SCWW Conference, October 19-21, Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort, Save the Date!

By Ginny Padgett

This year I am the Conference Chair for the SCWW Conference. For those of you who don’t know, the SCWW Conference has a national reputation for excellence. It features a faculty of about 20 well-placed agents, editors, and authors from NYC and around the country. I’d like to invite you to take part and enhance your writing and marketing skills.

Friday sessions are three-hour intensives, an add-on to regular conference registration. Also on Friday, premium critique appointments are scheduled. This year Intensive topics include social networking, self publishing vs. traditional, breaking into the world of publishing, book pregnant – now you have a book deal, what do you do next? Some of these seminars will be led by SCWW’s own: Mike Long, JM Kelly, Fred Fields, Carrie McCullough, Hope Clark, Maureen Sherbondy, Brenda Remmes, to name a few.          

On Saturday, the day is filled with 45-minute sessions lead by faculty members; in addition, purchased Real Time Query and Pitch appointments are scheduled. A general SCWW membership meeting will be held during the lunch break. Saturday evening there is a booking-signing event during cocktail hour. At dinner, this year’s keynote speaker is PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY, NYT BEST-SELLING AUTHOR.

Each evening every dinner table is hosted by at least one member of the faculty; this is a great networking opportunity -- not to mention the cocktail hour on Friday and Saturday evenings. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly, and the faculty is approachable and receptive.

Sunday’s sessions end at noon. The Silent Auction (a lot of people do their holiday shopping here!) ends about 10:00.

Last year, the SCWW Conference was rated as the #1 in the country by at least one independent web search. Come see what the buzz is about. Registration opens June 1 at www.myscww.org. Take advantage of the Early-Bird registration rates, and make your room reservations by September 1 to insure a SCWW special room rate from the Hilton and help SCWW fill it’s room-block requirement for free meeting space.

If you have any questions, email me at ginnypadgett@sc.rr.com.

I hope to see you there 

My Conference Experience

By Fred Fields

Over the weekend of October 21-23, I attended the SC Writers’ Workshop Convention in Myrtle Beach. The convention is considered by some to be the best of its kind in the United States. This being my first ever convention of the type, I can not compare it with any other. However, I can certainly attest to the exceptional quality of this meeting.

The location at the Hilton Hotel left nothing to be desired. The rooms, the views of the beach and the ocean are glorious.

The faculty was more helpful than I had expected. They were knowledgeable and willing to spend extra time giving counsel and advice. At other conventions I have attended in other industries, the speakers often fly in, deliver their paper or seminar, and fly out on the next plane. These advisors stayed the entire convention, participating in not only their own seminars, but visiting others and offering assistance when requested.

They were visible at meals and social events, too, and mingled with the conventioneers easily.

I was quite impressed with the information they were happily dispensing, and writers of any genre could profit from their help.

The site, the information were all wonderful. My wife and I had only one complaint. The food left something to be desired. One meal, for example had three choices of meat, all pork. That wasn’t kosher.

My Conference Experience – The “Different” Dilemma

By John May

The education sessions at the SCWW Conference were interesting and helpful but, for me, the conference was mostly about the critiques. For those who did not attend or look at the website, let me explain the process. Writers could purchase critiques from the faculty (agents and editors). You submitted either 10 or 30 pages (for different prices) a few weeks in advance. On the first day of the conference, you met with the faculty person who presented a marked-up submission and then discussed it with you for twenty minutes.

I’m trying to finish my novel soon and I felt having some professional feedback would help in writing the last few scenes and in the final edits, so I purchased four critiques from four different faculty members. The other thing I wanted was at least one invitation to submit additional material to the reviewer for representation consideration. So, my conference goals were feedback and a bit of validation.

In her recent blog, Laura said she thought the agents knew just what they wanted in a story. In my critique meetings with agents, I got the same impression—laser focus on whatever they thought could sell in quantity, and absolutely no interest in anything else.

Then, at the Friday night dinner, I sat at a table with two agents. The novel The Hunger Games was discussed. They both agreed that, had Suzanne Collins not been a bestselling author already, she never would have gotten anyone to represent nor publish what became a mega bestseller and one of the best books I’ve read in recent memory. They thought it was just too “different” for an agent to understand the potential market. They also agreed agents have become extremely selective about which manuscripts they choose to read, much less represent.
This hyper-selectivity was certainly born out in my meetings. One agent who had a large pile of critiques had decided to request only one manuscript submission. Another reviewing agent indicated only a tiny percentage of critique submitters were going to be asked for manuscripts.

I did get some very useful edits and encouraging feedback from the agents. Also, I was fortunate enough to get four requests for manuscript submissions (I’d like to thank the group for the many improvement suggestions over the last few months which I’m sure helped).

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Two of the agents said their interest was partially because my premise was marketable and also different enough to be interesting. They’re tired of seeing the same old plots and character types rehashed for the umpteenth time. So there’s the dilemma—if you want an agent, you need to be different, but not too different.

P.S. Some of you won’t be surprised to hear the most common edit request I got from the agents was to, earlier in the novel, round-out the villain character Francine (now where have I heard that before?). So, I’ll be reading some new “round-out” passages at future meetings.

SCWW Conference, October 21-23, 2011

By Laura P. Valtorta

Every year the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop Conference has been rewarding, but this year it was particularly friendly and fun. The writers and the agents seemed more relaxed and more willing to talk than usual. The highlights of this conference were the dinners -- Friday and Saturday night -- because Bonnie and I sat with agents who were wiling to talk: Jessica Regel from the Jean V. Naggar agency) and Mollie Glick (Foundry Literary + Media).

