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In a word, the conference was WOW! Completely overwhelming, exciting, and, just, wow. First, it was so nice to meet all my Blueboarder friends on Friday night for dinner before the conference. It's such an odd thing to meet an online friend in real life. Like you are just picking up where you left off conversation-wise, while your brain is goggling over the fact that someone known before only as MrsBear actually is named Ellen. (Hi, Ellen!)

This conference is unique in its set-up because you get to have a mentor for a 45-minute one-on-one session that you join again later for a five-on-five roundtable discussion. The other thing that is unique is the sheer number of editors and agents attending. I think there were 70 editors/agents and 70 writers. It felt like we were in the thick of the industry. For me, it was also fascinating to hear published authors like Eric Luper and Deborah Heiligman talk about the connections they made at this conference and continue to follow-up on at conferences like these.

So, we started the day with a funny and inspirational talk by Eric Luper, eluper, who reminded us that the mentors that we would soon meet wanted to find a good story as much as we wanted to give them one. Next, we had our five-on-five session where writers were encouraged to ask any question they wanted of the mentors in their group. My group of mentors was Timothy Travaglini, Senior Editor for G.P. Putnam's Sons, Kaylan Adair, Associate Editor of Candlewick Press, Jennifer Escott, Assistant Agent at Writers House (she was my mentor), and Mary Riskind, published author. Our fifth mentor couldn't make it. Anyway, we fired away questions based on each of our interests. My question was on the market for contemporary middle-grade books. I was reassured that there is still a great demand for them, and they don't see enough of them. Also, they see WAY too many werewolf stories.

Next, we had a panel discussion on using social media tools effectively, which I can sum up in one word--Twitter. Get thee on Twitter now!

We had lunch hobnobbing with the industry folks where we all tried to act natural and ease into our memorized pitches. Really, it was seamless. I'm sure none of us appeared overeager or desperate. After lunch, I met with my mentor, Jennifer Escott of Writers House. As an assistant agent, Jennifer acts as the gatekeeper, reading all the queries and sample pages before passing them on to a senior agent. For me, this was extremely helpful since I still need to get past the gatekeeper. She helped me rethink my query and gave suggestions for the first few pages of my manuscript. Then she answered all the questions I peppered at her for the rest of the time. 

We finished with another great speaker, Deborah Heiligman, deborah18, who encouraged us to take ourselves seriously as writers by having a writing space, making a bubble that tunes out the world during that writing time, and to carry a notebook at all times. Then she passed out waterproof notebooks so we could takes notes in the shower. That is how seriously she wants us to take ourselves. Mine's parked in the shower already, waiting for the magic.