Are you home from the ACFW conference? Finally unpacked? I hope you came home filled with encouragement and new ideas on how to make your writing breathtaking. I came home to a clean house and smiling sons. Nice! Conferences can be overwhelming, between the requests for proposals or full manuscripts, new story ideas, craft lessons, marketing epiphanies and loads of new friends. Don’t be overwhelmed. Here’s a game plan of what to do after a writers’ conference: Organize your contacts: Sit down a make a list of everyone you met, from editors to fellow authors, to newbies. Reach out: If they are editors or agents who gave you their time, even in an elevator to listen to your proposal, thank them. If they asked you for a submission, thank them and tell them that you’ll be […]
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Techniques for Layering Emotion into a scene: Other People
“Hi Susie. Um, Susie?” Sally sat down in a chair opposite me, handed me a coffee. “Kathy said you’d forgotten this.” I took it, tearing my eyes from the woman I’d been watching across the room. She wore a pair of sweatpants, the baggy kind, an oversized sweatshirt and a bandanna over her hair. Curled up in a leather chair, she was drinking coffee while buried in a novel. I sighed. “I want to be her. Just take a day off and read.” “That’s apparent, by the look on your face,” Sally said. “I know you’ve been busy these past few weeks – hello, I completely feel abandoned, but you look like you want to go rip that book from her hands, push her out of the chair and take […]
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Get the Truth about Conferences!
I’m on the road helping my kids move into college today, so instead of a conversation with Sally, I have a special offer for you (and Sally!) I’ll never forget my first writers conference. Fresh from my first term as a missionary, I had decided overseas that I wanted to write a novel. While on home service, I worked slavishly to finish it, and when I discovered a Christian writers conference in my area, albeit small, I couldn’t wait to arrive, plunk down my novel before some editor, and return with a check in hand. Right. Sadly, I was woefully unprepared for the conference. I read nametags and titles, and a sweat broke out on my palms. I saw people with slick proposals and writing credits behind their names and […]
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