Are you attending the 2022 Women Writing the West Conference?
Whether you are a seasoned conference attendee or a first timer, these tips will be a reminder of things to do in preparing to attend, while you are there, and when you get home from the upcoming .
Robert Lee Brewer has eight tips for attending a conference include: Prepare Ahead of Time, Participate as Much as Possible, and Make Connections
Some of Jane Friedman’s suggestions for attending conferences are: Find Out the Conference Hashtag and use it in Your Social Media Posts, Research the Speakers, Items to Take With You, and Ideas for Post Conference.
Chuck Sambuchino created a section on what to do, and not do at a conference, as well as some tips to use when pitching to literary agents.
The tips Kristin Oakley would have you apply after you have attended the conference include: Review Your Notes and Handouts, Share What You Have Learned, Keep In Touch aka Network
If you have tips you would like to share about attending conferences, please leave them in the comments.
We are pleased to introduce you to one of this year’s Sponsors of the 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October.
The 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October. Here is your opportunity to get acquainted with the Agents and Editors who will be in attendance this year.
Malaga Baldi ~ The Baldi Agency
Malaga Baldi has worked as an independent literary agent since1986. The Baldi Agency is an eclectic agency specializing in literary fiction, memoir and cultural history: work that takes you to places never visited before… Baldi graduated from Hampshire College and lives in NYC. She worked as a cashier at Gotham Book Mart, in the Ballantine Books Publicity Department, as an associate at Candida Donadio & Associates and the Elaine Markson Agency before going out on her own. Baldi believes the strength of the author’s voice and the heart of the story to be key when considering new work. Clients include William J. Mann, Kate Bornstein, Patty Dann, Glenn Kurtz and Kia Corthron. Please check out her website: www.baldibooks.com
We are pleased to introduce you to one of this year’s Sponsors of the 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October.
Author Janet Key shares the feeling of not wanting to revisit the world she was creating and the tools she used to help make her fiction a place she wanted to be.
Last fall, I decided with great determination that it was finally time to finish that literary novel of mine.
At that point, I had published short stories in literary journals and been told that a collection could be published … with, of course, a novel to go with it. It was disappointing to put the stories on hold, but I wasn’t too worried. I wrote in many forms, including long-form narratives. I had finished full-length plays and scripts, along with other, early attempt novels, and had sold a middle grade book, Twelfth, that I was still doing intermittent edits on.
The literary novel I was trying to write had been picked up and put down a lot over the years, but I was certain there was plenty of good stuff in there, and I was ready. I had the time blocked out. I had my notes and plans prepared. Finally, I thought, I could sit down and finish my real, serious, literary novel.
Only, I couldn’t seem to do the “sitting” part.
I would open the file on my computer and then immediately open YouTube. I would catch myself skimming my own work. More than once I lay my head down on my desk, willing my writing time to evaporate out from under me. As someone who always considered myself unafraid of “doing the work” of writing, this was a new, confusing, and honestly embarrassing experience.
It wasn’t writer’s block. I definitely had a sense of what needed to happen on the next page, and I already had bits and pieces drafted to get me there. Nor had I lost faith in the story I was telling. I believed it was exploring some valuable, big ideas, that it was interesting and engaging, and had moments of well-written tension and tenderness (I still do, in case you’re wondering).
At first, I blamed my problems on the fact that I had picked up and put down the novel too many times, distracted by other projects and jobs, and now couldn’t find the cohesive narrative. There was some truth to that—it was Frankenstein-ed together, overstuffed, and stitched sloppily at the seams—but it didn’t account for how I felt. It didn’t explain the dread, the procrastination, the sort of white-knuckle “just do it already!” self-talk I had to employ to actually write. Those feelings all boiled down to one thing: I just didn’t want to go in there.
But where was there? And why didn’t I want to go in?
The 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October. Here is your opportunity to get acquainted with the Agents and Editors who will be in attendance this year.
Sandra Bond ~ Bond Literary Agency
Bond Literary Agency is a small, full-service literary agency with a select list of clients. Sandra Bond works with the large houses in New York and mid-sized book publishers all over the country. She was the program administrator at the University of Denver’s Publishing Institute for four years, and she now guest lectures there annually. Sandra is currently looking for adult commercial and literary fiction, smart mystery/thriller/crime fiction, and YA fiction in all categories. She does not represent memoir, romance, science fiction, fantasy, poetry, children’s picture books, or screenplays. She’s also looking for compelling narrative nonfiction, and science for a general audience. These authors must have outstanding credentials: real expertise in their subject area, and some kind of platform from which they can actively promote their books. The Agency has expanded to include Becky LeJeune as an agent, and her interests differ somewhat from Sandra’s, so check out www.bondliteraryagency.com for submission guidelines.
We are pleased to introduce you to one of this year’s Sponsors of the 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October.
