Algonkian Writer Conferences / WebDelSol

bobdenny13 · Feb 28, 2011

IceCreamEmpress said:
Several very positive testimonials have been shared in this thread, including yours. This subforum is for people to share their opinions of all agents, publishers, workshops, and services for writers. People have shared their opinions about Clarion and Bread Loaf and Virtual Paradise and other writers' conferences here; why shouldn't they talk about the Algonkian Writers' Conference as well?

Since HapiSofi--and I've just found out who she is--posted her character assassination about me and Algonkian, there has been nothing but negative, really unnecessarily sarcastic postings with implications that are both unfair and real wrong, by folks who have not been to the workshop, or who have spent one or two days there and left.

MacAllister · Feb 28, 2011

Don't spam us, Bob. If people want to post about their own experiences here, that's terrific. They can register an account (notice "an" account, not multiple accounts) and post about their own experience, observations, and insight, just like everyone else.

But you're not going to cut and paste pages and pages of testimonial crap from the Algonkian marketing packet.

Stacia Kane · Feb 28, 2011

bobdenny13 said:
Since HapiSofi--and I've just found out who she is--posted her character assassination about me and Algonkian, there has been nothing but negative, really unnecessarily sarcastic postings with implications that are both unfair and real wrong, by folks who have not been to the workshop, or who have spent one or two days there and left.

Well...thanks, Bob, for categorizing my last post to you as negative, sarcastic, unfair, and wrong. Here I thought we were having a friendly and positive conversation.

HapiSofi · Feb 28, 2011

bobdenny13 said:
Addressing what HapiSofi Says about Robert Bausch--You are definitely wrong, sir. The DLB award is all over the internet as the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook Award.

Okay, that changes things. There are in fact about 800 mentions of the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook Award. That's about twice as many hits as the SFRA Student Paper Award, and about a hundredth as many as the Golden Duck, but it's real.

BobDenny, I have to believe it's never previously occurred to you that you're the only recipient who refers to it as the DLB Award, and that this might be a problem. Same goes for noticing that some of your literary colleagues have advised aspiring writers to invent nonexistent awards to make their CVs look better, or made a big deal out of having been "nominated for the Pulitzer Prize" (impressive, unless you know that anyone can nominate anything for the Pulitzer), or turned up with sumptuous cover quotes which were supposedly mailed to them by major literary figures just before they died.

I'm sorry. I'd rather live in a world where people who think no evil find none, and I particularly dislike inadvertently giving grief to the innocent when I'm looking out for bad guys. I can usually tell which is which.

The award for distinguished volume of short stories was awarded to both me and R.H.W. Dillard in 1995.

Have you tried Googling dillard "yearbook award" 1995? I'm getting one hit that isn't an accidental combination of those terms, and it's this conversation on AW. This has got to be the worst-publicized award in literature.

If you don't believe it, perhaps you could query the publication itself, --

Dead Letter Box, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, Don't Look Back, Dynamic Load Balancing, Dual Live Buffer, Defect Liability Bond, Direct Laryngobronchoscopy, Dolby Labs? If I'd been able to tell the actual name of the award, this wouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

(Also: fact-check something by asking Gale Research?)

instead of relying on the internet, which is a source of information that is not allowed in any freshman composition class for real research since it is so completely inaccurate and unreliable.

The internet is reliable and unreliable just like books are. If you're trying to find out whether something exists, and if it does exist who's talking about it and what they're saying, it's a superior resource. The absence of a datum in a book just tells you it's not in that book. The presence of a datum in a book just tells you that datum, not who's using it and where.

I also won the award in 2002 for my novel, The Gypsy Man. Readers should pay attention to your bitter tone, --

Not bitter. A bit judgemental.

before judging Michael Neff and the Algonkian Workshops.

I hope the readers will judge me on my information, my reasoning, and my history on this board.

Are you aware that I'm not the only person who's criticized the pitch conferences? Or that the descriptions here of what happens when you criticize Michael Neff and his enterprises are not only accurate, but can be checked? The internet doesn't preserve all its conversations, but many of the ones being discussed are still extant.

