Grub Street Day 1

Already this writers conference is much better than the last one. I have learned a lot. First of all, I am glad I got a room at the conference hotel--The Boston Park Plaza. My room is very comfortable, and I can leave most of my stuff upstairs while attending the workshop sessions.

The first session was about social media, and the speaker gave us some excellent ideas, particularly the importance of joining Goodreads. He also said all authors need to be on facebook and Twitter and they need to have their own name as a domain, and perhaps a site for each book as well. He said we must all work very hard at promoting our own books.

The second workshop was about plot, and the speaker used the example of the Grimm Fairy Tale of Hansel and Gretel to illustrate what plot does in a narrative. In the end she likened plot to the original meaning of the work--a parcel of land. The plot is the land your story covers. She said a person sitting in a chair might be interesting, but it is not plot.

Then I had my meeting with the agent who read my sample chapters from I Just Want to Be Happy. Edward Orloff. He said the writing is good, which thrilled me. He said the length of my manuscript--30,000 words--is too short. I should get it up to about 50,000 words. He also said a more coherent theme might help. He also suggested my query letter concentrate only on the incident with Thich Nhat Hanh. He also found the incident with Sean in the prologue hard to believe. Ray said that so, so I will have to work on that. Just because it is true does not mean it is believable. In the end, Orloff said that if I expand and improve the manuscript, he would be willing to take a look at it.

After that I listened to a reading form this year's Grub Street Prize-winning book, which was very interesting. After that I wandered down the street and found City Place, which has a food Court. It is neat the dental clinic where I have been getting my implants, but this time I approached it form the other direction.