If you have ever wanted to attend a conference this is the one to do. Until March 1 there will be a discount.

http://www.writeonwhidbey.org/Conference/

I had a great time at the one day mini conference last year.  I met several unpublished writers like myself who I am still in contact with, as well as a few of the presenters. This means they were presenting, meaning people whose opinions matters and I would normally have very limited access to them. I actually got a chance to talk to them, they actually listened instead of running off to their next event. I held one captive in my car on the way back from a chat house and got some excellent advice about  a problem I was having with my editor.  

The chat house sessions afford much closer access to writers and presenters who were only too eager to answer questions. I love that. It is so neat to hear how these professionals are more like me than I had imagined, especially when they describe their own challenges and how they worked and thought about their own work before they were well known. This helps me feel there is hope and this isn’t just a big fat hazy pipe dream. I have been to PNWA and San Francisco. The speakers at these events were more like spectacles and there was hardly any way to interact with them on any personal level, there were just too many people there.

Conference fees are expensive. Travel to conferences is expensive. They are also large and impersonal compared to Whidbey.  This is not to say that I didn’t have a blast last year in San Francisco, but I didn’t have access to the presenters the same way I did at Whidbey. I also didn’t have the option to pick and choose what events to pay for and attend like Whidbey. You can attend one day or all days. You can meet agents and editors or not. You can have your manuscript critiqued by a well published author or the editor of your choice, or not. The atmosphere is laid back and relaxed.

Garth Stein is going to be speaking and presenting and everyone is very excited about this. I look forward to hearing him, he is such a big name, and surely has a lot to say for me, the eager fiction writer. But guess who else is going to be there? Drumroll pleeeze:  Priscilla Long.  Long time readers can skip this last part.

Priscilla Long wrote my favorite book on writing: The Writer’s Portable Mentor. If you want to know more I posted two  blog  entries about the book. I have found it exceedingly difficult to get in to a class with her, they fill up almost instantly and so the only way I have been able to do it is via this conference.  She will be presenting three times over the course of the weekend.