I do regret chasing after your record, both because you're innocent and because it was a big waste of my time. I'll stand by the rest of what I said. Pitch conferences are a useless waste of time, money, and effort.

You know, you could just ask me to take down my remarks about you.

(They are named, by the way, for the park in which they are offered. Nothing suspicious or nefarious going on there either.) I've helped a lot of people find their voice in those workshops and I don't deal with pitch talks,

That's good.

I deal with the art and craft of writing, as I have been doing for 36 years.

Funny; so do I.

(American University, 1986-87; 1994. University of Virginia, 1987. Johns Hopkins University, Summer 1987. University of Maryland Baltimore, 2007. George Mason University, 1981-86.) I help as much as I can to introduce people to this scribbler's life; among the myths I try to help them deal with is the largely false one that editors and publishers in New York know a damn thing about writing.

What we know about writing gets field-tested on a regular basis. Nobody pays our salaries if we get it wrong.

Please don't assume I'm unfamiliar with your universe.

And the bitter attack on writing programs is getting really old. Nobody complains about a good music school or acting studio; nobody objects to the study of art.

No one in this thread has objected to writing programs per se. Take your carton of moldy, threadbare old Philistine costumes and put them back in your car. We are not doing that script, and we're sure not going to put on your costumes.

Tell me: when you see students racking up tens of thousands of dollars in student loans in order to major in creative writing at university, do you think they're assuming they won't make any money as writers after they graduate?

Is "finding their voice" what they want, or is it just all they get?

When struggling writers shell out lots of money to attend a weekend session on how to pitch books to agents and editors, are they doing it because they're content to write in their spare time, for no pay and no audience?

Do you think art can only be created by people who are independently wealthy, or who receive outside financial support?

Does it matter that learning to pitch books face-to-face is almost completely irrelevant to the life of a commercial writer, or that unpublished novelists are the class of writer least likely to sell a book via pitch? Does it matter that most of the conference attendees don't know that?

It's only creative writing that is scurrilously attacked by outsiders and people who couldn't cut it or get into a good writing program;

Oh, yessir, bunch of plebeians, that's us. Every day when we're toiling away in the salt mines of literature, we lament the cruel fate that kept us from learning to write like those fancy writing program guys we see in the slushpile. An editor a bunch of us know got a letter from one of them that really and truly said, "Enclosed is my manuscript. I think you'll find it a cut above the sort of crap [your company] usually publishes." She's kept it ever since.

and they are always attacked with the exact scorn and envy apparent in your post.

Oh, nonsense. They are not. And if you think there was envy or scorn in my tone, you were not reading carefully. Finding one's voice is all very well, but finding one's ears is just as important.

Do you honestly think the only reason anyone would criticize Michael Neff is because they wish they were just like him? Good god almighty.

You say you are an editor in New York? I would not be surprised.

Oh, hogwash. You've been published by New York houses and reviewed by East Coast literary establishment reviewers, and you've never hesitated to say so. Furthermore, you're doing a bog-standard canned rant about horrid mercenary New York editors that was old when my grandmother was young. Stay out of balloon gondolas until you've got yourself under control.

And for your information, a lot of very well known writer's workshops--Aspen, Sewanee, etc.--provide a slew of working agents and editors who are there so writers in the workshops can "pitch" their work.

Yes. I know. Been there. At the good ones, you get to see what they've written. Completely different from what we're discussing.

Two of the writers I worked with this past summer, Dale Myers and Emily Miller have successfully "pitched" books and gotten representation from agents,

Pitching books to agents is possibly the only time unpublished writers will do such a thing. Once they have an agent, the agent does the pitching. This is not a core skill for writers.

and editors who have promised to read and consider their work.

Did you somehow miss the part where I said that no matter how good the pitch, all it would accomplish was that the editor would ask to look at the manuscript? Come to think of it, I said that more than once.

What writers--real writers--

Careful. A lot of the people in this forum are real writers. Some of them also teach writing.

provide students in workshops and writing programs is an education about the student's own work; where it is very fine and where it is derelict.

