Can't Make It To The Backspace Conference? Follow Us On Twitter!

Follow @bksp_org and @TamaraGirardi

on Twitter 

for up-to-the-minute happenings at the 

Backspace Conference in NYC!

Also search for #bksp!

How To Make Sure The Next "Breakout Novel" Is Yours!

Donald Maass's All-day “Writing the Breakout Novel” workshop 

Just one more week to register!

Use Coupon "NYC" for a $50 discount!

 

This is the can’t-miss portion of the 2011 Backspace Writers Conference. Uber-agent Donald Maass, President of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, will conduct his always-popular “Writing the Breakout Novel!” workshop.

DMLA represents more than 100 authors and consistently sells more than 150 novels every year to major publishers in the U.S. and overseas. Donald Maass’s writing on fiction careers and advanced fiction technique have established DMLA as a leading agency for fiction writers.

All agents of DMLA are members of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR). In addition to being members of the AAR, the agency also holds memberships in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America, and the Romance Writers of America.

Maass founded DMLA in 1980. He is himself the author of fourteen pseudonymous novels and of the books The Career Novelist (Heineman, 1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (Writers Digest Press, 2001) and the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (Writers Digest Press, 2004). He also teaches week-long intensive workshops based on his books.

Maass’ workshops lead participants through practical writing exercises that plumb depths of character, raise stakes both public and personal, add plot layers, heighten sense of time and place, strengthen point of view and voice, deepen themes, transform openings, and develop the brainstorming skills that produce consistently original stories. With over 25 years of experience, Maass has helped hundreds of authors transform their careers, and now you can share what they learned at the 2011 Backspace Writers Conference.

Register today!

“All the camaraderie and vindication wanes in comparison to the hour I spent in a trance with a man who simply asked questions…My head was buzzing…the hour flew by entirely too fast.” 

– Jeanette Schneider, 2010 Backspace Writers Conference Attendee

How To Be A Conference Extrovert

Originally posted on Writer Unboxed.

by Jael McHenry

So many writers are introverts. You’d think that a roomful of writers at conferences would devolve into mass silence, a staring contest several hundred people strong. But that’s not what happens. I spent this past weekend at the Muse and the Marketplace conference, and at breakfast tables, cocktail hours, and in the hallways between sessions, there was a positively overwhelming sound of chattering voices.

Many of us (myself included) are everyday introverts who manage to become extroverts just at writing conferences. And that’s a good thing. Conferences are a great way to learn things and meet other writers, and if you leave without speaking to anyone, you’ve definitely missed out. So if you’re an introvert who wants to attend writing conferences but fears you won’t be able to break through your shyness, you probably will. Here’s how:

Opening lines. When I’m in a roomful of people I don’t know, I find it very hard to approach people. I’m afraid that I’ll be intruding, even if the person isn’t talking to anyone, just standing alone with his or her thoughts. But the beautiful thing about a conference is that you always have something to talk about. Chances are very, very good that the stranger sitting next to you at that breakfast table is a writer. If it’s mid-morning, they’ve been to at least one panel. You have something to ask them about, and they’ll probably have an answer. What panel are you headed to next? What do you write? Are you local, or did you travel to get here? Are you going to that open mic thing later? The questions are logical and easy, and they can be the jumping-off point to a whole great conversation.

Nametags. Never underestimate the power of a good nametag. “Hi, I’m Jael,” that simplest of introductions, is a heck of a lot easier when I can point to my nametag and the stranger can see the spelling of my name, so I don’t have to explain it. Plus, it makes it a lot easier for me to remember the other person’s name too. (I’m bad at names.) There’s something about being able to see someone’s name right there in front of you that helps forge a connection.

Shared goals. A conference isn’t a singles mixer, but it’s similar in one way: everyone knows what they’re there for. That person wants to meet you, she just doesn’t know it yet. Or that group of people, that circle, will open up to include you if you just sidle over with your drink. When you’re at a different kind of party it can feel weird to walk up to a group since you might be interrupting a chummy group of friends; at a conference, those people probably just met each other five minutes ago. So sidle right on in. These are fellow writers who also want to pursue their craft, hone their sense of the business, and meet other writers—like you.

So if you’re headed to your first writers’ conference or you’re considering it, but you’re not naturally outgoing, take the leap. You may be going to this conference with a bunch of strangers, but they won’t be strangers for long.

