Mastering the Art of Writing: Insights from a Conference

I just travelled to the other side of the country to meet with Simon & Schuster executives, which was monumental for me. I have never travelled so far by myself, so it was truly an amazing feeling. I found my confidence, had a reset after the last few months of hard stress in my life, and got to attend a wonderful writers’ conference and meet beautiful people who complement and build each other up! What a refreshing feeling it is, being around others who are positive and working towards goals 🙂

So the conference was with Archway which is whom I published my novel through, and they are a sublet of Simon & Schuster so the panelists invited to talk at the conference were from S&S. It was a busy two days with information packed in heavy and plus I was in New York so I had to do sight seeing and a Broadway show and pictures with Labubu in Times Square!

But here’s some coles notes for things I learnt, for my fellow authors that are also trying to make it in the world of words ❤

Some of these things you may have heard before, let me know in the comments if you have! And/or let me know if you’ve heard something different 🙂

Coles Notes from Conference:

-stick with key principles when writing a book and ensure they line up with the genre you’re writing

-non-fiction- why does the reader need to know this? YouTube has lots of information, what makes this book fresh?

-fiction- strong voice and the sooner something jumps off the page at the agent, the better, don’t write slow starts, they only read the first couple pages

-fiction- agents want to care about the character “if you cry, you buy”

-sci/fi- its hard to picture who the audience is so the query needs to be related to fans of ‘such and such’ (ie. how i compare my novel to strangers things mixed with alice in wonderland)

but also what other accounts do people of strangers things follows, for example? do those fans also like DND, use those keywords and tags.

-queries and book sales take time- books picked up in March are slotted for release in fall, at the earliest!

-when querying an agent- research, research, research. Nothing worse than an agent receiving a query for a Horror when they do Non-Fiction novels only.

-common mistakes in the story are ‘losing the thread’ the storyline gets lost or too loose, not having a strong enough hook and the writer not knowing the plot well enough to convey it

-don’t worry about word count, worry about the story and don’t let the character run away from you

-follow the proper building blocks of acts and chapter ends, they’re proven to sell

-hook readers with crazy fact or interesting point

-fantasy- does the magic system make sense or is it too basic?

“WRITERS PUT WORDS ON PAPER BUT AUTHORS BUILD A TALE PEOPLE WANT TO READ”

“PURPOSE OF THE FIRST PAGE IS TO GET SOMEONE TO TURN IT”

-have a social media platform

-don’t be an asshole and don’t be STIFF aka. refusing to change ideas in the book or the cover, yes its your art but its also a collaboration, some editors even ask the POV to be changed

-first meetings with agents are like first dates- be excited and interested in working together

-publishing is a shared editorial vision- you’re not done when the publisher picks up the book

-be willing to ask other authors for blurbs, make industry connections

-give agents respect, they don’t earn a dollar until they sell your book

-use the query shark blog- it fixes queries

-look in acknowledgements in books that are similar to yours, find the agents website and see if there is a junior available

-Simon and Schuster watches Amazon sales so promote your book through Amazon

-you’re never too old, a novel just got picked up by a 78 year old

-Publishers are using AI to help with marketing, not to decide on the content of stories in the slush piles, AI does not have the same emotional filter humans have when reading queries

-find the right social media account for your book types ie. LinkedIn for Business books/Non-Fiction

-an Ad needs to be seen 7 times to make someone buy something, so don’t pull ads down after a day or two, it can take two weeks for the ad to gain traction

-use negative keyword targeting ie. block your book title

That’s about all, and my ending comment that I heard time and time again through the conference- DO NOT USE AI

So that being said, I’m redoing my website, again, since I did it to include AI images and apparently readers dislike AI images as well. So stay tuned for a website revamp coming soon 🙂

Thanks for reading my coles notes,

keep writing,

Norma Rrae