Yup. That's what editors, writing teachers, fellow workshop attendees, critique groups, beta readers, and some agents do.

Plenty of people work very hard to do just that. And they are not in it for the money.

I hate to break it to you, but it's a commonplace of the writing and publishing world that we could all be making more money doing something else.

Standard joke:

Q. Why are we in publishing?

A. For the money, the power, and the glamor.

Cracks us up every time.

I wonder how many editors promise to get a fledgling writer's work "ready" for publication for a couple thousand dollars or more?

In-house editors? None that I've ever heard of. Working with the author on their manuscript is part of the job.

There are reputable freelance editors who'll work on a manuscript. Quite a few of them are former in-house editors whose companies went away. They won't work on no-hope books if they can help it, and they aren't cheap.

There's a piece of bad writing advice going around the net that says you must never, ever submit a manuscript until it's been gone over by a professional editor. (One of the people who says this is Michael Neff, because he doesn't know squat. Never mind that for the moment.) This piece of advice originates with scammers who either want to sell editorial services, or want to bunco-steer writers they've already snared to their favorite "professional editors", who will take them for several hundred or thousand dollars, then send them back. No one's ever caught one of these "editors" in the act of paying a kickback to the scammer, but you can draw your own conclusions.

And there's a further scam. You know how there are always people who want to be writers? There's a much smaller number of people who for some reason want to be editors. Some of the scammers -- fake agents, bunco-steerers for vanity presses, other scum -- advertise for people who want to be editors. They pay them a pittance to edit the manuscripts of these writers who've already fallen into their hands, then charge the writers thousands of dollars for the edit.

This area you're in, the Bewares Board at Absolute Write, has been tracking, analyzing, and publicizing scams like these for years. I have contributed a great deal of unpaid time and effort to this, and others here have done more.

Go ahead and keep sneering, if that's what you want to do.

I wonder if it would be fair to condemn all editors because of those few who do that?

No. And have we indiscriminately condemned all writing programs, or writing workshops? No again. You can put your straw men back in your car next to those moldy old Philistine costumes.

Some of our GREATEST writers attended writing workshops: Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'connor, Alan Gurganis, Jane Smiley, my twin brother Richard Bausch, John Irving, Henry Taylor, Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, Madison Bell, Richard Wiley, and on and on. It's quite a long list of the most distinguished writers of the late 20th century and of the early 21st.

Yes yes yes, and there are lots more you don't know about. Workshops can be an excellent thing. No one's said otherwise. The specific objection is to the Algonkian Write & Pitch Conferences.

I don't know if you edit fiction, or what you edit, but you should know better. I am not surprised that you don't.

That's the best you can do? "I am not surprised"? Malarkey. You are too surprised. If you'd had any idea that there was a problem, you'd have rewritten your standard bio.

What's really going on is that your nose is out of joint, and you're reaching for a standard set of cliches about us wicked editors. I refuse to be offended by a set of off-the-shelf insults, and anyway I suspect you're a nice old guy underneath all this rubbish, so knock it off. Amend your bio. Put your feet up and breathe deeply for a while. And if you still want to come back and argue some more after that, please figure out what the real issues are.

Giant Baby · Feb 28, 2011

bobdenny13 said:
Since HapiSofi--and I've just found out who she is--posted her character assassination about me and Algonkian, there has been nothing but negative, really unnecessarily sarcastic postings with implications that are both unfair and real wrong, by folks who have not been to the workshop, or who have spent one or two days there and left.

Because the idea of a "Pitch and Shop" conference aimed at unpublished writers IS a terrible model. You're a published author, you must understand that. Writers need to learn to query agents, or query publishers who take unsolicited submissions. Period. Is there going to be an occasional exception to this? As with all things in life, yes. Should scads of writers toss away their money trying to learn how to be that exception when a) they could spend that money learning how to be the rule instead, or b) they could learn how to be the rule many other places for free? For my buck-ninety-eight and a handful of lint, no. No they should not.