(Image via Flickr’s Creative Commons, by Alan O’Rourke)

Jael McHenry is the author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster, 2011), and is also a talented and enthusiastic amateur cook who blogs about food and cooking at the SIMMER blog, http://simmerblog.com. She is a regular contributor to Writer Unboxed, a member of Backspace, and a monthly pop culture columnist at Intrepid Media. Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Learn more about Jael’s work at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry. She lives in New York City.

Is Your Manuscript Like Your Baby?

Photo credit: Chapendra

by Kerry Gans

One of the things that startled me about becoming a parent was how much I love my daughter. The depths of it. The ancient nature of it. That urge to protect her that makes me realize I actually would die for her or even kill for her. Just the thought of someone hurting her brings a surge of fury that is terrifying in its power. It is primal.

So when I hear writers say that their manuscripts are their children, I laugh a little.

Yes, I get what they mean. As a writer, you pour years of work into a manuscript. Parts of your soul get intertwined with you work. And I know that all of my novel manuscripts took well more than nine months to reach completion. So I understand where they’re coming from.

I would not, however, advocate dying or killing to defend your manuscript.

Writers do feel those types of protective emotions toward their work, though. Often, those emotions get expressed in negative ways: Becoming defensive over constructive criticism; starting flame wars online over a bad review; acting the prima donna with agents, publishers, and fans. So, how can we use those emotions to help us rather than hinder us?

The short answer: Confidence. Many writers are not comfortable selling themselves or their work. They’re not comfortable in public situations. They don’t have confidence in their ability to make their case well.

But they should, and this is where those protective emotions come into play.

I am my child’s advocate. I do not back down when I need to speak for her. Our writing needs us as advocates, too, because it cannot speak for itself. Authors who have little confidence in themselves often have great confidence in the quality of the works they produce. Authors can transfer that confidence in their work into confidence in public or sales situations. You are not you—you are fighting for your work, for its right to be read, to be out there. Speak for it. Forget that little voice that questions your importance, and focus on the importance of your work.

This is the part of the children analogy that can benefit any author. Draw your confidence from your work. Be strong for it. Be an enthusiastic and steadfast advocate for it.

And if your manuscript should blow out of your hands in a parking lot, feel free to lift a car or two to retrieve it.

Kerry Gans is a mother, writer, and editor currently shopping a middle grade adventure, The Egyptian Enigma. Works-in-progress include a YA fantasy, another middle grade novel, adult science fiction, and children’s picture book. On The Goose’s Quill, she blogs about her journey toward publishing while parenting. Inspiring both blog posts and exhaustion, Kerry’s footloose 18-month-old daughter shows her the wonder and joy in life every day.

A Match Made at Backspace

By Sanna Levine

Helen DePrima had a couple of manuscripts under the bed and a year's worth of rejections for her current book when she hooked up with her agent, Stephany Evans, of FinePrint Literary Management, at the November 2009 Backspace Writer's Conference in New York.

"I'd been at it a long, long time," Helen says. Like many aspiring writers, she queried agents from A to Z. "I kept a log of who I queried, when, what I sent, and the rejection date."

Finally, in November 2009, all the pieces fell into place. At the first of the Backspace Conference's two query letter workshops, Stephany Evans told her "don't change a thing" in her query letter for The High Road Home, a women's novel about second chances.

"Helen's letter had a quality of craftsmanship," Stephany recalls. "She conveyed the essence of her protagonist in one tight paragraph." She also gave realistic comp titles and named known authors whose fans she felt might also like her book. Stephany was so impressed with the letter that she approached Helen later at the conference and asked her to send sample chapters immediately.

So did two other agents at the conference. Now agents were competing for the same book that had languished during a year of cold querying. "It was daunting to adjust from 'Dear Author' letters to having to choose among agents," Helen says.

Stephany read the early chapters and immediately asked for a full manuscript. Within a few days, she called Helen to ask about her status with other agents. By this time, three other agents were reading the full manuscript. "I guess Stephany was pleased when I said she was my first choice. We seemed to click."

In a business where compatibility and shared sensibility are essential, the personalities seemed propitious. "I had the sense right away that I'd enjoy working with Helen," Stephany says. "She struck me as someone with gravitas but also real warmth, very professional, but also both grounded and approachable."

Then, of course, there was the book itself. "Helen's story resonated with me, and I also felt it was commercial."

What Changed?

Between the "Dear Author" letters and multiple offers of representation, Helen discovered Noah Lukeman's free online book, How to Write a Great Query Letter. "I burned it into my brain," Helen says. "His advice was specific and orderly. Then I worked over my query letter."

