1. Volunteer

You can save a lot of money on registration by volunteering–as much as 75% off the cost of attending. You can apply your savings to your travel costs or to consults and pitch appointments.

In addition, volunteering can put you in face-to-face contact with the editors and agents you might be pitching to later in this conference or at another conference in the future. In addition, you can see what works in a pitch and see just how exhausting a day of listening to pitches can be.

2. Pitch Only at the Right Time

Don’t corner an editor or agent in the hotel, at a meal, or, god forbid, in the bathroom to pitch them your book. Purchase a pitch appointment. If you are talking with an editor or agent outside of a consult appointment, only pitch them if they ask you to. And, no, I didn’t see the bathroom thing happen at the conference last weekend, but I did read a tweet yesterday from agent Colleen Lindsay about the time she was followed into the bathroom.

3.Don’t Ignore Opportunities

Acquisitions Editor Charlotte Cook hosted a session where she critiqued the first page of volunteer’s stories. She read the page aloud, sharing her thoughts and stopping at the point she would stop if she had received the page as a submission at work. I learned a lot from that session, but I would likely have learned even more if I had brought my own pages to be read.

Opportunities for free critiques, pitch practice, and other feedback abound at a conference, but hey are only going to help you if you take advantage of them.

4. Talk to People

Yes, writers are a shy and retiring bunch. But the face-to-face interaction with our peers is one of the most valuable components of a writers conference. Set a goal to talk to one new person in each room you enter. You might find that you like that so much that you talk to two or three people in each room.

Each time someone asks you what you are working on, you can practice your pitch. When you debrief a session with another attendee, you get a second perspective on what you learned and help cement your new knowledge. And you might meet a new friend you can bounce ideas off. Volunteering also helps with this, as you will likely be in a situation where you will need to talk to quite a few fellow attendees.

I had a great time at the Willamette Writers Conference last weekend, and I will definitely be going next year. Have you been to a conference? What tips might you share with conference newbies?

I will be volunteering at the Willamette Writers Conference this weekend, and the volunteer orientation is tomorrow afternoon.

Volunteering is a pretty sweet deal. You receive tremendously discounted registration with breakfast and lunch (with the option of a vegetarian lunch–gotta love the Pacific northwest). I’ll learn a lot about what goes on at a writers conference. In addition, having a job in common with other attendees will give me a conversation piece that should help me get over my fear of talking to people I don’t know.

I will be taking the morning shift all three days, so I’ll be free to attend sessions after lunch each day.

Find out more about the conference here. And, if you’ll be there, too, let me know. Maybe we’ll run into each other!