I spent this weekend at the Emerald City Writers Conference in Bellevue, WA. It’s run by the Greater Seattle chapter of the Romance Writers of America every October. This is the third time I’ve gone and the second time I’ve gone as a chapter member. It’s a good conference, with lots of people taking over the Westin for three days.

There were three keynote speakers: Darynda Jones, Sarah MacLean, and Rebecca Zanetti. To my shame, because I’m still new to the genre and not extremely well-read in it yet, I didn’t know them. But they all impressed me and I’m looking forward to reading their books.

Darynda’s talk focused on aspects of being a writer—the challenges and demands and the need to constantly improve craft. She reminded us that even if we aren’t published, we’re still writers—it’s not a hobby. She also reminded us that it takes work, since “You can’t plow a field simply by turning it over in your mind.”

Sarah’s talk was mostly about how romance has a reputation for being silly and how stupid, insulting, and misguided that is. People dismiss the genre for many reasons, but often it’s because of the sex—but as she pointed out, sex is all about power. And in romance novels, women actually have power for once because they get to call some of the shots and enjoy themselves. Yay, feminism.

Rebecca reminded us that the work we do can be important, something that came up in the earlier talks, as well. We actually do impact people’s lives. We might not be the doctor giving the treatment, but we could be the author of the book someone using to comfort herself as she goes through that treatment. Helping people escape matters. She also pointed out that the best way to have success as a writer is to write the best book, which sells your next book.

All in all, the keynotes were inspiring but all the speakers felt relatable despite their levels of success. That’s one of the nice things about this conference—it makes everything seem attainable.

Besides the keynotes, I went to several good sessions. And then, I signed up for two pitch sessions and pitched my YA (written under a different name) to one agent and one editor because I’m still trying to get that one going. The agent liked it and asked for a large partial (up through the inciting incident, which is a little deeper into the book than some because there’s a faux inciting incident earlier on). The editor ended up asking for a full, but there was an awkward moment since I had misunderstood and they really only publish romance (there is a significant romance in the book, but I wouldn’t classify the novel as one). However, the definition’s a little flexible in YA and she liked my pitch so she decided to look at it anyway.

I tried to get a get a third pitch session with an editor at Penguin Random House to pitch my first romance. The manuscript was with my developmental editor for a second pass (though I got my feedback in my email during today’s keynote). I’m going to make necessary changes and send it to my line editor and then enter it in the RWA Golden Heart Contest, which is due in January. So, it’s close to being ready to send out. Consequently, I figured it’s time to start considering pitching it, even though I’ve been going back and forth about whether to go with self-publishing or try traditional. I worry about the expectations on authors in traditional publishing in terms of productivity (I’ve heard on multiple occasions that they expect you to generate 2 books a year or risk becoming irrelevant). But traditional publishers do at least some of the marketing and distribution work (even though authors are still on the hook for much of it), and that sounds good to me.

Anyway, I wasn’t able to get the extra pitch session. But then the very editor I’d wanted to talk to came into my last session of the day Saturday and sat next to me. We ended up chatting a bit during a break and I mentioned my reservations regarding productivity expectations. She was surprised and said that she’d heard that from someone else at the conference but that it wasn’t really true. In the end, I managed to tell her I’d hoped to pitch to her and she nicely asked what I write, so I actually did get to pitch to a third person. And she asked me to send the first 5-6 chapters once it’s ready to go. So that was pretty cool.