The 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October. Here is your opportunity to get acquainted with the Agents and Editors who will be in attendance this year.
Masie Cochran ~ Tin House Editorial Director
Masie Cochran is the Editorial Director at Tin House. Before coming to Tin House, she worked at InkWell Management Literary Agency in New York, NY. She is seeking the full range of adult fiction and general non-fiction, including memoir.
K. M. Allan talks us through four reasons to use internal thoughts in our writing.
A majestic cypress tree grew outside my grade 11 classroom window, eons ago. I remember spending hours staring at it, exploring its velvety green branches and reflecting on the boredom of my classes and wondering what I might do with my life when I was finally and blessedly allowed to escape school.
Fortunately, perhaps because I could be counted upon to get good grades, my teachers failed to notice my inattention, and they never criticized me for daydreaming. Also, fortunately, this was several decades before cell phones and I didn’t have an easier way of distracting myself with something most of us see as “entertaining.”
These days, when I’m bored, I tend to go to the online New York Times and read an article on my phone. I might do this while I’m waiting for a meeting to start, standing in a bank lineup (although I try to avoid that easily-preventable form of torture) or killing time before a doctor/dentist appointment.
Now, however, I’m starting to think I might be better off just allowing my mind to wander. I concluded this after reading some research from scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany and the University of York in England.
Over the last several generations, our society has tended to view mind wandering as a failure in control. Now, however, neuroscientists are able to tell us that it’s actually an advantage. “We found that in people who often purposefully allow their minds to go off on a tangent, the cortex is thicker in some prefrontal regions,” says Johannes Golchert, from Leipzig, and first author of the study. (Increased cortical thickness is associated with greater intelligence.)
The study also found that when people intentionally allow their minds to wander, two main brain networks — the default-mode network and the frontoparietal network — tend to work more closely together. This helps writers because the first network, which focuses on information from memory and the second one, which inhibits irrelevant stimuli, are both more effective when they work together.
The secret to mind wandering, however, is not to try too hard. Researcher Michael Corballis, who is author of the book The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You’re Not Looking, suggests doing “semi-boring” things like driving or knitting, which engage our brains just the right amount yet still allow us to escape from the present. Others suggest three Bs for creativity: bath, bed and bus. Although Corballis likes to add two more: boardroom and boredom.
For Damon Young, Honorary Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, another B helps with mind wandering: body movement. In his book, How to Think About Exercise, he describes how walking or running can increase our creativity.
“It’s like you’re removing the symphony conductor from your mind, and suddenly it starts playing improvisational jazz,” he says. “When that happens, your mind starts throwing up interesting ideas, impressions, feelings, epiphanies and revelations that you otherwise would not have had.”
Young attributes the difference to something about the movement itself. “[It’s] partly because the body is devoting its energy to motor functions of moving and partly because you’re taking resources away from the part that co-ordinates ideas,” he says. “It’s a kind of mental ‘unsorting’ that takes away categories and relationships of ideas and jiggles them about into new combinations.”
As for me, I like to use mind wandering as part of my writing practice in two ways:
1-I begin by planning some thinking time, away from my desk. I like to walk and think about what I’m going to write. But I do this thinking in an easy, ultra-relaxed way. My mind wanders and I let it go in whatever direction it wants, merely observing. This is part of the reason why it’s so important for me to get away from my desk. I don’t want to sit there feeling critical of myself for not being ‘more productive.’ It’s as if the act of walking gives me permission to take a slower, more circuitous — although, ultimately, more productive — route.
2-After the time away from my desk, I do a mindmap. This mindmap — which is freer, more easy-going and far more inspiring than an outline — allows me to think on the page. I try to write quickly, allowing my default network to remain in more control so that my linear, logical and non-creative brain is forced to take a back seat. See my video about mindmapping for more advice.
In the future, I’m also going to think about leaving my phone shut off when I have a few minutes to wait for something. I’m going to try to stop resenting the act of having to wait and, instead, see it as a chance to relax, think of new things and just let my mind wander wherever it wants to go.
The 2022 Women Writing the West Conference is being held in Oklahoma City in October. Here is your opportunity to get acquainted with the Agents and Editors who will be in attendance this year.
Jeanne Devlin ~ The RoadRunner Press
Jeanne Devlin is the founding editor of The RoadRunner Press, an award-winning traditional publishing house known for its thoughtful books for young and old alike, with a penchant for publishing both new and established Native American voices and those of the American West. Jeanne won her first national professional writing award at the age of nineteen, and went on to win four International Regional Magazine Awards for Best Magazine during her tenure as editor in chief of Oklahoma Today magazine. She is the original editor of 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995: The Official Record of the Oklahoma City Bombing, a special magazine edition that went on to be made into a book. She has also worked on national marketing and publicity campaigns with the Big Five and for a number of New York Times bestselling authors.
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