February 15, 2010

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.

8 comments:

fairyhedgehog said...

It sounds like a wonderful weekend. Good luck with the queries.

jjdebenedictis said...

Yay! Good luck! And congratulations on acquiring temporary Koala armor. I'm hoping to manage that this month also.

Aniket Thakkar said...

All the best! We have blogcamp over here this Saturday. But I'm probably going to miss it cause of work. :(

Merry Monteleone said...

It does sound like an excellent conference, Pete. Good luck on the query. My fingers and toes are crossed for you.

Chris Eldin said...

Awesome Pete! I'm beginning to find that these conferences are worth their weight in gold!

PJD said...

FairyHedgeHog, it was indeed a wonderful weekend. Thanks!

JJ: Thanks for the congrats. Koala armor is to be coveted.

Aniket, what it blog camp? Is that like band camp, only for... um... bloggers?

Merry: Thank you! Don't trip with the crossed toes.

Chris, you win the award for the best pun novel reference couched in a mixed metaphor. Well done!

Update on this post: The second superduper awesome agent has yet to receive her query or pages. Day Job has been just that all-consuming.

Aniket Thakkar said...

Its an un-conference about effective blogging, SEO/monetizing techniques and community building.

But having gone through your work history over FB I know you've done it all before. :)

Bernita said...

Oh yes, the best, best, bestus luck, Peter!
That's all you need, you already have the writing stuff.