Workshop Adventures

A few weeks ago, I got to attend the Minnesota Writing Workshop, a writing conference in the Twin Cities. I left feeling energized even if it started out with a bit of a hiccup.

I signed up to pitch several agents at this conference, something I’d only done once before, at a conference 10 years ago. At that time, I’d had no understanding of pitches and only a meager understanding of the publishing world, and I’d failed miserably. (Looking back, I’m grateful that old story from 2014 never made it further than the query trenches as it simply wasn’t ready.) This time, 10 years later, I felt confident, I understood the world of querying, and I had several, stronger pieces of writing behind me. I chatted with and reassured the other nervous “pitchers” as we huddled in the doorway outside of the room where the 15 or 20 agents were crammed in each with their intimate slice of space. We prepared to dash into the room when our time was announced for our 10 minutes with an agent’s undivided attention.

The woman “guarding” the door (I use this term loosely as she was very chill) called for the 9:40 pitch, and everyone with that timeslot hurried in. You can imagine my surprise when some other woman sat directly in front of the agent I was meant to speak with at 9:40. I panicked, quickly glancing down at my email again: yep, I was in the right place at the right time. I overheard the woman introduce herself, though, and I didn’t want to butt in, so I simply slipped back to the doorway and explained to our timekeeper what had happened.

“Do you need me to kick her out?” she asked. “Can I do that?” she wondered as an afterthought. She was only a college student who had been wrangled into this by an enthusiastic English professor who’d heard they needed more volunteers.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I assured her. “But can I see the master list? Maybe my emailed time was wrong.”

We compared lists, and I saw that the woman who had stepped in for “my” agent was slotted to meet her in the next ten-minute frame.

“Oh, this is no problem!” I assured the timekeeper. “She accidentally switched times with me. I’ll just swap with her, and nobody will be any wiser about what happened.”

The timekeeper was grateful, I felt much calmer by entering my “peacekeeper” mode, and I got a few extra minutes to practice my pitch with the other writers pacing in the hallway. When my new time came, I strolled in with confidence. I’d just solved a minor crisis and I was ready for whatever else the day had in store for me.

I loved soaking up the writer energy of the conference, learning more about the publishing field, and being able to meet editors and agents. I ended up completing four pitches (one for my memoir and three for my speculative adult fiction). One agent even told me specifically that she liked me and to send her a query even though the genre I’m publishing is a tough one to sell (essentially adult superhero fiction, though it’s really more upmarket or Book Club fiction that happens to have a superhero element, and she assured me that leaning in the “upmarket” direction will work in my favor). I had great conversations with three agents and really felt like I was doing what I was meant to be doing.

One thing I really enjoyed about pitching agents and interacting with them at the event was that it made them seem more like real people. Of course, I realize that the mysterious faces behind my QueryTracker submissions and countless query emails are human, but, at times, it’s difficult not to see them as complex guardians of the publishing world. I send material to them, and it disappears into some distant wormhole, never to be seen again. Occasionally, I’ll hear back. Interacting with them in person, I enjoyed hearing the depth behind their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, their favorite books, and their pet peeves from their actual mouths rather than via a bulleted list on their websites. And I got to witness their actual reactions to my story pitch, which were much better than I’d been imagining the reactions to be considering my lack of offers for representation.

Probably the most beneficial part of the conference was the first page “critique fest” where a panel of agents sat at the front of the room and listened to a speaker anonymously read the first pages of several manuscripts that the participants had submitted. They got through more than 30 submissions in the 75-minute time frame, though I lost track after 20. I didn’t submit my page because life is crazy and I embarrassingly forgot about it until that morning, but hearing and seeing the agents’ reactions firsthand were invaluable. They would share their thoughts briefly following each page, and it was fascinating and insightful to see the similarities and the differences; it truly is a subjective process as we always hear!

During the critique fest, the agents would raise their hands if there was a point when they would stop reading the first page and pass on the submission, and I have to admit that I was a bit shocked by how often that happened. Sometimes it was because it was a genre they were far removed from, but other times it was that the writing wasn’t as stellar as expected or the plot, setting, or tone were confusing or didn’t match the genre. One piece started in a place that was “too sad” to connect to the readers; another had a character that was “too annoying”. I was surprised to hear one agent say that, after hearing three sentences in a row with the same structure, she would have simply stopped reading– regardless of the content! It showed me that there is a depth to the quality of writing that they’re looking for, which I found oddly reassuring as sometimes it seems that the publishing world is so caught up in trends over substance.

Their responses had me quickly looking over my own first page later that weekend to ensure I didn’t have two complex sentences with the same type of modifier in a row (whew! I didn’t) and that my tone matched my genre (I’m fairly certain it does…though my genre isn’t straightforward). It also made a huge impact on me with just how quickly the work has to grab an agent’s interest. I actually had a huge realization about my story as a result, which changed my starting point slightly and made me feel much more satisfied with my opening pages. Reflecting on the panel and everything else I learned, I find that I’m feeling more comfortable in the publishing world every year. And I hope that’s a promising sign of good news to come. ❤️