So a couple weeks ago, I heard of this for-charity writer’s conference going on in Sandy this weekend. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the full event, but I did go to the evening extravaganza with fellow writer and quarkie Jimmy.
The evening session was great! There were some excellent performances by Divine Comedy and singer/songwriter Nancy Hanson, and a giant question/answer panel with such local writers as Shannon Hale, James Dashner, Sara Zarr, Brandon Mull, and Brandon Sanderson, among others.
My question for the panel was “with the way the market is changing, what advice do you have for new writers trying to break in right now?” Most of the answers were pretty standard fare, such as “don’t write for the market, write what you love,” “don’t let all the crazy speculation keep you from writing,” and, perhaps implied more than spoken, “no one really knows how things are changing; just keep writing.”
At the signing afterwards, though, I was hanging out with Brandon Sanderson, and he had some interesting things to say on the subject. When asked about getting an agent, he said that new writers should follow the blogs of the agents to whom they want to submit and join the conversations going on there.
Let me just say that Brandon is better to his fans than practically any other authors I know–and that’s saying something, because I have yet to meet an author in-person who wasn’t friendly and gracious. Maybe it’s something about sf&f; the community tends to be really good to its own.
Anyway, even with all the fame he’s gained from the Wheel of Time (he’s basically Tor’s biggest superstar fantasy writer right now), Brandon is still very accessible and down-to-earth. He makes a special effort to remember his fans, and greets them by name (or by some other tag if he can’t remember names) when he sees them. One of the guys asked if he could take a picture of Brandon with a message to his son, and Brandon not only took the picture but posted it to his twitter pics.
Overall, the event was a good opportunity to rub shoulders with other authors and aspiring writers from the area–and in Utah, there is certainly no shortage of either one. Chatted with Dan Wells and Rob, an old friend from the first 318 class I took at BYU, as well as others. Besides that, the money went to buy books for low-income kids across Utah–how can you not feel good about that? Great event–I’m glad I could go.
Sounds like it was a good event. There’s things like that going on fairly regularly in the area, it seems. =]
Sounds like a lot of fun! Wish I went. :/ And that was nice of Sanderson.