I love writers’ conferences. I can immerse myself in the craft of writing and not feel like the odd duck. They can be expensive, but conferences help you make connections across both sides of the publishing industry, traditional and indie.
You might want to attend a conference but are worried about cost. I have ways to keep your expenses down.
If you are a regular here at Life in the Realm of Fantasy, you may have seen my two-part series on the business side of being an author. If not, and you are interested, I will put the links to those articles at the bottom of this post. In the meantime, here are some pointers for making attending a conference more affordable.
One: Join the association offering the conference because members get reduced conference fees, sometimes by as much as $100.00. Take advantage of the early-bird discount if you can. Members will often have opportunities for remote learning all year long. I belong to three writers’ associations, each offering virtual classes I can access all year.
Two: Small local events. Does your library system offer presentations on the craft of writing by local authors? These small classes will likely be free if it is a public library. If they don’t offer little seminars occasionally, suggest it to them. Perhaps they’ll be willing to ask some local authors to do such an event.
Three: Use the internet. Google “writers’ conferences in my area.” Local ones are great because you can eat food that fits your dietary needs and sleep at home. That way, you only pay for the conference itself.
Four: Did I mention food? If you are planning to attend a large convention or conference where you will need to stay in a hotel, take simple foods that can be prepared without a stove and are filling. As I am vegan, I’m an accomplished hotel-room chef. Most coffee bars don’t offer many plant-based options. If they do, there will likely only be one to choose from, and it may not interest you. While that bias is changing, I still travel prepared.
Conferences work for me as an extension of the self-education process. Most of what I know about the craft of writing, the genres I write in, and the publishing industry as a whole are things I could only learn from other authors.
I gained an extended professional network by joining The Pacific Northwest Writers Association in 2011. Every year since then, I have attended their annual conference. Even during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, they held a virtual conference, which was an excellent example of what humans are capable of at short notice.
I attend the Science-fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Nebula Conference every year. The pandemic also inspired SFWA to move to a hybrid in-person and virtual conference, so my only cost is the conference fee itself. That cost is quite reasonable because I always take advantage of my membership and early bird discounts.
I am not a happy flyer, so a virtual conference is definitely my thing if I can’t drive there. However, since SFWA is a worldwide association of professional science fiction and fantasy authors, their conferences will also be available virtually for the foreseeable future.
I attended the Southwest Washington Writers Conference (SWWC) two weeks ago. This shindig is local enough that I can commute from my home. I was privileged to present a one-hour class on the character arc and layers of depth, Heroes and Villains – Who are they, and why should we care? I had a lot of fun talking to other writers and hearing what they struggle with. In the end, I hope what I had to say helped them through the rough spots.
This last weekend, I was in Seattle, Washington, attending PNWA’s 2023 conference. I expect the ideas and information I encountered will emerge in my posts over the next few months—after I’ve had time to distill it. Each time I’m exposed to a different way of looking at things, my creative thinking style is reshaped.
I’m a small fish in a vast ocean. Attending local conferences puts me in contact with other authors and industry professionals, most of whom are successfully pursuing their craft. I meet people I don’t usually come into contact with as they hail from all over Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia.
The connections I make within the writing community often turn into friendships, which are sometimes the most valuable things I bring home from the conference.
Here are the two posts on the Business Side of the Business:
Artist: Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900)
Not every program or platform supports curly quotes, so those gurus who claim they are the only quotes you should use are wrong.
Another frustration, this one of my own devising, is the mess I have deliberately created in a new project. I’d run into a wall with this story last winter, so I set it aside. Then, two weeks ago, I had the bright idea to change the viewpoint and make it present tense.
We do get out sometimes, though. We have a wonderful 
September is always a month of transition. The summer weather is changing to cooler days, and leaves are turning red and yellow. The days are growing shorter, and the traffic outside our windows during rush hour is a little more frantic.
Something we don’t think about when we’re young and healthy is that the equipment disabled people rely on can fail. The first thing that failed this week was his little walker for getting around in indoor spaces—I’ve named it R2D2 since it’s perfect for serving drinks on the space-yacht that is our home.
So, we had to supply dates and names of previous marriages and divorces—which, in my case, involved getting copies of three divorce decrees from the county. (I’ve had a life, and while I could have done some things differently, I don’t regret it for a moment.)
But enough chit-chat about me. Let’s talk about writing. This week, I made headway on a first draft I had set aside a year or so ago because I was stuck at the 30,000-word point. I changed the narrative tense from close third person omniscient to first person present tense for the protagonist and third person present tense for the side characters. That change kickstarted things and the plot is unfolding as it should.
Also, my first drafts are not written linearly. I write what I am inspired to, skipping the spots I have no clue about. I fill in those places later. Even after completing the first draft, things will change structurally with each rewrite.
