The last time I went to a conference was over a decade ago: Drupalcon in May 2016. And no, I don’t count the the Calgary Expo. For me, conferences are about being exposed to new ideas and learning techniques (along with Q&A), and a bit of networking.

It’s that need to learn that brought me to When Words Collide. (Yes, it’s a play on words. Which also makes it a meta joke.) Now that I’ve oublished a book, and am actively trying to sell the next one, it seems necessary that I invest some more time in getting my professional act together.

(But, Geoff, didn’t you lose your job two months ago? Why would you pay for something like this without a book sale or a writing contract?

I bought the ticket months ago. Back then, it wasn’t an issue. The only issue now is how the annual trip to Ruskin ended up being at the same time. And now I’m the Bad Guy.)

The conference started yesterday. It’s lectures, panels, workshops, keynotes, and sessions all geared to address various aspects of writing. Like any great conference (yes, that word is chosen specifically), there’s just too much for any one person – even a team of six – to see it all. It’s fantastic and overwhelming.

Sessions start at 9. They end at 5. The only break is the 15 minutes between sessions. You have to plan for meal breaks. Even peeing has to be thought out, lest you move from your seat too late to find out that the next session in the room is highly prized and you can’t get in.

I’ve missed only one session: how to pitch a story (to a publisher). It’s a skill I need. Even with a couple of decades of marketing experience behind me, it’s bloody hard and I don’t grasp this industry nearly enough.

So far, though, the conference has been amazing. I’m exhausted, even though I’ve sat on my ass all day. It’s gaggles of information to process and question. (It also hasn’t helped the service that hosts my websites got hacked and I was distracted moving them.)

Example: today, I attended the “Query Slush”. (“Slush” refers to the piles of submissions that publishers have to sift through to find potential next projects.) This is about writing clear query letters (basically, what The Beatles’ Paperback Writer is about; by the way, it’s a terrible query letter).

The premise of the session is three industry experts listen to query letters and offer feedback: the good, the bad, the “for the love of the gods, don’t do that”. I think a quarter of all the notes I’ve taken so far are from that session.

I went to the IFWA (Imaginative Fiction Writer’s Association, aka my “writing club”) Improv after my last session (how to align speculative fiction with Hollywood). It’s a simple game: someone offers a word, like “hippocampus”, and small teams compete for the best sentence made from that word. Then everyone votes for the best reponse. But that sentence is part of a larger story that successive sentences have to support, no matter how ludicrous the word. (“Hippocampus”, by the way, became the name of an Irish elf: Hip O’Campus.)

And I was done. Too much in mind, too much to do at home. And I still have to get a good night’s sleep.

I still have a day to go.