ETA: Cross posted with HapiSofi...

James D. Macdonald · Feb 28, 2011

bobdenny13 said:
And I am not talking about academic writing either. That is a completely different animal, and as far as I know, strictly non fiction.

No, when I say "Academic fiction" I mean precisely what you're pleased to call "literary" or "serious" fiction. Only without privileging that particular subgenre as somehow superior to the others.

When I say "tell the truth" I'm not talking about factual truth. I'm talking about the truth of the human spirit--what George Garrett called the "news of the spirit."

Which is what I endeavor to do in my fiction, whatever you may choose to call it. With what success, others may someday say.

What is the difference between literary and genre fiction?

...
Genre or commercial fiction has as its purpose to divert us from what is true; to allow us to escape the truth.

This is nonsense, and it's time someone told you so.

...
...
...

Literary fiction is not interested in diverting the reader. The interest is in the truth about serious things.

Ah, then will you accept my definition that academic fiction consists of boring stories about dull folks whose trivial problems have obvious solutions? Because that is just as accurate as your definition of genre.

By the way, if you're going to talk about writing, please leave Hollywood out of it. Stick to literature, please.

But you don't go to a rock concert to find out what the last song will be. You go there to hear the whole thing and enjoy all of it, every bit of it from the first song to the last. You don't come to a work of literature worried overmuch about the ending, either. You're supposed to enjoy it all along the way.

In that case every single one of my books has been literature. Thank you.

One other problem with genre writing. Frequently there is a plot formula.
For instance, one of my favorite genre writers is Robert B. Parker. He was a great writer of detective fiction. I read 19 of his Spencer novels. He wrote a few more before he died this past year. (He was working at his keyboard when he died.) I once took all of the novels he wrote to my creative writing class. I handed each student a copy. I kept one at the front of the room. Then I flipped through pages to about a fourth of the way through the book I was holding. I asked each student to do the same. They marked their place. Then I asked them to look ten pages in each direction for the scene where somebody comes into Spencer's office, or accosts him in a restaurant, or stops him in the street and tells him in no uncertain terms that he better stop investigating the situation he is dealing with in the novel. Eighteen of the nineteen got it within ten pages. Only one had to go eighteen pages earlier into the text to find it. But it was always there. That's one of the faults of genre writing--the formula that must be adhered to, even by the best practitioners of it. This is something perhaps that editors insist on, I don't know. But it marks the work in ways that make it fairly perishable.

What you've found is one writer who wrote the same book 20 times. That isn't unknown; not in commercial fiction, nor in academic fiction.

A real test, to see if it's a fault of the genre, whether it's something that the editors insist on, or if it's a problem of that particular writer, would be this: Take twenty detective novels by different authors: A Parker, a Chandler, a Hammett, a Spillane, a Leonard, an Elroy, a Grafton, and so on. See if you can do the same trick.

Can you guess what you'll discover?

Deleted member 42 · Feb 28, 2011

bobdenny13 said:
What is the difference between literary and genre fiction?

If you want to write literary fiction you should be wary of stories where the conflict is resolved, where the trouble just goes away. That is the stuff of genre and entertainment fiction. That sort of work doesn't usually last much longer than the next boating season.

The kindest thing I can say about this is that it is charmingly idiosyncratic.

bobdenny13 said:
One other problem with genre writing. Frequently there is a plot formula.

Sir, I would like to direct you to the magnum opus of Vladimir Propp The Morphology of the Fairy Tale. All narrative, and all plot, may be reduced to formulae.

bobdenny13 said:
For instance, one of my favorite genre writers is Robert B. Parker. He was a great writer of detective fiction. I read 19 of his Spencer novels. He wrote a few more before he died this past year. (He was working at his keyboard when he died.)

Oddly enough, these are almost the only novels you refer to in this entire screed; you tend to be easily distracted by films. I think perhaps you should peruse the English and American Novel canon more closely—because your definition condemns 2/3 of them to "not literature." I think perhaps you are standing on the wrong side of Plato's cave; come into the light, dulce et utile and what not.

