New York Pitch Conference: The First Day

Was it only yesterday that I wrote that the prospect of the New York Pitch Conference seemed both exhausting and exhilarating? I’ve survived the first day I can tell you: it is definitely exhausting!

We started the day with what was billed as a “Pep-Scare Talk” by the Director, Michael Neff, who told us, in no uncertain terms, that not a single Conference participant has a manuscript ready to send anywhere. Even if an agent or editor asked for our manuscript, he said, we should not send it because “it is not ready.” I don’t dispute his expertise – after all, he’s been directing these conferences for ten years. I am, however, a little puzzled by such a categorical pronouncement since no one connected to the conference has read any of the manuscripts. Is it not possible that at least one of the participants has a polished gem? Apparently not.

In any event, we were then assigned to workshop groups but not on the basis of genre as I had thought. It’s unclear how they decided who would

The New York Pitch Conference begins today

I’m in Manhattan to attend the New York Pitch Conference from early this morning through Sunday. My posts during this time will be about the Conference and what I learn there.

The Conference is limited to 65 participants who each have a completed manuscript in one of these genres: upmarket and literary fiction, general fiction, serious and light women’s fiction, historical fiction, military fiction, mystery/thriller and detective, historical romance, paranormal romance, all forms of adult fantasy/SF, young adult and middle grade fantasy/SF, memoir and narrative nonfiction.

Twenty-four acquisition editors are attending. They are from such publishing houses as Akashic Books, Berkeley/Penguin, Berkeley

Gloria Steinem and Language

Photo by Starpulse.com

I have been giving thought to the lecture presented by Gloria Steinem at the San Miguel Writers Conference. It was entitled, “Writing Our Way to the Revolution.”

“Writers,” she said, “have the power to make the invisible visible.” By writing the stories of the ignored, the overlooked, the oppressed, we combat racism, sexism, anti-Semitism. 

She urged us to be aware, always, of the politics of language. “The less powerful person or place requires an adjective; the powerful get the noun,” Steinem said. “There are poets and

Be Kind to Yourself

Carol Cassella (carolcassella.com) is a practicing physician and the national bestselling author of three novels, GEMINI (2014), HEALER (2010), OXYGEN (2008), each published by Simon & Schuster and translated into multiple foreign languages. All three novels were Indie Next Picks. On top of that, she’s the mother of two sets of twins (count them, two) and is working on her fourth novel.

Her workshop was entitled, “The Devil Is In The Details.” The etymology of “details” means ‘breaking something into very small parts’.

Doctors are interested in details and, when writing on medical or scientific issues, the details must be true but also must be chosen with

“Don’t Be Afraid of Dialogue”

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I took an advanced fiction class with the multi-talented Mary-Rose Hayes (maryrosehayes.com), entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of Dialogue.”

Dialogue, she said, involves listening and hearing, as well as speaking. The basic “Rule of Dialogue” for writers is to “watch and listen.”

Photo by Jason McHuff

Ride public transport, she urged, and listen to what your fellow passengers say and how they sound. She recounted being on a bus in San Francisco behind two women, loaded down with enormous bags of produce they had just purchased at market. They were speaking Mandarin. Then, one of them sneezed and the other said, “Gesundheit!” That gem went into one of her stories.

Listen to children, she suggested, how they talk to each other and how they talk to adults. By way of example, her “perfect” very young

Thanks, Elizabeth Gilbert – I needed that!

This morning I attended an advanced fiction workshop taught by Mary-Rose Hayes (mary-rosehayes.com), entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of Dialogue."

Just reading her biography made my head swim. Get this: she has written six novels, including WHAT SHE HAD TO DO, and has co-authored two political thrillers with Senator Barbara Boxer. She’s written optioned screenplays, been a script editor in London, a travel correspondent in Tripoli, a librarian in Northern Ireland during “turbulent times.” She has worked in public relations and advertising in New York and San Francisco, and also as a free-lance book editor, a research assistant at the Harvard

Refreshingly Contrarian Views

David Corbett (davidcorbett.com) is the author of four novels, including the NY Times Notable Book, DONE FOR A DIME and has a new one coming out in April. He was a San Francisco private investigator for fifteen years and worked on some very high-profile criminal and civil cases during that time – great fodder for his fiction, I imagine, as he now writes acclaimed crime novels. He is teaching several classes here at the San Miguel conference and I was particularly interested in a few of his somewhat contrarian views.

