At the Rose City RWA Chapter’s Spring Intensive

The last few weeks I’ve been obsessed about e-pub vs. print and self publish vs. traditional houses. Over at Bark I blogged about how I learned that the term “self-published” is too filled with negativity, so the hip new term is “indie author.” I also wrote about how a writer friend emailed me Jim C. Hall’s very funny cartoon to get me to shut up about the whole thing.

Well, I’m happy to report that I’m not longer obsessing. The Rose City Spring Intensive has renewed my enthusiasm for writing, given me new hope about getting published, and shown me—yet again—how important it is to network and hang out with other writers. It fuels my soul, my creativity, and my hope for humanity and peace on earth. (Yes, I had a Kiwi Kamikaze cocktail with dinner—fabulous Sushi and Thai restaurant BTW. Why are you asking?)

 The last couple of years the message I’ve gotten from the publishing industry is how hard it is for new authors to break into the business, how terrible the money is, how you have to know somebody high up in an agency/publisher to get a contract, how I should just give up now because there’s no way I’ll ever make enough money off my writing to quit my day job. Enter Rose City Spring Intensive.

The fabulous agents and editors that are here from New York had a totally different message during the panel yesterday. Basically: Stop worrying about where to publish, how to publish, what the latest trend is etc. Writers’ job is to write, agents’ job is to work with editors to find the best possible and most profitable venue for your work. You just make sure your writing is the best it can be and let them do what they’re good at. It’s their job to stay tuned to what’s currently going on in the industry and they want to build your career so that they have a stable of writers who will be around for a long time.

Today I pitched to all these fabulous women. They couldn’t have been more encouraging, more approachable, or more professional—all while being painfully honest about how your work will place and what you can do to improve it. Get this: I gave a query to an agent who was not taking pitches. She read it and told me she wasn’t interested, but gave me two names who she thinks would be and said I should use her name as a referral. Is that the most fabulous thing you’ve ever heard of or what?!

During the query Q&A the publishing peeps encouraged multiple submissions, just not to more than one agent at a house or more than one editor at an imprint. According to the, it’s understood. As one agent put it, “Are you going to give one person an exclusive and then wait around for six months for an answer? I don’t thinks so.”
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Here something new I heard: If you do get an offer for representation, rather than withdrawing the work from other agents or editors, tell them about the offer and allow them to counter offer. Wow, that just wouldn’t occur to me. I would feel like I won the lottery just getting the one offer and wouldn’t dream of someone else also wanting to represent me.

So, two very good days at the conference so far and still have one more to go.

Oh, you want me to tell you how my pitching went? Really, are you sure? I don’t want to take up too much of your time…okay, you’ve twisted my arm. I’ll tell you.

I pitched Paved Paradise which is women’s fiction. One editor wanted a full, the other two asked for partials. Two agents asked for a partial, the other one wasn’t interested but remembered that I had asked a question about paranormal romance in the Q&A the night before. She asked me to pitch that project. I said it wasn’t finished. She told me—not asked—to pitch it to her. I did, she said finish it quick and send her the first fifty pages when it is done.

Over and out from Portland and Rose City RWA—my new favorite chapter (after my own IECRWA of course).