By the way—if you like Parker, you should check out his Ph.D. dissertation on Chandler, Hammett, and Ross Macdonald. I can also recommend both of his articles on Edmund Spenser, and I note that he was offered tenure on the basis of his genre fiction.

bobdenny13 said:
That's one of the faults of genre writing--the formula that must be adhered to, even by the best practitioners of it. This is something perhaps that editors insist on, I don't know. But it marks the work in ways that make it fairly perishable.[/B]

Yeah . . . Stephen King is already in various Norton Anthologies, along with Ray Bradbury, Oscar Wilde, Joanna Russ, Raymond Chandler, and Ursula Le Guin. (Yes, you'll find genre fiction even in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, ed. Bausch).

I'm very glad that the Norton editors found them sufficient unto the day. It was genre fiction, ranging from the ninth century Irish Scéla to contemporary SF and fantasy that directed my attention and interests to English literature and graduate school, and I owe all those genre authors, living, dead, and anonymous, a debt of gratitude I can never repay.

Lisa L. Spangenberg, Ph.D.

HapiSofi · Feb 28, 2011

Why is it that when they start talking about literature in terms of "truths of the human spirit," the truth they always arrive at is that they're the gentry and you're not? I'm morally certain that that is not what literature is for.

BobDenny, here's a truth for you: Jim Macdonald is a better person than you are. He tells us that all writers are his brothers, and reminds us to treat them with respect. Meanwhile, you're telling us how much better you are than mere commercial and/or genre writers -- making denigrating, classist assertions that are not only mean-spirited, but factually are complete nonsense.

It's at moments like this that I appreciate the benefits of reading all those cubic yards of literary theory.

Anyway, Bob, if you want to go on being condescending, you can just go right ahead, and I'll keep snickering while you do it. My relationship with literature is not and never will be mediated by the likes of you.

James D. Macdonald · Feb 28, 2011

HapiSofi said:
Have you tried Googling dillard "yearbook award" 1995? I'm getting one hit that isn't an accidental combination of those terms, and it's this conversation on AW. This has got to be the worst-publicized award in literature.

The fault is with the web, and Google. The word "Yearbook" sometimes appears attached to this award, and sometimes not. Also, I don't know if you remember how recent the Web is. In 1995 it was still very new indeed. Nothing drops out of conversation faster than last year's awards. You'll find vast lacunae in that year, and in many following ones. And if Mr. Dillard doesn't list it in his standard biography, one could hardly expect him to list his every award.

See also, e.g., International Who's Who of Authors.

No one's ever caught one of these "editors" in the act of paying a kickback to the scammer, but you can draw your own conclusions.

Have you forgotten "Edit Ink"?

They pay them a pittance to edit the manuscripts of these writers who've already fallen into their hands, then charge the writers thousands of dollars for the edit.

That's Strategic Book Group (or whatever they're calling themselves this week). Another variant is the one where the newbie editor works on the book for a percentage of the eventual sales of the book to the public. Which, in the case of vanity publications, works out to zero. That's American Book Publishing's deal.

What's really going on is that your nose is out of joint, and you're reaching for a standard set of cliches about us wicked editors.

There's more to it than that, I think. But when a fellow comes up with a definition of Literary and Serious Writing that excludes Moby-Dick, Of Mice and Men, and The Shipping News from the list of Serious Literary Works, perhaps that definition needs to be tweaked.

Deleted member 42 · Feb 28, 2011

James D. Macdonald said:
There's more to it than that, I think. But when a fellow comes up with a definition of Literary and Serious Writing that excludes Moby-Dick, Of Mice and Men, and The Shipping News from the list of Serious Literary Works, perhaps that definition needs to be tweaked.

It's a definition that's right out of the English 4 sophomore survey, and one that was previously eviscerated by Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, never mind Aristotle or Wimsatt.

He's no kin of mine, Macdonald. You can keep him.

