Conference Notes and Insights: Part 2

By Lacey Gunter

Here is my last set of notes and insights to share from WIFYR14.  Hope they are helpful.

Notes and insights from J Scott Savage:

1. When your confidence is shot as a writer it can severely impede your creative process and motivation.

2. If you define your personal success on how well a book sells or how well it meets sales expectations, you will inevitably find yourself thinking you're an unsuccessful writer, no matter how well you write. Your job is to write great books, it is the publishers job to sell them.

3. In some situations your participation in helping market a book will have no effect on sales and you can use up all your profits trying. In other instances your participation in helping market a book can have a sizable effect. It is difficult to predict before hand which will occur though. So if you enjoy the marketing, go for it. If you don't, spend your time writing your next great book and don't feel guilty.


Great idea from Shawn Stout:

Write down what your current writing schedule/routine is. Next write down what you would consider to be your ideal writing schedule/routine. For most of us, it is unlikely you'll be able to change enough in your life to make your ideal a reality. But, comparing the two, you may be able to find one aspect you can change today that will bring you closer to your ideal.


Notes and insight from Michelle Witte:

1. Don't take the time to tell the reader things are typical, just let the reader assume it.

2. You don't need adverbs if you use strong verbs.

3. The level of visual detail needed in today's publishing market is far far less than what it was before the internet was around. People's attention spans are much shorter and the world is a smaller place where people are much more exposed to different environments.

4. Remove redundancy in your details. Respect your reader enough to have gotten the information the first time.