Still, the new letter wasn't to every agent's taste. Whereas both agents conducting the first query letter workshop told Helen not to change a word, the agents in the second workshop said she included too much biographical information. "That sort of criticism was more what I expected. It's a matter of taste."

This expectation was consistent with Helen's previous experience with the "Dear Author" letters. She got rejection letters saying said the pace was wrong. Or there was too much backstory. Or not enough backstory.

That feedback was helpful. "Agents aren't in the business of educating writers, but I paid attention to any personal response."

The helpful, cordial agents included a few Helen had met at a 2006 Backspace conference, which she attended to pitch one of the books now under the bed. She came out of that conference with a better, but still incomplete understanding of how to query.

"There are people who can toss a manuscript over the transom and have it picked up immediately," Helen says. "Good for them, but if you're serious about it, be prepared for a long haul."

Making a Marketable Product

Many revisions later, The High Road Home is in the hands of several editors. Helen is preparing synopses of two more books for a new series so Stephany can go to editors with more projects in the works.

"From the start, Helen had a good idea where in the literary firmament she belonged," Stephany says. "I borrowed heavily from her original letter when I crafted my own pitch to editors."

The edited manuscript and the marketing collateral are the products of deep collaboration. "The more we got into editing, the more confident I got about our working relationship," Helen says. "Stephany doesn't mind telling me that something I wrote or proposed isn't right, and I feel the same liberty. It's called respect."

Helen counts herself extremely lucky for finding the right agent. "If any of the agents at the conference had offered me representation, I would have taken it. It's not as if new writers have agents banging down their doors."

The Query

Ms. Evans:


Thank you for your kind words regarding my query letter during the recent Backspace conference. To refresh your memory, my 100,000-word novel THE HIGH ROAD HOME shares elements with Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees with a touch of Nicholas Evans's The Horse Whisperer; it should also appeal to readers who enjoy books by Billie Letts, Fannie Flagg, and Earlene Fowler.

My protagonist, unmarried and facing her fourth decade, has spent half her life putting her kin first. Now with Mama gone, she can finally strike out for a little adventure. Even her long-ago lover who shows up at her mother's funeral can't talk her out of a solo road trip from Kentucky to Seattle. Her journey stalls in northern Colorado, however, when she meets an enigmatic rancher, to-die-for in his faded Wranglers. She's instantly smitten, but passion ignites only when they face danger together. When he confesses the secret haunting his life, the revelation calls on all her grit and compassion, teaching her about hard choices and sacrifice, about loving and letting go. And where her true home lies.

Like my protagonist, I grew up in Kentucky and spent ten years in Colorado including summers on a cattle ranch. I am a member of the New Hampshire Writers' Project and have participated in numerous NHWP workshops. I have also studied news writing and have attended writers' conferences including Harriette Austin in Georgia and the 2006 Backspace Conference.

I have enclosed the first thirty pages of THE HIGH ROAD HOME; the completed manuscript is available. Thank you for considering my work.

Sincerely,

Helen DePrima

About the Author

Sanna Levine is a freelance writer for not-for-profit organizations dedicated to environmental and health care causes. She has 25 years experience writing and editing corporate and trade publications about finance and healthcare.

Pitching Novels Face to Face, or Learning that Literary Agents Don’t have Horns (at least not the ones I've met)

With the Backspace Conference just a few weeks away, we hope you'll enjoy this classic post originally on STET in January 2010. Some of the names may have changed, but the message remains the same.

by Teresa Bergen

I’m used to rejection coming the old-fashioned way, through the mail. However, last year I ventured out of my writerly isolation and attended the Willamette Writers Conference. It featured something entirely alien-- face to face pitching to literary agents. Wasn’t it enough for us to get words on a page? Now we had to be able to speak?

Turns out it’s not a new phenomenon, just new to me. When I asked Herbert Piekow, who has long ruled the excitingly hectic consult pit at the conference, he told me WW started bringing literary agents to the conference in 1985. Call me behind the times.

This year, I bravely attended two writing conferences -- Thrillerfest in New York, and the Willamette Writers conference in Portland. People say you have to confront your phobias, and my phobias had faces: literary agents. I did a lot of confronting this summer. At Thrillerfest, I pitched to seventeen agents. At WW, I spent three four-hour shifts volunteering to assist agents and editors. I poured wine. I brought them coffee. I watched them listen to people’s pitches. I tried to understand this complicated social and professional transaction.

