Are you home from the ACFW conference?  Finally unpacked?  I hope you came home filled with encouragement and new ideas on how to make your writing breathtaking. I came home to a clean house and smiling sons.  Nice!

Conferences can be overwhelming, between the requests for proposals or full manuscripts, new story ideas, craft lessons, marketing epiphanies and loads of new friends.  Don’t be overwhelmed.  Here’s a game plan of what to do after a writers’ conference:

1. Organize your contacts: Sit down a make a list of everyone you met, from editors to fellow authors, to newbies.
2. Reach out:  If they are editors or agents who gave you their time, even in an elevator to listen to your proposal, thank them.  If they asked you for a submission, thank them and tell them that you’ll be sending it.  If you have more work to do on it, give them an estimated time of delivery.  (more on that in a moment).  If they were fellow authors whom you enjoyed meeting – tell them that!  If you’ve met someone just beginning their journey, someone who feels overwhelmed, perhaps reaching out  to encourage them is a way to remind yourself of where you’ve been.  We learn by helping others.  
3. Create your game plan:  No doubt you’ll have come home with something you’d like to work on in your story.  If it is something you are going to weave into the plot or the first three chapters, knuckle down and do this immediately before you send in your proposal. If you have a list of new teaching tips to add into your ms, then make a list, and apply these, step by step in to your story. Don’t try and tackle it all at once – get one element down, then move to the next.
4. Respond to those requests for proposals: If you’ve received a request to send in a proposal, or a full, then, Yay! and Oh Boy, because now you have an open door that you want to use wisely.  If you know you aren’t ready, now that you’ve attended the conference, you may want to hold off submitting until you have applied these changes.  Sometimes if I have a list of revisions, I go ahead and apply them, easiest to hardest, to the synopsis and first three chapters.  I can fix the rest of the book while the agent/editor is reading over my proposal.  (however: if it is a full book rewrite, write to them and tell them you’ll contact them when it is finished.  You don’t want an agent to read your proposal, be excited about it, only to have you say…sorry, it’ll be six months before I get the rest to you.).

Let’s just talk about the “I must submit immediately” panic that most authors experience after a conference.

Here’s what reality looks like. An agent arrives home a few days after the conference (some of them have taken other trips to visit publishers while they are on the road and are only just getting back into their office this week) to a slew of mail.  They’ll take a few days just to sort through their mail.  Then, proposals will begin to arrive. They will stack them like cord wood on their desk (or on the floor next to their desk), maybe read a few query letters, synopsis and first few pages.  Those they like, they’ll send out to their readers.  They’ll do this in between taking care of their regular clients who will also have proposals and perhaps even contracts to negotiate after conference.  Maybe they’ll get to your proposal in a month.  Maybe not…but guess what – here comes Thanksgiving.  Then December – and nothing gets done in December.  So, suddenly it’s January and they’re still looking at the pile of proposals they received in October.  Or, they’ve read them through and haven’t found anything fabulous….

And, that’s when you’re rewritten proposal arrives.

My point?  Don’t rush into this.  You get one chance to impress them with your writing.  Take the time to give them a polished proposal, even if it takes until January.

The key is to keep communicating.  If it takes you until mid-November to rewrite, then simply send your agent/editor a Christmas note giving them an update on the story.  I promise they’re not waiting by the computer for your submission, but it’s courtesy to let them know what’s going on.

My advice: Follow up on every proposal request with the appropriate information:

1. A Thank you and your ready proposal
2. A Thank you, and an update on when you’ll send it.
3. A Thank you and an “I’m not ready yet, but can I contact you later when I am” request.

Don’t be overwhelmed. Just sit down and create your game plan.  Then work the plan.  If you have further questions, I invite you to apply for the 24 hour MBT Premium Members pass:  http://mbt24hrpass.mybooktherapy.com and attend our Members-only Peptalk on Thursday night.  We’ll be fielding questions, unraveling agent/editor speak and giving hints on how to apply all that teaching.

Have a great writing week!

Susie May