I can hardly believe it was so long ago, and now it’s 2016 and I’m ready to go back! But I simply cannot go without posting (as I intended to LONG AGO) about the conference. My last post told the story of how I was sidetracked by coaching, and this one is about how I’m still bent on getting it done—better late than never.
Here’s how it will work: I’ll post a “part” each Wednesday until I’m done writing on all of the (six) sessions that I had volunteered to blog about initially. Those posts will come on each of the next six Wednesdays, then I can move on knowing I finally completed my task. (Yes, it’s been bothering me A LOT!) I will also do a reflection on the conference as a whole before I really, actually, move on to other topics. Still savoring..
I’m going to cheat a little today and simply post my notes from the Author’s Panel on the first night, which I was not assigned to do, so these are just what I wrote down for myself. Given the fact that I’ve been to several writing conferences and I don’t write down things I’ve heard a lot of before, these notes are the “best of,” in my humble opinion.
Author’s Panel
-Write the book you need to write, then write the book you can sell.
-Take as much time as you legally can (according to your contract dates)!
-You must spend as much time on the business of being a writer and promoting yourself as you do on perfecting your craft. All the talent in the world doesn’t mean anything if nobody can find you.
-There are Universal Truths that connect us all; it is your job as a writer to find them in your story.
-In preparing for your book to come out, it’s good to publish small pieces in a variety of magazines, online, etc., hitting different audiences by coming at the topic through different lenses.
That's all I wrote, yet there is so much in in there, so much to work with, in every one of those points. And that's how HippoCamp's inaugural conference was--there was SO MUCH GOOD STUFF all the way through. More on that later though. This, like all writing, is a process.
Thanks for reading.
XOXO,
Lisa