Home from Hippocamp with a Bunch of Thoughts about Writers Conferences

I’ve begun, and put aside, several drafts of a wrap-up post about my time at Hippocamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, this past weekend. (I was both a speaker and attendee.)

Partly I hesitated because it’s getting more difficult to distill every good thing I want to say about my personal experience and history with this conference (which, since it began in 2015, has come to feel like a kind of home base). But also because I wanted my post-conference report to be something useful to any writer who happens upon it, regardless of genre, location, finances, or personal conference experiences, etc. 

During several periods in my writing life I attended no conferences, and other times I could get to just a few, dictated by a confluence of budget, geography, logistics, day-job demands, family logistics. When I could attend, I had to be picky. 

I came to understand that a conference will not make me a better writer or a more published writer by itself. But the right conference can helping make one into a writer who better knows how to identify, create, pursue, participate in, and evaluate the writing life, career, projects, and submission/publication plan that will work best for me, and make me happy.

So, I thought I’d offer this list, and hope it has some value for others. All these things line up for me with the Hippocamp conference, and by extension might help you pick conferences.

What makes a writing conference right:

. It directly, seriously, fully, and openly addresses, embraces, and celebrates the genre or category of writing most important to you. If you can find it, specialization rocks! One big reason I love Hippocamp is that it’s focused on CNF writing. Yes, I learn a lot at conferences that aren’t so specialized, but a hyper-focused event means you are with your tribe. Everything that happens, each break-out session, panel, reading, or other element is for folks who write what you write.

. Enough of what’s on offer is for writers at your skill and/or experience level. Yes, it’s good when some sessions push you to extend your reach; that’s good for learning what to aspire to. But do you want to spend all day, or most of many days, feeling either completely overwhelmed because you have no idea what the speakers are talking about, or bored and antsy because you already know and have mastered what’s being covered.

. The mix, intent, and focus of material jives with what you want and need now. Only craft-related sessions? Hands-on (“generative”) sessions? Lecture style only? Workshops (with feedback)? Presentations with opportunities for Q-and-A? Marketing/submission/querying skills?

. The size fits. I love a mid-sized conference best so I can make personal connections. Small to mid-sized events usually also foster casual, follow-up interactions with speakers and presenters at meals, breaks, and just wandering about the venue—another thing I like. (I do occasionally like a huge conference, but for very different reasons.)

. The conference organizers respect every attendee, and don’t play favorites. This is one of those intangibles that, for me, can make or break a conference experience. At Hippocamp for example, I’ve heard attendees describe the organizers in ways you might reserve for your favorite teacher, coach, or BFF: they listen, help, and care. Every person on the grounds is IN THE CLUB. (I’ve attended way too many conferences where some writers are made to feel inadequate and lesser-than because they don’t “have a book,” are not sufficiently well-connected, and find themselves feeling left out in an us-and-them kind of way.) At Hippocamp, the club is everyone in the room. Look for that.

. The fees make sense. Who wants to be someplace where you feel the conference is mostly interested in your wallet? I happen to like conference fees that also include meals, coffee, snacks and parking; offer hotel room discounts; and small goodies that make me feel welcome. If I can get that, and it also lines up with reasonable travel costs, I’m in. (Don’t go broke attending conferences.)

. Everything’s included, but there’s also an a-la-carte add-on menu. One year at Hippocamp, I paid for agent pitch sessions, other years not. Twice I took a pre-conference workshop. Choices like that can add value to your time away from home, and (for someone like me who likes to cram every hour with something useful), make the conference a more robust writerly experience.

. There’s a little bit of fun built right in. Door prizes? A casual open mic? Fun snacks? Optional, casual meal meet-ups for when it seems everyone else has made dining plans? We’re writers, not robots, and only some find it easy to organize themselves socially.

My door prize from Hippocamp!

. The conference encourages, and facilitates, continued learning beyond the time limit of each program element. I like to leave a session with something that I’ll consult later (besides my own notes) -- handouts, recommended links, the speaker’s email address or resource website, maybe something I’ve been urged to generate during the session. Even better if (as is the case with Hippocamp), I can find some speakers’ entire slide presentations on the conference website later. 

. There's a balance between too much and just enough. One day? Four days? Five break-out sessions running concurrently? Or 25 to choose from simultaneously? A crammed daily schedule or one with breaks and free (writing?) time built in? Each is likable for different reasons, by different writers. What do you like at a conference?

. The organizers want your feedback. Whether it’s a matter of listening sincerely to an in-person complaint or suggestion during the conference, or providing and urging attendees to fill out post-event surveys, I like it when speaking up about what didn’t go quite right, what was stellar, and what might be a good future addition (or deletion), feels welcomed.

I’m sure I’ve left something out. What do you love about, and look for in the conferences you attend? 


