SFWC Wrap-Up, or, "How I avoided the claws that catch"

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
the Scottish Koala!

I'm paraphrasing, but I bring this up to say that today I made the Koala pleased.  Although she does not yet know it.  Today, I sent off query and pages to a fabulous, stupendous, wonderful, thoughtful, kind, intelligent, insightful, and very non-frumious agent that I met at the San Francisco Writers Conference over the weekend.  Another trait of hers is that there is a small but nonzero possibility that she may read this blog.  Did I mention stupendous and amazing?  I'm sure I did.

Last weekend I volunteered at the San Francisco Writers Conference for my third year in a row.  I absolutely adore (most of) the volunteers, speakers, and attendees.  Although after three years I find the content of the sessions a bit redundant, I still get a lot out of the conference.  Renewed enthusiasm, new contacts, a little new perspective and information, and most of all, fun.

I don't have much of a writeup about this conference.  I attended three of the four YA sessions I had wanted to hear, and I was assigned to Ransom Stephens' session about basic writing craft that was shockingly stupendous.  I worked the cafe and sold mediocre coffee at $3 per tiny cup (the hotel charged us $5 per cup).  I hung around with writers from Los Angeles, Salt Lake, Cincinnati, New Jersey, Florida, and--yes--even San Francisco.  I pitched two very kind and patient agents (did I mention stupendous and amazing?  oh, yes, I see I did) and waylaid a YA editor to bend her ear on some tough questions while waiting for the elevator.  And I did an awful lot of helping attendees find rooms, helping presenters remember to repeat the question, carrying boxes, etc.  Plus, since my wife also volunteered on Sunday and we had a room at the Mark Saturday night, we spent a pleasant Valentine's Eve in the city together.

All in all, a great weekend.

Today, the Day Job hauled me back in with a relentless efficiency and sucked all the life from my body before 2 p.m.  A little coffee reanimated my corpse, and by the boys' bedtime I was back in business and slapping together the query and pages.  Tomorrow:  the other wonderful, astounding, super-duper agent I met gets her query and pages.

Wish me luck.