My York Writers' Festival Experience

I was at the York Writers' Festival on Saturday. It's a three day event by I was only interested in the seminars on Saturday (and couldn't afford the entire event anyway).

Saturday was organized as 3 talks and 3 workshops (alternating) and I had my 2 one-on-one agent sessions amidst those.

The opening address by Katie Fford (distant relation of Jasper Fforde) was entertaining and added more data to my theory that 8-10 years seems to be about the modal time span for a hard-working, talented writer to get their first novel published (it took her 8 years). She also presented her ten tips to follow that would guarantee publication--summarized here as: write, write what you love, write in a fashion that works for you and don't get discouraged by any one opinion.

I was fortunate to hear a 'state of the sf/f/h market' presentation by well-repsected UK SF/F/H agent John Jarrold. It's his opinion that the sci-fi market is recovering fastest in the UK, with the US still lagging a bit under the 'only fantasy sells' mentality. Australia is somewhere between the two. And I managed a brief introduction, card grab after the session.

The other workshops I attended were on 'what writers should know about rights' and a kind of day-in-the-life-of-an-editor type talk with Oliver Munson from Blake Friedmann, and Zoe King from Darley Anderson. Both were interesting, but not a lot of new information. However, I did manage to catch Zoe King after her presentation and gave a crude pitch for a science anthology that she was tentatively interested in. I got the go-ahead to send her more details.

My two one-on-one sessions went as well as could be expected. Signing up late meant that anyone with any interest in sci-fi was already booked, but John Elek and Jo Unwin were both friendly and helpful none-the-less. As a great help, Jo gave me the author of a well respected book on editing/revision of novels, something I've been looking for for a while. For anyone interested, check Amazon under Sol Stein (apparently the book titles differ on either side of the ocean).

I also met Isabella White, an independent agent (again, non-sci-fi). Interestingly, both her and John Elek, the first two agents I met, are Canadian (from Toronto). It seemed a little strange going through the last ten years of world travels to come full circle and meet two Canadians at this event.

Anyway, overall I felt the event was worthwhile for me. It almost feels like the official marking of the next phase of my writing career--namely, properly finishing the work and getting it out there. And it taught me that agents are not ogres, most of them are quite friendly and helpful.