Images: Crowd illustration - Flickr/Creative Commons-openDemocracy; others, mine.

Friends Don't Let (their writing) Friends Go It Alone

Recently I've had several occasions to mentally review a rather longish list of people who have been helpful to me in my writing life over the past ten years. 

In either some rather large way, and/or in many smaller ways, folks have lent encouragement, provided helpful introductions to others, listened, read pages and offered feedback, and given me sound and thoughtful advice--including some of the hard-to-take kind of counsel that I almost certainly ignored for a while until, finally, I was truly ready to hear. 

Lately, I'm simply feeling thankful. Lucky. And a lot more aware and comprehending of the genuine need and significant benefits of a true literary community, one that operates on mutual respect and reciprocity. I may not be able to "pay back" each kindness or bit of assistance in equal measure, and there are certainly some professional leg-ups and/or personal favors that aren't even in the category of possibly paying back anyway. 

But I've come to accept that this is okay. 

Because I realize that every time I try to help a writer in any small way I can, it acknowledges and honors those who've have helped me--sometimes in ways or at a time when I have wondered, why? Why is this eternally busy, extremely successful, definitely stretched-to-the-limit person--who surely has more important or inviting writing-world requests/tasks to attend to--inexplicably helping little old me?

As my father once explained long ago when I asked why he helped so many people--in business, in the neighborhood, in the extended family: you help because you can. Because you have been blessed with something you can share. Because you remember what it's like to need help. Because when you help someone, they'll help someone else. And so it goes. 

Dad also taught me not to be afraid to ask for help. You may have to swallow hard and psych yourself up first, but ask. I've been asking a bunch lately, and trying not to feel guilty about it. Trying to remember that most people actually want to help others. 

Sure, some folks will disappoint (I've heard a few No's recently). That's okay, too. That's why--as Mom once said--you need more than one friend, so that when you want to go to the pool and your bestie isn't around (or is temporarily mad at you), you won't have to sit in the hot backyard alone.

Some days you grumble about the stuff you don't have on your writing resume yet, the things may never get to publish or do, the writing world goals you are sure you can't possibly accomplish. 

Other days--like today, for me--you look around and see nothing but blue sky. Because you're being held up.

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-EmsiProductions

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- April 21, 2017 Edition

I'm seeing a big uptick in readers here lately, so welcome! For those who don't know: it's called Friday Fridge Clean-Out because years ago, when I began sharing links, it mirrored the way I fed my family on a Friday night--clearing the fridge of all the tidbits we'd accumulated during the week. (Nowadays, I just call for pizza!). Enjoy.

> My friend Laraine Herring shows us how to write about illness/medical events without a smidge of self-pity. Please read her "Robot Kisses." 

> When I once fell, breaking three front teeth and cutting up my face, someone told there must be a reason. My (slightly annoyed) conclusion: I'm clumsy. Maybe that's why I loved "Being Leery of Everything Happening for a Reason and Other Takes by Ariel Levy," at The Riveter.

> I concur with the headline of this excellent article by Bahar Gholipour, at the Science of Us: "Writing a Memoir Is a Strange Psychological Trip Through Your Past."

> Not sure what to do next with your (writing or any) career? Try Delia Lloyd's approach and ask your future 90-year-old self.

> At semester's end, Aubrey Hirsch gives her college creative writing students a comprehensive handout, "A Beginner's Guide to Publishing" which she's made available at her website.

> I recently discovered Denton Loving's blog, which periodically posts submission calls.

> Sounds like good news from the Boston Globe, for those with books in the pipeline, looking to book promotional stops in the Northeast: "Indie bookstores in smaller towns hatch plan to lure authors for readings".

> In her post, "When You Engage in Some Good Old Literary Citizenship Because, Really, You Just Want New Writer Friends with Whom To Bitch About Publishing," Steph Auteri says a few nice things about me and The Writers Circle, but what makes it terrific is how it confirms the benefits and strengths of having a literary community in person as well as online.

> Finally, in this week's student brag box: Carol Accetta, a writing coaching client, achieved her first publication, a lovely short work of creative nonfiction, "The Geese," at Gravel Magazine.  Former student Vincent Fitzgerald, who is also a therapist, published "I'm a Client And a Clinician" at Psychology Today, and a work of narrative nonfiction in the British literary journal Into the Void. Congrats!

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons - Scan Dog

The Post-Conference, Post-Vacation Post

Probably the smartest thing to do after a writing conference would be hurry home and burrow in, open a new document (or six!) for all the ideas that skittered across your mind while there. Or, better yet, take a solitary decompressing trip, that frees you to write and muse. I've done both of those things before.