It wasn’t exactly literary brilliance, but it gave my idea a jumping-off point. I just began telling the story as it fell out of my mind. Surprisingly, I discovered my word count averaged 2,500 to 3,000 words daily. By day fifteen, I knew I would have no trouble getting to 50,000, and by November 21st, I had passed the 50,000-word mark.
But I took that incoherent mess apart, and over the next ten years, it became three books: 
It helps to check in on the national threads each day. Look at your regional threads on the national website to keep in contact with other local writers. You will find out when and where write-ins are scheduled.
Included in this mess were ten dreadful poems, along with chapters 7 through 11 of 
Conferences are excellent places to make good connections with other writers. You meet people you can talk to about every aspect of the experience of writing as well as craft. No one’s eyes glaze over when you try to explain your main character’s inner demons and you find people with struggles similar to your own.
Some new writers are completely fired up for their novels, obsessed. They go at it full tilt for a week or even two, and then, at the 20,000-word mark, they take a day off. Somehow, they never get back to it. These writers will continue to write off and on and may participate in NaNoWriMo again.
Cooking is my love language. I have many tips and ideas for getting word count and having a proper family feast. As a dedicated writer, I know how to plan for all aspects of life.
How to get inspiration? That translates to getting a story idea. I used to think up nifty situations and wondered how an average person would deal with it. That’s the good ol’ what-if set-up you find mostly used in sci-fi stories. The problem with focusing on the cool idea is that usually the characters who have to deal with it become rather cardboard. That’s fine when you’re a young writer or producing a first draft. Slap it down and keep going. You can come back later to beef up the character, add description details, and so on. Whatever the idea is, get it out of your head at any cost.
What is serious writing? Even if it’s comedy, it’s the writing you take seriously. What you want readers to admire, no matter the genre. That is all well and good, but you will find that what you think is good isn’t always what readers think is good. Got nothing to do with what you’re writing or how well you write it, it’s just the way it is. So don’t take yourself too seriously; you can take your writing seriously, of course. The idea is that the writing will get better for readers each time you go through a manuscript and revise and edit it. How many times you go through it is your decision. It helps to get someone else’s eyes on it at some point, especially if you are new at writing. You can look at a map but until you get to your destination you can’t be sure that map is accurate and you’re going the right way. Sounds like another thing I learned.
I started reading a long time ago. Started writing soon after, making up my own stories which I thought were better than the ones I read. I borrowed here and there – and in later writing had to tone it down so as not to sound like the sources I borrowed from (sci-fi authors, mostly). You develop your own style eventually if you write enough. So write a lot; you don’t have to show it to anyone. I like to try writing in different styles, too. I like trying to have characters speak in different ways, some slang, vernacular, accents, different levels of education, just for my own amusement – which is cruel, I’ll admit. But trying different things is good for a writer. Read different styles, too, and try to imitate them. Read the juicy parts aloud, let them get stuck in your head. Consider what is special about the style the author uses. Compare and contrast with other authors you read, and with your own writing. Most of all, read a lot in different genre and different writing styles. How much you absorb from that differs for everyone, but try it.
Finally you have a complete story (or novel) from beginning to end and the plot is satisfying, characters compelling, dialog crisp, and so on. What next? Read and revise at least three times, but put it away at least a few days between each reading (a month is optimal; go get some coffee). Yes, I know you’re eager to get into it again but make yourself wait. Go to your slush file and work on that erotica. Now back to your masterpiece. Try to read it as a reader who’s never seen it before: what would the average reader think and feel in this scene or on that page? You’re no longer thinking of how to write the story so now you focus on how someone you don’t know might understand it. (Sure, go ahead and correct those pesky mistypes as you find them. No rule saying you have to do that in a separate pass.) I like to look at scenes in isolation: every scene should do something, even if it is “only” showing a character’s personality. I read dialog aloud (or, recently, have my computer read it to me); I catch a lot of mistakes and sloppy or weak sentences that way. Run spellchecker until it’s about to fall off the rails but understand it is not actually reading and still will miss errors. You must read your manuscript with your own eyes and ears more than twice. Look for pet-peeve errors (e.g., I type ‘form’ a lot when I mean ‘from’; obviously the spellchecker will not catch it because ‘form’ is correctly spelled, just the wrong word). I run a search for them. Most importantly, never ever hit “replace all”!
Stephen Swartz is the author of literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and contemporary horror novels. While growing up in Kansas City, he dreamed of traveling the world. His novels feature exotic locations, foreign characters, and smatterings of other languages–strangers in strange lands. You get the idea: life imitating art.
Mansker takes us into some of the darker days of the 1960s and 70s, sometimes introducing us to people we may not want to know and situations we don’t want to be in. Some protagonists are endearing, and some not so much—but all are intriguing, and all kept me reading.
He was born in Longview WA, spent five years on a dairy farm near Bristow OK, and is a 1973 graduate of Western Washington University in Bellingham WA.
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