Me and my little red car on the 20 miracle miles of Oregon’s Central Coast
To the Conference and Back
It felt so good to toss my sweat pants into the laundry (long overdue), dust off my suit, slip into my little red car with the top down and head out to the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland.
What an adrenalin rush it was beginning with Pitching for the Prize on Thursday night for a panel of six national agents hailing from New York to Los Angeles to get a range of feedback before the conference actually began on Friday.
There were a variety of workshop tracks to attend ranging from literature to children’s books and self-publishing. There was advice to be had one-on-one on synopsis, pitches and previously submitted manuscripts. And then there was the elevator pitch to the national agents, either in groups of four or five or one-on-one.
The range of stories that were being pitched was amazing: lesbians in outer space, a memoir on 13 years as a stripper, a New York inner city hospital in the 80’s from the orderlies perspective, a non-fiction book on interactive museums, a novel about King Brian of Ireland in the year 1014, and an account of an escape of Lipizzaner stallions from war torn Hungary. Actually, I heard three stories about WWII Hungary but none about Africa.
Plenty of time was made available for lunches, cocktail hours and dinners to get to know other writers and exchange tips. I made a number of acquaintances I hope will come out to the beach for a break to cement friendships.
But, pitching is what I had come for. Out of thirteen agents I pitched, seven asked to see various numbers of pages or the whole manuscript. So I got back in my little red car, hung up my suit, got the sweat pants out of the drier and am back at work…. 🙂
Leave A Response