Have you registered for ANWA’s Writers Conference? It could change your life. The last few ANWA Conferences have changed mine. In honor of the upcoming learning opportunities, I thought I’d share a few of the classes I attended over the last few years that made such an impression on me.
I only remember one class from my first conference, Marsha Ward’s class on indie publishing. I wandered in there with no intention of being interested in the subject. I really was only there for Marsha. We’d never met, but I’d heard her name enough times over the weekend to be curious. Marsha’s enthusiasm for indie publishing caught my attention, even though I wasn’t interested in it for myself. Back then, I was querying my first novel, Master of Emotion. The process was new and exciting, and I wanted to go the traditional publishing route.
I must have learned more than I remember because I went home and revised my manuscript. The changes improved it and made me want to be published even more.
By the time my second ANWA Conference rolled around, I’d finished my second novel, Once Upon a Tour. I finished the novel about three weeks before conference—just in time to pitch! I learned so much pitching, especially about how hard it is to write a catchy, concise one-sentence summary. The whole process was challenging, but fun. Then, I was still in the proofreading stage with my novel when I sat in on Kelly Mortimer’s class on self-editing. I took her eight page handout home and used it to line-edit my manuscripts. By the time I finished, I had removed 5,000 unnecessary words from each novel. I was shocked and excited by the differences I could see in my writing.
When I finished my third novel, Supreme Chancellor of Stupidity, a few months later, I pulled out my editing handout from conference and cleaned up my manuscript before I had anyone else read it. Word’s Find and Replace commands became my new best friends.
You’d think that serving as ANWA’s Treasurer might have curtailed my class attendance at last year’s ANWA conference, and I’ll admit that I didn’t see every class I wanted. But two sessions helped me in my stage of writing. See, by then I had followed Marsha’s advice and dived into indie publishing, and a month before, I had self-published my first novel as an e-book. To publicize my writing and newly published book, I’d also started a blogspot blog. I was struggling with web issues and with the covers for my second and third novels when Conference jumped in to help. A class on cover design issues and another on online/website promotion answered my questions and inspired me to start a web page at www.dogdenhuff.com . My covers improved as well.
It shocks me how far I’ve come in four years and how critical the ANWA Conferences have been to my success. I now have three indie published novels, available in both e-book and paperback forms. I like my website, and I love my chapter meetings which are filled with funny, talented sisters. ANWA, and especially ANWA Conferences, have truly blessed my life.