James D. Macdonald · Feb 28, 2011

"The prisoners are coming down stairs," said Tom condescendingly.

priceless1 · Mar 1, 2011

I'm embarrassed to admit that I still can't figure out what this Algonkian conference is about. Is it nothing more than learning how to pitch books face-to-face? Or is there more? How do they differ from other conferences, say, Backspace or Florida Writer's Conference? Sorry for the interruption.

Gravity · Mar 1, 2011

I'm with you, Priceless. Very confusing. And all this sturm und drang from their pitchmen is making my eyeballs flutter. Where have you gone, Billy Mayes? The nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

Writer-2-Author · Mar 1, 2011

Hi Pricelss1, I have chosen to attend the San Francisco Write and Pitch conference put on by Algonkian conferences not because of the opportunity to pitch, but because their website claims to teach its attendees what our novels must have in order to attract the agent, editor, and eventually, publisher. They discuss how to make our books "high concept," which I take to mean a book that has a huge target audience.

I've written one memoir that took me 13 years to write, and is now sitting in a literary agent's office as I write this! My fingers are still crossed. The current memoir has been in progress for over two years now, but is almost finished. It will be finished by the time I go to this conference in July.

One of the things that attracted me to this conference is that they claim to have information that I won't find at any other writers conference/workshop. Needless to say, it peeked my interest. Their website is covered with books that have been published due to some effort on their part, which tells me they've been successful in helping writers to become published. That is why I've chosen to attend this conference. Their website is at http://algonkianconferences.com/ if you'd like more information on it.

Everyone might consider me crazy for still wanting to attend after all that has been written here, but I do like to "judge" things for myself rather than taking things from others, especially from those who have admitted to never attending. I will take everything written here as a "warning" or "beware" and when I return I'll be able to speak from experience on this particular conference.

Hope this helps,
Robin

Jamiekswriter · Mar 1, 2011

bobdenny13 said:
Some of our GREATEST writers attended writing workshops: Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'connor, Alan Gurganis, Jane Smiley, my twin brother Richard Bausch, John Irving, Henry Taylor, Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, Madison Bell, Richard Wiley, and on and on. It's quite a long list of the most distinguished writers of the late 20th century and of the early 21st. QUOTE]

Did any of them attend an Algonkian workshop prior to publication?
Did it help them land an agent or a book deal?
How often did they use the skills they learned at Algonkian after they got an agent/book deal?

What does Algonkian provide me for the cost of the workshop that I can't get free with research and hard work?

What are Algonkian's success stories beyond happy and unpublished writers?

What novels are out there that the authors credit Algonkian for helping them? (For example, I can name you several Clarion authors who have gone on to publish. Where are the Algonkians?) Edited to add: OK I crossposted with ROF. Their website has some examples in the right hand side bar.

priceless1 · Mar 1, 2011

ROF said:
They discuss how to make our books "high concept," which I take to mean a book that has a huge target audience.

High concept simply means that you can describe your book in one sentence in an appealing manner. For example, "One publisher, five saucy retirees, hot romance stories, a famous author, and a nosy reporter equals a giant headache."

High concept has nothing to do with audience.

You're saying a conference is centered on writing an effective logline? I'm even more confused because that seems a lot of money to spend just to learn how to write a logline.

One of the things that attracted me to this conference is that they claim to have information that I won't find at any other writers conference/workshop.

Personally, I'm always concerned when anyone speaks in absolutes. Even if Stephen King were hosting this conference, I wouldn't believe that only he has information that opens the magic doors to publication. It's a rather grandiose thing to suggest, don't you think?

Have you attended other conferences? Why would you take their word for it? They may have authors whose books have gone on to publication, but the same can be said about many other conferences that don't experience such negative scrutiny.

So I'm still confused as to what this conference really is, what makes this one so special - or what makes it a bad choice - and how it compares to other conferences.

MikeGrant · Mar 1, 2011

My jaw is still on the floor at that comparison between literary and genre fiction on the previous page. One for Pseuds Corner in Private Eye magazine, methinks.

Writer-2-Author · Mar 1, 2011

Hi Priceless1, I'm sorry I didn't clear up your confusion and that I've probably left you even more confused.