He doesn’t hold with the theory that conflict is the center of a story. “Desire is. And conflict and desire are not the same thing.” In every

“Your Book is Your Business”

Maia Williams, Co-Director of the San Miguel Writers Conference and a professional Business Building Consultant, led this workshop.

She began with the mindset of the emerging writer. Fill in the blank in this sentence: “I’m too _____ to promote my book.” Some of the answers from the group were “shy,” “lazy,” “discouraged,” “poor,” “fearful of rejection,” and “fearful of losing my friends.” After you fill in the blank with your own answer, she said, pledge to delete the sentence from your mind for the next ninety days and get on with what needs to be done.

Her mantra for promoting your book: Keep It Simple. Make It Easy. Start Sooner. Some of her recommendations were:         

• Don’t wait until your book is published to start building your platform.
• Post on Facebook but, “for every nine personal things you post, add one about your book.”

The Wisdom of the Agents

My first workshop this morning was with April Eberhardt, a self-described ‘literary change agent’ (aprileberhardt.com). She founded her own agency “to assist and advise authors in navigating the traditional and electronic marketplaces, along with the evolving options for agent-assisted independent publishing.”

The workshop was entitled, “Nailing the Spike: Writing and Selling a Killer Short Story.” Her view is that life is very fast-paced these days and that, “the less time we have, the more we read and write short stories.” She described the short story as “a sprint vs. the marathon of a novel,” with a concentrated approach, high stakes, unforgettable

Tracy Chevalier and Alice Walker

It is impossible to report on everything that has happened in this long and very interesting day. Randall Platt’s class on Point of View, Voice and Character will be the subject of a subsequent post as will Louisa Roger’s pitch practice session. Both classes were extremely helpful.

Photo by Jon Drori

In addition to those two classes, there were two keynote speeches by Tracy Chevalier and Alice Walker. I can only hit the highlights of what each of them said.

Chevalier, author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING and other historical novels, was celebrating having just completed her eighth book. Her topic: “The Past Is a Foreign Country: Why History Matters,” which is taken from the L.C. Hartley line in THE GO-BETWEEN, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Chevalier disagrees with the latter part of Hartley’s statement. While “they” may have had different clothes, eaten different foods, etc., there are aspects of the human experience which do not change. The task of the historical fiction writer, she believes, is to find those links with the past that are universal.

There are three schools of thought as to why history is important. The first is that we learn lessons from the past. As Santayana (and Churchill) said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed

The San Miguel Writers Conference Begins

One of the few remaining joys of air travel is having mostly uninterrupted time to read. On the way down, I read DIRTY LOVE by Andre Dubus III (andredubus.com). The first novella in this book, “Listen Carefully As Our Options Have Changed,” bowled me over with such amazing images as this: a husband watches a video, made by a detective, of his wife and her lover having sex – “his heart kicking like a hanged man’s feet.” And this line, describing his wife as she was when he first met her: “And it was the way she smiled at him in the realtor's office, as if she’d been waiting for him for years and now that he’d finally come she was shy about it.”

We’re in Mexico!

We made it as far as Léon late last night. We stayed in a little hotel near Silao Aeropuerto and, this morning, God willing and the creek don’t rise, a shuttle will pick us up for the hour and a half drive to beautiful San Miguel de Allende, with its cobblestone streets, colonial mansions, art galleries, and wonderful food.

One of the workshops I’m taking at the conference will be led by the prolific novelist Nicholas Delbanco. It’s called “The Sincerest Form” and, I assume, will be based on the method he describes in his book: THE SINCEREST FORM: WRITING FICTION BY IMITATION. 

Delbanco’s theory is that, as writers, we learn by studying the choices made – the “aesthetic strategy” – of the best authors. One way to understand these strategies is to try to copy them, much as art students copy Old Masters to advance their own technical skills. The point is to learn from our betters – not to adopt their voices in lieu of our own.

We’re Leaving on a Jet Plane

Photo by Justin Vidamo

As my friend Pat Shipman says, there’s a writer under every bush in North Carolina. And four of us are crawling out from under our respective shrubs and heading for the San Miguel Writers Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico today! Check it out at sanmiguelwritersconference.org.