Blogger: Rachel Kent
The ACFW conference has come and gone, and I know many of you attended this year. I have heard glowing reports from my clients who were in attendance. For any conference, there are things you can do after it is over to make the most of the time and money you spent. Here are some follow-up tips!
1) Make the most of your investment. You put a lot of money in to going to the conference. Make sure you make the most of the information you gained at the conference. Buy conference CDs so you can listen again to the workshops you attended and for the first time to the workshops you missed. The CDs or MP3s are usually only offered to those who have attended the conference, and only for a limited time, so hurry to order yours if you haven’t already. I also suggest you go over the notes you took during the meetings to solidify in your mind the information you learned. Your brain was overloaded during the conference; reviewing your notes will help you to sort out the jumble of input.
2) Edit your proposal and manuscript according to the input you received from the critiques. Don’t assume that your book is perfect. Listen to the professional critiquers and make some changes. Don’t let your time with them be a waste.
3) Submit your requested manuscript or proposal to editors and agents. If your manuscript was requested, be sure to send it in! You were given a huge opportunity to pitch directly to an editor or agent and getting a request is a big deal. The ball is in your court after the conference, and you’re the one who has to follow through and send in your materials. You’d be surprised by how many manuscripts I request during appointments and then never see.
4) Stay connected with the new friends you made. Follow them on Twitter and friend them on Facebook. Start connecting via email or form a critique group. These new author friends are a built-in support system that you don’t want to lose.
If you follow-up after the conference with these steps, you’ll get even more out of your conference experience! Now, I’d love to hear from you. Here are a few questions I’m wondering about, but feel free to add tips for fellow writers beyond the four I’m suggesting.
Do you usually purchase the conference recordings?
Have you ever not sent a requested manuscript? If so, why?
What benefit do you want to gain from attending a writing conference?
Hang on to those notes. Something new may pop out years later, when you’re at a different point in your journey. Finding a forgotten pearl of wisdom is like finding buried treasure.
And sometimes that discovery can be more important – a remembrance of the loved and lost which can bring you back to all that’s truly important in life.
this is so true!!!
I keep a journal of every trip I make, and keep them to read down the road. Things pop out at the right time, and the right place in my writing.
Very true! I have found treasures in my notes years later.
Hi Rachel,
I love getting together with my critique partners and meeting new people. I also love the classes. I’m already looking forward to ACFW 2016.
As an agent, what do you enjoy most?
Meeting people in person! I see so many people online, but I love meeting them face-to-face at conferences.
I’ve never been to a writers’ conference, but I did something analogous to ‘not sending in the manuscript’ in another setting.
* At a meeting I attended, I was speaking to a higher-up from a different organization, and invited – with some enthusiasm – to apply to come and work with him. He seemed to know a lot about me, and I was flattered.
* One of my older colleagues had seen the conversation, and after confirming that it was in the nature of a ‘job offer’, suggested that I not pursue it…that this individual had a very bad reputation in certain circles for misusing resources (including human resources), and that he’d use the mere fact of my sending him my particulars, as requested, as a wedge between me and my current ’employer’.
* As I was new to the community, I checked around…and found out that my colleague was right. As I was happy where I was, and the perceived results of a mistake could be quite serious (and unrecoverable in many ways), I didn’t send in the manuscript, so to speak.
* Subsequent events proved that the decision was correct.
* I guess the lesson here is ‘know the reputation of the person with whom you are talking’ (and that should have been part of the reason you got the appointment anyway).
* The point isn’t getting an agent or publisher; it’s getting the right one..
Proverbs 29:5 – A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.
*What a great lesson in avoiding the net, Andrew.
Points well made, Andrew! How valuable your colleague’s insights were! And you were wise to listen and check things out for yourself. And perhaps there was a bit of God-influence in that situation, as well. 🙂
*You’re right. We do need to check out potential agents before we meet with them, to see if we think they’ll be a good fit for us.
Ah, thank you for sharing this! A perfect cautionary tale. I’m glad you found that you made the correct decision!
I attended the ACFW conference this year, but only for the last day (due to work commitments). I was amazed at how generous other writers were to share their notes from workshops I missed. My biggest takeaway is seeing the wonderful Christian author community in action. I’m currently working on my proposal to send in to several agents. I’m currently praying about whether or not to pursue one of them because I’ve done some more research and don’t feel 100% confident about where I’d fit in with the other books and authors she represents. I feel sending it in anyway can be a learning experience, but we’ll see where I feel led.
