someday I’ll tell you about my extensive editing process), but not all writers are as lucky as I am. For them, who better to look over their work than another author?

            There were also live events where authors could directly ask agents questions. I can’t tell you about those as I didn't manage to get to any, but from what I heard they went very well and were quite informative.

            Of course, there was also the off-topic section, where just about everything was being talked about. The one topic, however, became a highlight of the event – Larua Tisdel (author and artist) made the extremely generous offer to sketch other authors’ characters. She’s still working on the list now, after the conference is over. She’s very close to mine, so drop by later this week to see what she’s done.

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            That about covers it for the conference. Even with my limited attendance it was exceptionally fun and informative. I fully intend to return next year, although hopefully I’ll be attending as a helpful published author by then.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.