High concept simply means that you can describe your book in one sentence in an appealing manner. For example, "One publisher, five saucy retirees, hot romance stories, a famous author, and a nosy reporter equals a giant headache."

High concept has nothing to do with audience.

I stand corrected. It was simply my thought, not theirs.

You're saying a conference is centered on writing an effective logline? I'm even more confused because that seems a lot of money to spend just to learn how to write a logline.

No, it's not about a logline or pitch. Not this one anyway. I believe the NY Shop and Pitch is, but the San Francisco one seems to be more about the novel itself and writing it in a way to attract agents, editors, and publishers.

Personally, I'm always concerned when anyone speaks in absolutes. Even if Stephen King were hosting this conference, I wouldn't believe that only he has information that opens the magic doors to publication. It's a rather grandiose thing to suggest, don't you think?

Yes, you are right. They do seem to place themselves above the rest, however, they don't claim that you will land an agent or publishing contract, but that they have information they teach you that will help. At least that's my understanding and again, I could be wrong.

Have you attended other conferences? Why would you take their word for it? They may have authors whose books have gone on to publication, but the same can be said about many other conferences that don't experience such negative scrutiny.

Yes, I have attended one writers conference, one writers workshop, and one conference/workshop specifically for memoirs. I have learned something new in each one I've attended. I've also learned things that I didn't need to and threw those out, but each one was very valuable to me and worth every penny I've paid. Just the critiques alone by instructors and participating writers were invaluable. Now that I've discovered this writers forum and one other, I will be able to get those critiques on these websites and save hundreds of dollars.

Currently, Tim Seldes from Russel and Volkening has my first memoir. I met him at a writers workshop in January. Before the workshop, he'd read 50 pages of my manuscript. At the workshop, he asked me send him the full manuscript! That alone was worth every penny I paid. Even if he comes back and says no, I got to meet him in person, and that has to go a long way. For me anyway.

Last summer I had the privilege of meeting author Dr. Dennis E. Hensley and agent Steve Laube. Both gave me valuable information on my current memoir. I hope to receive even more at the San Francisco Write and Pitch conference. I guess you could say I'm addicted to writers conferences-they are fun, informative, and offer great ways to network. BTW, I feel that these forums are too!!!

You're saying a conference is centered on writing an effective logline? I'm even more confused because that seems a lot of money to spend just to learn how to write a logline.

The San Francisco conference is not centered around a pitch or logline. It seems to be more about the book itself.

So I'm still confused as to what this conference really is, what makes this one so special - or what makes it a bad choice - and how it compares to other conferences.

First let me say again so I'm clear to everyone, I have never attended a conference put on by Algonkian before, therefore I am not a sock-puppet for them in anyway. I just came across their website during a conference search and found it interesting. I personally don't believe any conference/workshop is more special than another, however they advertise that they have "insider" tips that we won't find in a Writers Digest magazine. Just to be clear I subscribe to and love my Writers Digest subscription and hail the Writers Market books and websites as one of the top sources in writing!!! They aren't my only subscriptions though!

I have been published ONCE in a magazine about Rottweilers (my second passion next to writing), so I'm by no means an expert of any kind at anything! But I love to write and I have a story to tell with a complete twist from the norm. Again, it's memoir, not fiction.

I hope I've been able to clear up SOME of your confusion and haven't caused you any more!!! LOL! For myself only, I want more than ever to check this conference out and see what all the "fuss" is about. Maybe I can dispel some of the things written here or maybe I'll be able to confirm some of them. Either way, I am going for myself to learn how I can make my book more desirable to agents and publishers. I had only hoped to meet some friends here that might be going there. My goal is to attend two conferences/workshops a year so maybe I'll meet you at a conference next year since my quota is up for this year! LOL!!!

Thanks,
Robin

HapiSofi · Mar 1, 2011

James D. Macdonald said:
The fault is with the web, and Google. The word "Yearbook" sometimes appears attached to this award, and sometimes not. Also, I don't know if you remember how recent the Web is.