Jessica lives in Florida and works on-line for her New York agency; as a teenager, she worked as a fashion model. Mollie’s husband works for an ad agency and they travel a lot. These insights into the agents’ lives showed whether or not we might like to work with them, and what sorts of things interest them. Bonnie enjoyed quizzing everyone about the new, tough world of publishing where e-books are only this year becoming less horrifying. Last year, every agent grew pop-eyed at the mention of electronic publishing. Not so much this year, because the prices have gone up.

When I described my water-rights fight, each agent responded “Erin Brokovich.” It was like a word-association exercise. Agents need catch phrases and quick ideas that spell “money.” What amazes me, always, is that these young people, who haven’t worked in the industry for very long, can, in about 30 seconds, describe what they want from a story: what they believe will sell.

Thanks to Carrie McCullough, Ginny Padgett, and their team, the setting was marvelous, and the food was conference-quality. I can’t imagine a prettier setting than a South Carolina beach in October. On Saturday at noon I walked to the pier and back. It was a perfect beach day. Forget the writing; I wanted to become a photographer.

2011 SCWW Conference Review: My Perspective

By Ginny Padgett

October 21-23, 2011 was the date of the 21st annual SCWW Writers’ Conference. As SCWW President, Conference Co-Chair and conference volunteer, I have a behind-the-scenes perspective on the conference.

As the conference ended on Sunday, I heard enough feedback to say with reasonable certainty that it was a good one. Many conference goers told me that this year's was one of the best, citing our excellent faculty. We have Carrie McCullough, Conference Chair, to thank for that - along with just about every other detail pertaining to planning this event.

The conference wouldn’t have been as successful without the efforts of Kia Goins, Conference Co-Chair, and Kim Blum-Hyclak, Silent Auction Chair. They worked like Trojans to make Conference 2011 an enjoyable, informative, seamless and financially-viable endeavor.

Then there are the 20 volunteers that gave up a good portion of their conference time to insure that attendees and faculty were comfortable and on time to their specific sessions and appointments. This was accomplished with smiles and enthusiasm. In addition, there were many unnoticed chores shouldered by these members.

After the last session on Sunday morning, a 19-year-old man stopped to pass on his thanks to SCWW and our annual conferences. He said he had been attending them since he was 15 years old and owed his writing career to SCWW.

Later, I asked an attendee as she was leaving if she'd enjoyed her weekend. She paused at the door, placed a hand over her heart and with a blissful expression sighed, “I have been inspired.”

Here’s a quote from an email I received Monday morning following the conference. “I sat beside a writer from NY Saturday night and I asked him how he discovered our conference. He found it online, a site that reviewed conferences in the USA and ours was listed as NUMBER ONE!”

Also, I spoke with an attendee the next day who said, “I am busy putting to work some of the things I learned this past weekend. I expect better results than I’ve had.”

And lastly, I received this email from Sorche Fairbank of Fairbank Literary and 2011 faculty member.

I want to extend a quick and heartfelt thanks once again for inviting me to be a part of your conference. I participate in six to eight conferences each year , and while I almost always enjoy them and find them worthwhile, it's been a long time since I've been to one that left this much of an impression on me. It was top notch all around, both for presenters and for attendees. Truly, not many conferences have such heart and soul, professionalism, and value. Your selection of speakers/agents/faculty was fabulous (even I left energized!), the attendees were open to suggestions and very eager to learn, there was a feeling of respect and excitement over being in the world of books and writing -- and none or very little of the doom and gloom that is present at so many conferences.

So from my perspective, the 2011 SCWW Writers’ Conference was a brilliant success.

Be Like Rick Steves…Go Where the Action Is

By Kimberly Johnson

For those who don’t have the Travel Channel, but watch a healthy dose of PBS-- Rick Steves is the King of Backpack Trekking. And I am his servant—in a gotta-watch-it-because-one-day-I’m-gonna- go-there type of way. I’ve logged a lot of frequent flyer miles with Rick. I trekked through the ancient streets in Seville; marveled at the Byzantine wonders of Istanbul and enjoyed a sleigh ride during Christmas in the Swiss Alps. What’s my takeaway from these television escapades? You gotta go where the action is--if you want to learn.

The same can be said about going to conferences. Finding the action in Myrtle Beach on October 21 – 23 is definitely is an opportunity to learn. The writing faithful will converge on the Grand Strand for the SCWW annual conference. Unfortunately, I will not be one of them. So, I took my misfortune to the SCWW website (www.myscww.org) and navigated through what I could have learned.

What I could have learned is from Matthew Fredrick’s The Four Ps of Non Fiction: Platform, Proposal, Prose and Purpose. Destination: Platform. So, I jumped on the Orient Express (the Internet, of course) and made the following stops along the way…

Destination 1: Cultivate an identity before selling your book to an agent. Organize a personalize media kit that includes: a press release, a fact sheet about your book, and a DVD of your media clips.

Destination 2: Develop a relationship with an audience – public readings, social media, writing groups. Increased attention or buzz about your work sell an agent on your marketability.

Destination 3: Provide information on your ups and downs. Blog about how you were rejected. Tweet about your acceptance to a local or national publication.

Destination 4: Generate an email tagline or signature that is memorable.

Destination 5: Go old school—create business cards and pass them out.

Destination 6: Make audios and videos. Take advantage of YouTube and the like. Sell yourself on podcasts and videos.

Sources: www.writersdigest.com, www.emeryroad.com, www.fairfieldwriter.wordpress.com, www.alanrinzler.com, www.Hiwrite.com