I’d be interested to hear what you like about conferences, Rachel.
So sorry I missed meeting you, Teresa! I agree with you. Writers can be sooooo generous. 🙂
Sorry I missed you, too, Jeanne. Just something else to look forward to next time. Are you planning to be in Nashville next year?
I’m so glad I was working registration on Saturday morning and got to run into you, Teresa!
Oh me, too, sweet lady! I was blown away when you said, “You’re Teresa aren’t you?” WHAT?! Haha.
I love the personal connections I can make with authors and editors! Email and phone calls are great, but getting to meet face-to-face is the best.
The benefit for me was the fellow writer camaraderie. Before trying my hand at fiction, I felt all alone in my writing world. I knew very few writers. After finding this website, I feel surrounded by encouragers. When I feel discouraged, I just speak it, and I’m instantly surrounded by uplifting words. And it was a slice of sweet heaven to meet so many of those encouragers at the conference. The best of the best laugh with you and admit their own mistakes, their own areas of needed improvement. Even when my mind is telling me that I don’t belong there, that I’m on a lower level, that my works not yet good enough … hands reached out to drag me along. Me? Hearing my name spoken with excitement by other writers … it’s a sweet benefit. 🙂 And I really needed that.
Sweet Shelli! Hearing you call my name in the plotting workshop was a true highlight for me at ACFW! You were so kind and made me feel like I was meeting a long lost friend. Wish we had had more time to get to know one another. But so grateful for this space that has introduced us.
Teresa … so, so grateful for this space. And you made me feel the same … long lost friend. 🙂
Yes! The community of Christian writers is amazing! 🙂
Rachel, these are great tips. I have bought the conference recordings for the past few years. Last year, because of where I volunteered at the conference, appointments and “chance” meetings, I only made it to 1 1/2 hours of all my classes. Knowing I’d have the recordings put me more at ease with missing classes I’d registered for.
*I don’t know if other conferences do this, but ACFW gives attendees the opportunity to purchase conference recordings for a lower price during the conference.
*I’m hanging my head . . . a little. Last year, I pitched a story for category romance. I discovered that, while my overall story was well set-up for category romance, one of my characters was not a good fit for their readers. After speaking with an agent last year, I decided to add a subplot and make it full-length. The agent requested to see it when I was done.
*Here I am a year later, and I still haven’t sent it. 🙁 God has used this year in a number of ways. A lot of life happened this year with my family that cut into writing time. It took time to craft and weave a subplot into a story. I’ve also faced some of my own fears about this next step of the journey (sending in my baby . . .), and I’ve learned how to move forward in spite of them. And I still have the okay to send it when it’s done. So I AM sending it in the near future.
*So there’s my very long answer to a simple question. 🙂
Be encouraged! God can make perfect timing out of any situation. 🙂 Excited to see where this story takes you.
You aren’t rushing it, you’re perfecting it.
I’m glad you are still going to be able to send it! Life definitely can get in the way sometimes, but God’s hand must be in all of that.
Excellent tips! The recordings from ACFW conference this year will definitely be worth the purchase. It was such a good one!
The benefits of a conference??? ACFW 2013 was my “deer in the headlights” conference. I knew a few people, and I mean, like, 3. I’d met one writer friend the previous summer, and had spoken to a few on the phone before the conference.
Scientific fact: Beth Vogt can break a person’s ribs with a hug.
Along with Beth, my room mate, Sarah Thomas, and Jeanne Takenaka, were the only other writers I’d spoken to. I was scared.
BUT, as I’ve said before “it’s not Bolivian airport security”. Hence the hug/rib/cracking knowledge.
By the end of the weekend, I had HUNDREDS of new contacts, almost no sleep, new friends, and the rarest of the rare gifts of attending a conference, an agent who believed in my story!
ACFW 2015 was so different. I knew people. People knew me. And the magnetic ankle bracelet worked, BTW.
I was pitching to editors, and had the enormous blessing of pitching to an editor at one table, and my agent had my back.
Literally. Had my back. Mary was seated at the next table, in the chair that had its back to mine.
Noooooo pressure at ALL not to mess up! None!
HAHAHA!
All I could think was “Will she elbow me when I say something stupid? Nah, she’ll be focused on her own meeting. But, she is a trained mom, she can totally hear 23 things at once…”
Did I mention I got some very hard news from home 30 minutes before this appointment? The “go cry in a corner” kind of news?
