Write on Con Follow Up – Now It’s Over

What a week! Any time I had a spare moment I was checking out all the newly posted topics on Write on Con or visiting the forums to critique or be critiqued. Here is a run down of some of my favourite parts of the conference:

1. The vlogs. Apart from the great opening song that played at the start of all the blogs (Song 2 by Blur), it was great to sit back and imagine I was sitting at a real conference while I listened to the experts speaking about topics ranging from querying to character collages. I especially liked the vlogs because of a night time when my eyes were getting too tired to read the words on the screen I could just listen. One of my favourite vlogs was Romance in YA by Lisa Shroeder, I loved the acronym she came up with and it will definitely be helping me inject more realistic romance into my YA writing.

2. The live chats. Although I missed most of these because I’m in Australia and the timing usually worked out to be the very early morning hours for me, I did manage to catch one in real time. And fortunately the ones I missed were still able to be accessed afterwards as transcripts or videos. In particular the agent live chats were very informative. My favourite was probably Natalie Fischer’s live chat. I didn’t get to see it in real time, but watched it afterwards. She was just lovely and answered lots of questions. It was a very informative session.

3. The critiques. I got so much fantastic critique from everyone on the queries and first five pages I posted. And best of all a few of my fellow PB writers and I are now forming a critique group together after ‘meeting’ at the conference.

4. So many great topics! I still haven’t finished looking at all the ones I wanted to, but the ones I’ve read/listened to so far have all been so informative. Some of my favourites include: Plot and Pacing by Weronika Janczuk (particularly part 2); Writing Middle Grade by Jon Lewis (almost made me want to change my YA novel to Middle grade!); Pie-in-the-Face (how characters react to situations) by Rosemary Clement-Moore (very funny vlog); and any of Joanna Volpe’s query critiques.

And the very best part? Write on Con has given a big injection of motivation to write and keep on writing. I’ve taken so much away from the conference and I’m bursting to use all my newly gained knowledge in my writing.

I can’t wait to read the remaining topics I haven’t had a chance to look at yet. If you haven’t had a look at any of the Write on con topics yet it’s not too late, you can find them all in the August archives on the website: Write on Con

The forums have taken on a new look following the conference. All the conference sections are grouped together and some new sections have cropped up, including new critique sections and discussion areas for PB, MG and YA writers. Write on Con Forums

I can’t wait until Write on Con 2011!