Are You Ready for Conference Series?!?

I’m starting a new series called Conference Confidence in an attempt to get myself ready and others motivated for ACFW in September (but my tips will work for any writer’s conference.)

I won’t claim I know it all, or know much for that matter 🙂 But what I do know is that everything I’ve pitched at conferences have been requested by multiple editors (little did I know that I would have to follow up with a finished product…but that’s another story for another post.)

So the first order of business is to figure out why you’re going to a writer’s conference? This will be my fourth BIG writer’s conference in four years, and my third ACFW conference. The first three times I went to a conference I went to pitch and SELL. I was focused, driven and hardly recognized my introverted self. I had to will myself to be an extrovert, in fact flying to my first conference (Glorietta) in Santa Fe, New Mexico I distinctly remember the moment I put on my game face. I gazed out the window, worrying about having to push out of my shell and said “Game on.” (Yes, I’m a big Survivor fan) but it was the focus I needed to play the game. And it worked, I got multiple requests for multiple manuscripts (yet to be written, of course. I admit I was naive and believed what I’d been hearing, that you can sell without a completed WIP…sure if you’re Francine Rivers, Brandilyn Collins or Ted Dekker. Sadly, I was not…)

The last conference I went to (ACFW), I went knowing I wouldn’t pitch anything. I had given up writing and simply went to network and make friends. It was very awkward for me, a little no body, sitting with the big guys, late after classes. But I did it and prayed I didn’t look like the misfit I felt like.

So why are you going to conference this year? And are you willing to break out of your comfort zone? Leave me your answers and come back Monday when I will talk about the pitch.