When I was interviewed for two local newspapers (The Greenbelt News Review and The Gazette) two years ago, one of the questions the interviewers asked me was my advice on how to get published. I recommended attending writers conferences. I know the annual Romance Writers of America (RWA) conference, and the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) conference, are great, but can tend to be a bit pricey once you pay for your conference fee, hotel, food, airfare, etc. If it’s not possible to attend a conference on a national level, there may be conferences, some of them only one day, that might be in your area. I do know that there are an abundance of Christian writers conferences all over the United States. It might be possible to find one in your area and attend it for a day or so, might be more economically feasible for some.

Here are a few that caught my eye when doing a google search. I have never attended either of these, but they did sound interesting. The first one is the Delaware Christian Writers Conference:
http://www.delawarechristianwritersconference.com/
I’ve received correspondence via email from John Riddle in the past, and I believe he does this conference each year? The only people listed on the faculty that I’ve personally met was Candy Abbott (met her at Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference last August, and also met her at the now extinct Mid-Atlantic Christian Writers conference), and Joyce Hart from Hartline Literary Agency (met her at Mid-Atlantic Christian Writers Conference and ACFW last September).

The other conference that sounded interesting was the Memphis Black Writers Conference. The link is below:
http://lawrence.wayne.tripod.com/vipmemphis/
Again, I’m not familiar with the faculty, with the exception of Sister Betty. I met her twice, both times at the Faith-Based Arts Conference.

I also wanted to add a little bit advice to my earlier posting about critique groups.I blogged about critique groups the other day. However, I’d like to expand upon what I already discussed. I’ve found that over the years I’ve heard bits and pieces of advice about critique groups from various writers. The writers who seem to be in a successful group are usually in a group where most of the writers are on the same level, meaning you wouldn’t have a person who just started writing yesterday in the same critique group as an author who has successfully published several books. That’s an exaggerated example, I know.

If the relationship has a multi-pubbed author, and a new writer, one who is just getting his/her feet wet in the writing world, then I’m not sure that’s called a critique group. The word mentor comes to mind, but I’ve also been told that a mentoring relationship is for encouragement and support, not to give a writing critique.

Until next time,
Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com