What a full three days that was! The 2019 Surrey International Writer’s Conference is now over and I’m still processing the experiences, learnings and bondings. I always find I’m a bit topsy turvy after the conference, shaken like a martini.
What I do love about the conference is the ability to run into an agent or writer you admire and share a moment.
Donald Maass asking what my takeaway was from the conference during an elevator ride on Sunday morning on the way to check out. I pause to cycle through the many things I learned and experienced, and filter my reply through the grey lens of having been rejected by Donald a year and a half earlier. “The importance of the author voice,” I reply, as that summed up both the theme of the two previous sessions that were banging around in my head and heart, and the sudden epiphany that past rejections by Donald and others might have been due to an earlier, foggier author voice which was now coming into focus.
“Hmmm,” he said, nodding. “Yes…” as if reading my mind. The writers in the panel session on “Finding Your Voice” (Diana Gabaldon, Delilah S. Dawson, Nicole Blades and Liza Palmer) had unanimously agreed that a clear, strong author voice might be hard for a writer to see in oneself, yet is probably the number one thing that agents are looking for. The author voice is undeniable and unique, something an editor can’t edit away, or if they do, it will kill the soul of the work. I think I had known this, but Sonali Dev’s following session on “Finding Deep POV at the Intersection of Author Voice and Character Voice” brought it into even clearer focus.
Requests for pages and full manuscripts had provided positive balance to some of the self-doubt that inevitably crept in during the conference, and in coming close to a yes with a well-respected agent 18 months earlier I knew that with work and persistence that yes, and voice, would arrive.
And I was reminded of that with the lovely Eileen Cook giving a wonderful and surprisingly moving and relevant keynote about not giving up, about how she sat in the chairs we sat in for several years before being signed by – the same Donald Maass. Then running into her that night and giving her a huge hug to say thank you.
Of sitting in a chair waiting for a pitch session and chatting with another writer, Graham, this his first conference and very first pitch session. Reminding myself of how I felt three years earlier when I was in that very same place. And realizing that we’re all at different places on the same journey. Part of a tribe of wandering storytellers who come together to break bread and drink wine and share stories about stories about stories….
Or running into Chris (C.C.) Humphreys, again (I’d seen him at the PNWA conference in September, and at Creative Ink in April). Ever since taking a weekend workshop with Chris a couple of years ago I had been amazed by both his productivity (he’s published three books since, and I’m only part way through book two), his ability to write in different genres, and his ever curious and helpful tone (he had given very productive blue pencil feedback on my opening that he remembered in our brief exchange). A welcome face to see!
Or singing karaoke with ‘Mrs. Blue Sky’ Andrea, now part of a lovely expanding circle of new writing friends and connections.
A circle that includes Annie, Laurie, Laura and Michelle from my writing group, each of us flowing past one another and bobbing together for a few minutes, sharing our experiences about a Blue Pencil, or a pitch, or a random elevator agent meeting, before flowing on to the next session. Then connecting over lunch or dinner or a drink to share war stories.
The surprise of agents whom I didn’t think would be interested, but ended of having a passionate connection to my story, and then the equal surprise of agents whom I thought would surely connect to my story but didn’t, saying it was “too commercial” (that was a first). You just never know… .
It’s all of these experiences that matter. And that’s the wonder of it all…you never know, so must keep yourself in a positive mindset, in the moment, for what might happen. Which of course is great practice for writing, carrying on, putting words down, struggling, failing, being open, listening, and then it happens.
And that’s why we do this.
So I’ll be back next year to do it all again, and trust that the many wonderful volunteers at SiWC who make it happen year after year (most if not all of themselves writers) will again, miraculously, be there to help us on our next journey together.