Yesterday I talked about Worldcon 2018 and how I was a bit exhausted going into it.\u00a0 Now I’m going to talk about the event that tired me out in the first place, New York Writer’s Digest.<\/p>\n
Before I start talking about that conference, I need to talk about my current favorite online community, #WriteFightGIFClub.\u00a0 You can find us on Twitter via the hashtag, or look for @WFGHeadquarters.\u00a0 It’s a good group of writers that are extremely supportive, silly, and talented.\u00a0 Before I found them, I kind of hated Twitter.\u00a0 Now I spend way too much time there.<\/p>\n
One of the leaders of the group,\u00a0Kelly Dowling<\/a>, was telling us about this conference in New York that we should try to go to.\u00a0 It has Pitch Slam attached to it, and it’s an amazing opportunity to network as well as find representation.\u00a0 Ashley Reisinger<\/a>\u00a0committed to going, I committed to going, and before long, the whole conference became an unofficial WFGC meetup.<\/p>\n Melissa had been to New York City with Bryanna, and I’d been to New York City with Chris, but we hadn’t been there together.\u00a0 Also, when we were there with our kids, we were there as chaperones.\u00a0 It didn’t really let us explore the city on our own very much.\u00a0 This conference offered us a unique opportunity to go have a little vacation and enjoy the city together.<\/p>\n And so we did.\u00a0 The first night we were there, we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, then went and saw Hamilton.\u00a0 I could honestly spend a whole post talking about the show, from the writing to the performance.\u00a0 We had a wonderful time, and it was only the first night.<\/p>\n Then came the conference.\u00a0 I’ve attended quite a few conventions.\u00a0 Writer’s Digest was a little bit different than all of them.\u00a0 While it was difficult to judge, I don’t think there were more than a thousand people.\u00a0 If it were a convention, this would put it at the tiny end of the scale.\u00a0 But this was a conference, so everything operated just a little bit differently than I was used to.<\/p>\n For starters, the programming was narrower.\u00a0 At any given point in time, attendees could go to one of four or five presentations.\u00a0 Comparing that to other conventions I’ve attended, that makes the offering seem exceedingly sparse.\u00a0 While the choices were fewer, the quality of any individual presentation was higher.\u00a0 Most were lead by one individual standing behind a podium and using a screen to provide slides and images that went along with what they were teaching.\u00a0 Many of them had handouts.<\/p>\n The rooms where the presentations were held were much larger.\u00a0 A panel at Worldcon this year would have been overfull with around 40 people.\u00a0 In New York, the main room held several hundred people at once, and the smaller rooms held over 50.<\/p>\n The material itself wasn’t much different than what I’d heard at a half dozen other conventions.\u00a0 Once again, I had the feeling I was attending the same college course, listening and taking notes, with no sign of ever graduating.\u00a0 One thing that distinguished this conference from all of the conventions I’ve attended to this point is that this one didn’t stick to just genre fiction.<\/p>\n Towards the end of the conference, I attended Pitch Slam.\u00a0 This is like speed dating, where I got to rotate through a large room, pitching my stories to agents and acquiring editors.\u00a0 I’m going to talk more about this in a few days, but I’ll just say now that Pitch Slam went far better for me than I could have expected.<\/p>\n There’s quite a bit I could say about the nuts and bolts of the conference.\u00a0 I enjoyed it, and I took lots of notes.\u00a0 However, the thing about this trip that made it extra special was getting to hang out with my Twitter friends.\u00a0 We ate together, we laughed together.\u00a0 These truly are friends, and I can’t wait to see them again.<\/p>\n I don’t know yet if Melissa and I will attend the 2019 Writer’s Digest conference.\u00a0 We might, since we had such a good time.\u00a0 We had a wonderful time, and it seemed worth the money.\u00a0 Soon, I’m going to have to schedule out my vacation time for next year.\u00a0 We’ll see if going to New York again is in the cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday I talked about Worldcon 2018 and how I was a bit exhausted going into it.\u00a0 Now I’m going to talk about the event that tired me out in the first place, New York Writer’s Digest. 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