Blogger: Rachel Kent
With ACFW around the corner, I know many of you are wildly preparing schedules, pitches, proposals and one-sheets. That is wonderful, but I’d also like to encourage you to leave room in your expectations for God to accomplish his plan for you during conference time.
You might have all of your plans set out, and then none of what you thought should happen during the conference ends up happening. God might have a different reason for you to be at a writers’ conference.
For one author I know, she found out that she was at a conference solely to encourage other writers.
Another author discovered that she was supposed to meet an industry professional–and she found a job in publishing. She wouldn’t have guessed that was what God had planned, but it turned out to be the reason he called her to the conference.
Another author I met at a conference had a lot of marketing ideas to offer, and he ended up being invited back to the same conference the next year as faculty. He never expected to be a speaker, but he discovered he had a gift and had knowledge to offer others. He runs a successful marketing business now!
Prepare as much as you can for ACFW, or any conference, but leave room in your plans for God to work. I hope you all have a wonderful time and I wish I could be there with you!
Have you ever clearly seen God working during a writers’ conference? Can you share your story?
How has God been working in your writing career/writing life?
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*Plus, our internet is goofy.
This is so true. Back in 2012 some friends of ours sent me to the ACFW conference and of course I hoped that it would be my big break. It was the only chance I’ve had to go to something large like that and I wanted to make the most of it. I came prepared to pitch and I did, but what I went away from Dallas with was not a contract, but a critique partner who changed the way I write and revise. Someone dragged her across the bookstore “Look, Jenn writes YA too!” after seeing “YA” on my name tag. I am such a better writer after these years of exchanging chapters with Jenn. It was just what I needed to grow and be able to tell the story I wanted to.
I can’t think of a personal experience off hand, but I’ve been seated at tables where writers made an obvious God connection through a similar life situations: abuse, loss of a child or family struggle. You could see their personal, as well as writing connection wasn’t a coincidence.
*I suppose I may have also been seated there for a reason as I helped with a couple of the introductions.
This is a great perspective. Thanks for reminding us to leave space, Rachel.
My first big writer’s conference was the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference years ago. I went to share some ideas for magazine articles and a possible nonfiction story idea, but signed up for “The Writer’s Call” with David Manuel. His little bitty book and amazing session changed everything for me – got me thinking completely differently about purpose and calling with my writing. Weeks later, I had the “big fiction idea” and was pursing it. Then a couple weeks later, we lost everything in a wildfire, had a son in and out of hospital, and were in a rough season of life. Yet the lessons I learned in that one class to lean into prayer and hope were so elemental to our learning to not just survive, but to thrive. And I made a wonderful editor friend who loved prayer, too. Now the fiction idea is well nurtured and culled and I hope will yield fruit soon, after many other lessons and conferences. But the feeling of that first conference, and knowing that sure sense of purpose, has been such a tremendous gift I never could have expected.