4 Things Conference Faculty Wish You Knew

Write Canada is around the corner! As the Assistant Director, I had a hand in helping to plan the workshops and approach faculty. What I wanted to create was a really great teaching conference with streams for beginning, intermediate (an often overlooked group at conferences) and the career writers.

Like any other career, you have to keep pushing yourself to try new things and become better to be successful. Conferences are about connecting, learning, and keeping ourselves humble.

Conferences are overwhelming, exhausting, intimidating -- and one of the best things you can do for your career.

I pulled this post out of the vault. Marcy Kennedy is teaching the fiction intensive this year, and I'm teaching a career class on Facebook marketing -- but this is not the first time we've been faculty at a conference and there may be some things as attendees that you're not aware of. We're here to dish.

(1) We can tell a lot about you from a 15 minute appointment.

Marcy: We can make a pretty good educated guess about who is going to be successful and who isn't from just 15 minutes. Some of the factors signaling success:

• a willingness to learn and work hard
• questions showing an understanding of the market
• the ability to tell me what you need my help with (or the acknowledgment you’re just starting out and aren’t even sure what your first step should be)
• evidence you did your research ahead of time (if you booked an appointment with me randomly, that’s not a good sign)

Lisa: The most enjoyable appointments are with writers who have specific questions or are looking for specific feedback on a piece. When someone slides a manuscript under your nose and says, "What advice can you give me?" That's a big question and it's difficult to be helpful. Instead know your weaknesses, or what market you're writing for -- something we can read for and give helpful feedback on in a short time.

• Do you understand the market? 
• Do you know who you're writing for (everyone is not the right answer)
• Are you willing to accept constructive criticism?

Marcy: Hard work and teachability trump talent every day. If you know what you need my help with, you know your weaknesses. Recognizing them is the first step in fixing them. Know what I write and edit - do a little research. It's hard when people sit down and ask a question about something I don't write -- like poetry.

Lisa: And both of us are very accessible online - and so are most writing conference faculty. Having someone sit down with me and say - 'So, what do you write?' tells me they didn't even take five minutes to look us up on Facebook or our blogs.

I'm not good at remembering faces or names, but I remember conversations. Jog my memory after the conference. If I have time, I'm happy to help those who impressed me.

(2) We don't make money going to conferences.

Marcy: Monetarily, going to conferences is a loss for me. It's time away from work and there are always costs outside of what we're paid for.

Lisa: We know exactly what it feels like to attend your first conference or even your tenth conference. We're there to help and offer advice -- just like at one point someone further ahead on this career path did for us. Professionally, we have little to gain from being faculty so know that any advice we give is sincere and meant to help and not hinder.

(3) Don't take it personally.

Marcy: Faculty members put in long hours preparing for and attending conferences. We take appointments, do working lunches and suppers, informal meetings . . . you get the picture. It's exhausting.

Lisa: Our intention is not to crush your dreams, but help you understand the market and make you a better writer. Be polite even if you disagree.

(4) Conferences are about making connections.

Lisa: Writing can be such a lonely occupation and you need a few people alongside you on the journey or else it can quickly feel, as Stephen King put it, like trying to cross the Atlantic in a bathtub. 

Bring some business cards and swap cards with the people you meet. Look them up on social media, stay in touch. Some of the best connections we've ever made were at conferences and we've maintained many of those connections (which I'm now able to use to help get great faculty to come to Write Canada). These people want to see you succeed and there are many stories of promotional help and writing advice taking place long after a conference meet up is over.

This year's Write Canada is June 11-13 in Toronto (the publishing centre of Canada). You can find out more info at www.thewordguild.com/events/writecanada

You can connect with Marcy Kennedy on Twitter or her blog here.
You can connect with Lisa Hall-Wilson on Facebook or her blog here.

Write what you know. Really? - Lisa Hall-Wilson

That seemingly age-old writing advice used to grate on me. I wasn’t interested in writing what I knew about. How boring would that be? I’ve never been a male firefighter (yes, I have a penchant for romance), an FBI special agent (I’ve delved into suspense), an Amazon warrior (how boring would life be without fantasy) or been chased by a serial killer (I’m also a big horror fan). I’d be relegated to the mommy-lit section, or the not-so-desperate housewife literary novel section, and that just doesn’t put the sugar in my candy.

There’s more wisdom to this piece of advice than at first glance, but it took several years for me to stop fighting it. This isn’t a box I’m being forced into, but the safety lines that keep me from hitting author-rock-bottom. And I’m still learning more layers to this piece of wisdom, so my first tip is not to dismiss this out of hand as I first thought to do.

Societies, languages, technology, scientific discovery – these are all things that can evolve, change and grow. Human emotions don’t. The degree to which we experience that range of emotions varies from person to person, the situations that can cause those emotions may differ, but the basic emotional wringer we go through is the same one Noah and Moses went through.

These two verses really opened my eyes to the truth found in the “Write What You Know” advice.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1 NLT).

“History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new” (Eccl. 3:9 NLT).

In listening to Ted Dekker’s continuing class CDs from Write! Canada (you knew you could buy CD’s of most of the sessions, right?), I was surprised to hear Ted say, “You can’t write what you don’t know.”

Ted writes fantasy, thrillers, and what he calls storyteller books (with a couple of non-fiction books in there too). Here’s a snippet from his talk:

“You can’t write what you don’t know. If you do, people won’t buy your characters…Generally speaking, we write out of our experiences. Whatever that pool of experiences is…

“I find areas to write about that I’ve never been in myself, and that allows me to step out of my own context and see things with fresh eyes. Do you know heartbreak? You can’t write about heartbreak until your heart has been broken…Don’t write about what you don’t know about.”  

Every character I write, is me. If I want my characters to reach out of the book and grab the reader by the throat or the heart, they have to be motivated by an emotion I’ve experienced. Every year longer I live, I find more depth to the emotions I can write about.

A teen being forced to choose between parents in a divorce. I’ve never lived this, but I know what it’s like to desperately want to avoid hurting someone I love, or disappointing someone I love. I know what it’s like to feel like I lose no matter what choice I make.

A firefighter who’s discovered his wife is in an adulterous relationship. This isn’t something I’ve lived out, but I understand being blindsided by betrayal. I understand the singular focus of just putting one foot in front of the other because I just don’t know what else to do.

A battered mother finally makes a choice to leave an abusive husband. I understand what it’s like to talk yourself into and out of a decision a thousand times. I understand doing something for the sake of someone you love, because you wouldn’t do it just for yourself.

Dig down into the very root emotions motivating your characters, and find some common ground. Once you do that, the degree to which you experienced those emotions becomes irrelevant. Once you have common ground, once that character becomes you - you can write from their perspective. 

Writing this way is hard, not gonna lie. You have to relive some things that will be painful, bittersweet, and difficult -- but so what. Pouring that reality into your characters brings them to life. This is the job of a writer. It will cause your readers to laugh, cry, pull the blanket closer, sleep with the light on. And aren't those the best kinds of books?

Go ahead and try this! It’ll change your writing.

Lisa Hall-Wilson is an award-winning freelance journalist and writer for the Canadian faith-based market. Lisa writes a syndicated interview column, blogs at www.LisaHallWilson.com, and spends way too much time on Facebook.