What I hadn't done was return home, run a load of laundry, answer only the urgent emails, repack, sleep a few hours, and then set out with my family for an enforced four days of R&R—strictly away from my computer, all of us together in a small seaside house (often huddled in the A/C to escape daunting heat and humidity when not under a beach umbrella to escape frigid A/C), and on unspoken but rather clear orders from my husband not to disappear into my brain and essentially away from the moment

I had books. I had my notebook. What I didn't have was time to spread out all my notes from Hippocamp 2016 (a conference for creative nonfiction writers), and reflect, make notes, tackle follow-ups in the immediate manner I like, and to write a post-conference post.

But I'm back at my desk now (feeling of course as if I never did leave it!), so here goes.

If you read my post from the first day of activities this year, you already know how much I love this conference. You can scroll the live-at-the-time tweets, and read other post-Hippocamp coverage here and here and here, and at the official conference recap page. I'll just share some of what showed up in my notebook and program margins when I was sitting in the audience at various presentations.

First, I'll note that I was completely unprepared and overwhelmed by the lovely, positive reaction to my own session, "Writing About the Same Experience Across Multiple Pieces." Not only did people fill every seat in the break-out room (nerve-wracking and wonderful), but I was gobsmacked by how—for hours afterward and into the next day—so many writers approached me to say that the session opened up something for them about their own CNF work. I've never had that kind of response before, and almost cannot adequately express how much it meant to me. (And served as a timely reminder that when I'm in the audience and find value in a speaker's presentation, saying so afterward, face-to-face, can be a true gift to that person.)

Now, on to some of the small gems I came away with.

> In the Collage Essay Workshop (a pre-conference add-on), we got to talking about other fragmented forms, and Sarah Einstein shared her own definition of a segmented essay, which she thinks of as not exactly linear, but a series of interconnected stories that follow a timeline progression. Yes! That makes so much sense; something I think I intuitively understood but hadn't worked out a definition for.

> During a panel on query letters, one agent (sorry, didn't record who!) suggested a simple formula: "The hook, the book, the cook." What's the essential heart of the book?  What is the book about (slightly extended description)? Who is the writer?  Another noted that query letters should involve no more than "one scroll" of the email screen. Still another advised digging through the Manuscript Wish List's site or following #MSWL on Twitter.

> Wendy Fontaine, part of a panel on truth in nonfiction, shared some of her captivating research on memory and recall, brain anatomy and function. This, for example: "The brain makes no biological delineation between a true memory and a false one." Whoa! Certainly makes me want to think twice, or three, maybe four times when writing about what I think I remember clearly.

> At a presentation on designing and delivering a writers' retreat, Joanne Lozar Glenn advised working backward from the intended outcome. Ask yourself what you want the writers who will attend to take away from the experience. Newly generated pages? A notebook of ideas? Feedback? New process skills? Community? A combination? Something else?

> In a talk on incorporating science into CNF, Jeannine Pfeiffer, writer and scientist, suggested ways to track down data and experts without spending a lot on abstracts or other access to scientific journals—such as using Google Scholar; the Public Library of Science; asking a professor friend to let you search on Academia.edu or Researchgate.net; gaining in-person access to a local university library; and searching the terms "open access journals" + "your topic".

> At a session on content marketing, Kelly Kautz noted that for writers who are marketing themselves, their books, and/or their services, it's wise to tame the intimidating monster that is analytics data, focusing only on areas that are meaningful to you. Identify keyword combinations that work, and then purposely use them in posts or social media exchanges. That means, for me, posts incorporating the word combinations "New Jersey… Editor" "Writing teacher…NJ" and "NJ…writing coach," might be in my future.

> Jim Warner, on a panel about literary citizenship, invited writers from everywhere to submit audio files from literary events, especially interviews with authors, for consideration for his podcast, CitizenLit.

> Finally, it would be impossible to sum up all the wonderfulness that was Mary Karr's keynote address, so I'll leave you with these notes:

On writing about family: "A dysfunctional family is any form of family with more than one person."

On stories within memoir: "Memoir is, by its nature, episodic. Everyone has stories."

On melodrama: "Don't write how you suffered. Write how you survived."

On writing from reality: "Don't exaggerate. Trust that what you experienced was enough."

On blame: "Judge yourself more harshly than anyone else."

On her writing process: "One sentence at a time. There's no strategy. Jump lump along. Six hours or 1000 words a day, whichever comes first."

On revision: "Make the ugly parts prettier. Make the pretty parts better. And if you can't, cut it out, because you don't want to be boring."

There was so much more. I suspect it's all going to be buzzing around my writer's brain for weeks or months to come, and maybe as long as it takes to get back there in September 2017. Which is what I want out of a conference after all.

Images - Beach umbrella: Flickr/CreativeCommons - Monkeyatlarge - Memory stone: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Tim Green aka atoach