Yeah, that didn’t help. But all of a sudden, the pitch was irrelevant to the fact that my son had a broken heart and I was 1000’s of miles away.
Yes, my work mattered. But I was a Mom who couldn’t hold her child. I prayed with a friend, and she suggested I simply tell the editor what was going on. So, I did.
God is good. He set my mind on loving and praying for my family from afar. He set my beloved agent right behind me. And he had me connect with a Mom who was missing her kids as much as I was missing mine. The session went well, and I walked out of there having done my job well enough that I was smiling.
The greatest benefit from any conference is the sense of being in God’s house with believers who are as driven as I am to tell the stories He’s given us.
As for not sending a requested manuscript???
Ask my room mate from ACFW 2015 what I’m like when a person needs a good talking to about letting go of the fear of not belonging and not following the path God has set right there. Right in front of you. And lit it up.
😀
🙂 You are sweet. That’s what you are.
Aww, thank you. So are you.
I’ve gotten some of my best revision ideas at conferences. Sometimes from editors or agents and sometimes from other writers. I got a great title idea from another writer who was pitching with me to an editor, she pulled the title right out of my pitch and asked why I wasn’t using it. I also found a fabulous critique partner at a conference. The value goes on long after you come home.
For what it’s worth, here’s a takeaway from ACFW 2015 from someone who wasn’t there –
* I loved hearing of the triumphs – the writers who found an agent, and the writers whose conversations with editors may lead to trad pub success. It’s wonderful to hear the amazed delight in the voices, and the humility which underlies it, each individual knowing how long the road has been for them.
* I love hearing the repartee here, between those who met face-to-face, sometimes for the first time. The small intimacies exchanged, the ‘inside’ comments…they add a sparkle of mystery which brings the experience, observed third-hand, an aura of magic.
* And for those who found disappointment amidst the celebration, the support they’ve received from their friends, here and at other, linked communities, has been heartwarming…knowing that they’re part of a family, not alone.
* Finally, the surge of energy and optimism – “I can really DO this!” – that I’ve seen among the post-ACFW commentaries really gives hope for the future of Christian writing, and for this country.
* Used to be, I looked at all of this with the feeling that one day I’d be there, too. I’d have my place in the sun. That’s not going to happen. I’m not agented, and barring a miracle never will be. I’ll never be at an ACFW event, will never have my exciting, scary, and thrilling talk with an acquisitions editor. The contract won’t arrive by FedEx. Events have turned past those possibilities.
* And that’s OK, because of what I’ve learned here, about community, about compassion, and about love. We’re not writing for the fame or fortune, or for the personal pride and prestige of being a working novelist. We’re writing because we want, through our words, to make the world a little bit better, give a little more reason for hope, by the time we have to leave.
Andrew, I think in your words, “…because of what I’ve learned here, about community, about compassion, and about love…” you’ve hit on what God wants to accomplish through the Books and Such blog. The blog is a setting in which to see those things.
*One evening in a writer’s group we started praying for a couple members who were going through rough times. We spent most of the time praying for those people, instead of discussing writing. Christ’s Presence was very real that evening. He was right there with us. After that, I realized that sometimes we humans think we are doing an activity for one reason–and that’s OK–but God has a bigger reason for us to be there at the time.
This year’s ACFW conference was about my tenth conference, but my first ACFW. I wanted to be there to absorb and meet. I enjoyed the speakers/sessions, but what may be the most important to me was the meet-and-greet with the Books & Such agents and authors. I truly felt welcomed to the group by so many great pros in the industry that I have admired for years. Thank you!
I’m glad you felt so welcomed! I wish I had been able to be there to give you a hug.
Just this week I finished listening to the CDs from the Mount Hermon conference. I play those in the car while driving, and don’t commute, so it takes a while to listen to all of them. But they keep me inspired and remind of what I learned and experienced at the conference for months afterwards.
What a great idea!
I think I’ve saved notes from nearly every conference I’ve attended. The advice from agents, editors and guest speakers is for the most part, timeless and very helpful.
Rachel,
You have solid thoughts as always (I’m still trying to figure the best way to implement the ‘doctor’s office book drop’). My question is about those of us in jobs where conferences are a bit harder to squeeze into the schedule. Does anyone at Books and Such offer hourly consultation services, especially regarding book queries and the initial chapters? Or are there any organizations you personally recommend and work with? Any insight would be appreciated!