The way it works at conferences, an attendee pays for a certain amount of time with an agent. At WW, the fee is twenty bucks for ten minutes. At the Hawaii Writers Conference, it’s fifty. At Thrillerfest, it was more of a flat fee, speed dating kind of event. It definitely costs more than a stamp.

Writers have much higher hopes for face to face meetings. We seem to think if we could just tell someone in person about our brilliant idea, they would be swept up in it, too. Some agents and editors bear out this hope.

Nick Eliopulos, an associate editor at Random House who edits middle grade and young adult books, said he gets a consistently higher quality of manuscripts from the WW conference than from average submissions. “I’m really excited about reading some of the projects people pitched here,” he said. By the way, Eliopulos was definitely not the editor of my fears. Boyish and friendly, he quickly put conference goers at ease.

But what are the agents getting out of this? It’s not much of a vacation, flying across the country and sitting in a hotel ballroom all day, meeting with a parade of hopeful writers eager to pay to pitch, escaping only to be hounded by cheapskates at lunch and in the bathroom. There will be no shortage of unsolicited manuscripts waiting on their desks Monday morning, whether they attend conferences or not.

“In face to face meetings, you can see if the person gives an impression of professionalism,” said Deb Werksman, editorial manager at Sourcebooks. “You get a sense of their ability to market themselves.” Werksman said she did not see a significant difference in the quality of publishable material between conferences and what comes in over the transom.

With all these agents running around, I saw a marked increase in my ability to see people as products. I would watch someone pitching and think, sweetheart, if only you’d found a more flattering outfit, or touched up those six inches of dark roots.

Maybe I was being extra cynical or extra paranoid. While writing this, a Yahoo article warned job seekers that receptionists run out into the parking lot during interviews to check the cleanliness of your car. Turns out that is an indication of your character.
Many of the writers were nervous. But some were confident, like Randal Houle, who is looking to publish a mystery set in Portland called Right of Passage. In pitching, he said, “Your personality and how you handle yourself comes out.” Houle, who sells prepaid funeral plans, finds it easier to pitch verbally than to write a query letter. “But I’m a salesman by trade,” he said.

For some people, a face to face is a good thing. For others, well, a written query might be better. Now if only I could figure out which category I fall into.

----------

Teresa Bergen is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. After years of toil in literary fiction, she is now completing her first thriller. Her articles and stories have appeared many places, including Exquisite Corpse, Ms., and the South China Morning Post. She is excited that one of her short stories has just been accepted to Baconology, a horror anthology involving bacon.

This article was originally posted on Portland's Reading Local, where Teresa is a regular contributor.

Backspace Conference News & Updates

The 2011 Backspace Writers Conference is just one month away! We're very excited about the program, and truly believe the 2011 conference will be our best event yet.


Many terrific agents and editors have joined the faculty in recent weeks including Andrea Walker, Vice President and Editorial Director at Little Brown, who will be assisting Jeff Kleinman with his Thursday evening "Buy This Book!" workshop. But don't let her fancy title fool you - this workshop will be relaxed, informative, and fun. The cost is just $45, and it's a great way to spend the evening. If you haven't already signed up, there's still time to register!


Nicholas Croce (The Croce Agency), Nicole Resciniti (The Seymour Agency), Jessica Regel (Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency), and Louise Fury and Emily Keyes (L. Perkins Agency) are just a few of the agents who have signed on recently to help with the May 26 Agent-Author Seminar small-group workshops. You can see the full list here.


Dan Conaway of Writers House, and Brittany Hamblin of Harper Collins will join author Susan Henderson (Up From the Blue, Harper Collins, September 2010) for a panel discussion on Friday about the unique challenges and rewards of writing and publishing literary fiction.

Other Friday conference program highlights include a workshop with Jeff Kleinman (Folio Literary Management) and his client, Elizabeth Letts (author of The Eighty Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation, Ballantine Books August, 2011), on how to write a successful non-fiction proposal; a conversation with Scott Hoffman (Folio Literary Management) and Rachel Griffiths (Scholastic Press) on the agent-editor relationship and how books get sold; a workshop with New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry on how to make money with your writing, and much, much more.


And for those of you who have registered for the May 26 Agent-Author Seminar, workshop assignments are now posted to the conference website.

If you'd like to expand your conference experience by registering for an additional event, there's still time!


As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to email Backspace administrators Chris Graham or Karen Dionne. You may also telephone Chris at 732-267-6449.


See you in New York!