Thank you to the following businesses and individuals whose contributions greatly enhanced the success of our Fall Conference.

An especially big THANK YOU! Cary Fellman for serving as Jade Ring Contest Chair for the last three years.

Thank all of you for all you do and for this extra effort to give.

The line-up of speakers at this fall's WRWA Conference in Janesville was absolutely capital. Not least of these was J. R. (Jenny) Turner: authoress, homemaker, and dynamo.

I've read one of Jenny's books, Stark Knight, and am now reading the second in the series, Silent Knight. I know Jenny from earlier conferences, and she's an active part of our online WRWA group. I already liked her. So.it's fun to be able to write about this Energizer Bunny's presentation.

She first talked about when she started writing and told us a cute story about her childhood introduction to writing. Then she told us why she writes: “We write to understand life better, ourselves.... Most authors struggle with life and how to put it down on paper,” she said, and illustrated.

Jenny intimated that she doesn't have a particular fondness for doing research-unlike the rest of us, I'm sure. She joined the Romance Writers of America, whereupon she was roped into mentoring others while still paying RWA a fee. That, she claims, despite the fact that she needed help herself.

Jenny revealed her favorite writing books: James R. Frey's How to write a damn good novel (I and II), Alice Orr's No More Rejection, and Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel.

Jenny said that she stayed constantly engaged and challenged herself: contests, Website with giveaways, blog, listserves, forums, networking, being constantly on the lookout for “what's hot and new” for subject matter and professional direction. She told us of the struggle to find an agent, and deciding against the traditional publishing market after a string of refusals and confusing incidents wherein agents and editors kept disappearing on her. She finally landed a contract with Echelon Press. Now, Bullet Proof Bride, Stark Knight, and Silent Knight are all available for those of us who enjoy action, adventure, and romance. My Biker Bodyguard is just around the corner.

Jenny gave us an exercise to pick our three favorite authors, and from these decide what we'd be best at writing. Why? Because these are the things that excite us.

Jenny talked about promoting yourself: podcasting, networking online, speaking, newspapers, etc.

A few items discussed during Q&A: podcast promotion through U-Tube trailers, romance writer's groups, contracting without the help of an agent, the time of day to write, using Lulu.com for self-publishing a book. Other items can be seen at Jenny's blog.

Tom Montag advised us to pick and choose from his 99 propositions, and use those which work for us. I managed to scribble down about 96 keepers. Contemplative, witty, hard-edged, or metaphoric, they all rang true-even the ones that contradicted each other as truths sometimes do.

Still, his opening proposition, repeated at least four times, is surely his central theme: Listen to the poem. What is it trying to say? Let it follow its own form. It is a chrysalis-a midwife-a radio. (It's not too hard to figure out those metaphors.). It is all about the poem, not about you. The poem knows. Listen to it, not to those around you who have their own agendas. Tom's presentation offered several pithy quotes.

Using the examples of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Lorine Niedecker, Montag tells all writers, “Believe in yourself when no one else does. And always, listen to the poem.”

Milwaukee literary agent, Jack Byrne, presented a comprehensive analysis of an agent's role in the publishing process, beginning with guidelines to selecting an agent. He cautioned against unscrupulous agents who charge reading fees or suggest payments to book doctors. A reputable literary agency does not expect any monetary output until the manuscript is sold.
A literary agent's help isn't necessary for short fiction, technical writing, or poetry, but a writer should have representation for full-length fiction and non-fiction proposals. The principal reason is to protect the writer's rights, negotiate advances and payout schedules, and to act as a buffer between the writer and editor.

To stand out and improve your chances of finding an agent, write a great cover letter and submit only your best work.

There's a reason 99 percent of manuscripts never get past the first read at a publisher or literary agency, Chris Roerden said in her Saturday afternoon presentation, "Voice-Sounds from the Submission Pile," at the WRWA Fall Conference: Most writers fail to polish their work from "average" or "amateur" writing to an "above average," professional level.

Roerden, who has a 40-plus year background in writing, publishing, teaching, and editing, said slush pile screeners, the first readers of unsolicited manuscripts, have a job to do, and that "is to lower the piles as quickly as possible. They dismiss (manuscripts) very quickly. They have to, that's their job."

Screeners do that by looking first for sloppy appearance-manuscripts not formatted as the publisher or agent requested, or the genre of the work is not clearly and precisely defined.

Pass those initial tests, and the screeners will actually start reading your work, Roerden said, looking for signs of weak writing that will get the work rejected. Some signs of amateur writing include a description or back story “dump” and extraneous information told too early. "Not in the first chapter," Reorden said.

She told us to avoid chit-chat, unfocused dialog; eliminate past perfect tense; dull writing; unnecessary transition scenes. These are other "clues," that a manuscript is not professional enough to publish.

Roerden's latest advice book for writers is Don't Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your Manuscript from Turning Up DOA, in which she lists the simple mistakes that can get your work rejected.

Patricia Fry has contributed articles to two hundred magazines and written twenty-five books. She is an editor, ghost writer, promoter, and self-publisher. The president of Small Publishers Artists and Writers' Network (SPAWN), she is the author of The Right Way to Write Publish and Sell Your Book.

Patricia began her presentation by informing us that if we wanted to write a book, we should look upon the actual writing as our last step. She eased our puzzled minds by outlining the steps that should come first.

Patricia concluded that if writers are going to successfully write, publish, and sell their books, they must shift from the creative right-brain process to the rational left brain. This can save time in the long run, and, by focusing your writing in the proper direction, you may very well facilitate the creative process and make things easier and more gratifying when you switch back to the right side of your brain and write your book.

A feisty and articulate speaker, Jack Magestro tackled the topic of publishing. He explained that there are two ends to publishing: self-publishing-or vanity publishing-on one end, and traditional publishing in the other. Vanity publishing (Print on Demand and other forms of self-publishing) entails the most risk for the author, as the editing, design, distribution, and publicity fall largely in the author's lap. The rewards for self-publishing are lower publishing costs, higher percentage of sales returned to the author, and the ability to promote yourself the way you want.

On the other end of the scale, traditional publishers take all the risk-finding editors, typesetters, graphic designers, and others who do the legwork to promote your book. Their amount of involvement is the reason why it is hard to get a publisher to take a risk on a new author.

To make publishing our writing easier, Jack suggested we find a way to manage the risk, finding a middle ground between doing everything ourselves and waiting for someone else to do all the footwork for us. That means doing some of the work ourselves. Suggestions included finding someone to edit your writing objectively, designing your own work through programs such as InDesign or Microsoft Word, submitting your work to objective readers and working their comments into your manuscript, and even producing a full mock-up of your book, similar to a galley proof.

Jack suggested there are several programs on the Internet that can help you create a professional-looking document. www.lulu.com has a free utility that helps distill (translate) Microsoft Word documents into PDF files. Once you convert your document, he recommended having the PDF file mailed to you so that you can see how it looks. Then you can have your manuscript printed and bound with a soft cover in up to five copies for a very low cost just to demonstrate the final product. According to Jack, the closer you are to producing a manuscript in its final form, the more likely you are to get it read by an agent or publisher, and the less risk there will be, both for you and the publisher.

Final submissions and production depends on how much we are willing to risk; how much we are willing to put out to succeed. Self publishing can be a bonus to getting picked by a larger publisher if you have a selling record. But preparing a professional looking document will take you one step closer to being considered by a larger publisher.