You mean that Mosaic thing they bolted onto ARPANET a while back? I think I recall it.

In 1995 it was still very new indeed. Nothing drops out of conversation faster than last year's awards.

And nothing stays in people's CVs longer. There are plenty of online mentions of other literary awards from years past.

You'd think Gale Research/DLB would at least put up a page about the awards, but they haven't. That's only one of their many shortcomings. Gale's website is just awful.

Google Books and Wikipedia are a far better source on the DLB Yearbooks. Very short version, because there are still some pending questions: hardcopy DLB Yearbooks were published for the years 1980-2002. They were meant to be annual updates to the DLB proper.

The only real information on their contents available on the web are the Table of Contents pages for the volumes. You can get almost all of them via Google Books, or access them as .pdf files from the individual yearbook pages in Gale's online catalogue.

(Note: the only functional way to get to those catalogue pages is to use the "advanced search" function, use "dictionary of literary biography" as your search string, and specify that you're searching on the whole phrase. Searching on "yearbook" will not turn up any of the yearbooks. It will tell you there's no such thing anywhere on the site. And if you forget and search on "dictionary of literary biography" without specifying whole-phrase search, the DLB listings will start on the 426th page of your results. It's a bad, bad web site.)

The Table of Contents pages show the DLB Yearbook Awards being given out in 1992 and 1997-2002, and they list the categories (Best First Novel, Best Literary Biography, etc.) but not the authors and works that received the awards. There is no mention of DLB Yearbook Awards in 1995. There's also no mention of those awards we've seen mentioned elsewhere for best-edited DLB volume.

From 1998 to 2002, the ToC pages also list an "Annual Awards for Dictionary of Literary Biography Editors and Contributors" page near the back of the volume. My guess is that it's a page of acknowledgments for the people who helped put together that year's awards. If so, I'm going to stop apologizing for thinking it didn't exist: not only was it cited as an abbreviation of only part of its name, but the award itself is instantiated as proprietary text irregularly published in $300 reference series update volumes that are sold almost exclusively to the library market.

The DLB Yearbooks may have continued publication electronically from 2003 to the present, but there's no mention of them that I can find in the Gale catalogue. Not that that proves anything; Gale's site search function couldn't find an elephant in a haystack.

...when a fellow comes up with a definition of Literary and Serious Writing that excludes Moby-Dick, Of Mice and Men, and The Shipping News from the list of Serious Literary Works, perhaps that definition needs to be tweaked.

I was amused to notice that the hallowed DBA Yearbooks included articles and updates on Greg Benford, John Crowley, Arthur Hailey, Mary Renault, Gordon Eklund, John Jakes, Michael Shaara, Peter Straub, Theodore Sturgeon, Florence King, Raymond Chandler, Russell Hoban, Dashiell Hammett, Michael Avallone, Carolyn Keene, Peter S. Beagle, C. J. Cherryh, Stephen King, Ben Bova, Lin Carter, Michael Crichton, Ken Follett, John Varley, and Humphrey Carpenter; plus three substantial installments of "The Year in Science Fiction and Fantasy," and a memorial for Isaac Asimov with tributes by Poul Anderson, Harlan Ellison, Fred Pohl, Norman Spinrad, and Kurt Vonnegut. All of the volumes included articles about NYC editors, publishing houses, industry issues, and other iniquities.

There was also a 1998 article by Richard Curtis called "E-Books Turn the Corner," but that's just Richard Curtis being the world's greatest expert again.

James D. Macdonald · Mar 1, 2011

Michael Neff may be a minor writer, but if his talent is in organization, putting outstanding teachers and eager students together in the same venue, then it's better than if he had the Nobel Prize in Literature but no organizational ability at all.

I think that putting however-many people who are or want to be writers together for a weekend to talk about writing must be a good thing. Like f(x) = x^2 + 1, the result is always positive.

What I like less well is putting the People Who Attended Our Workshop Got Published on the front page, complete with book covers and the logos of the various publishers. They say, on their front page, "As of summer 2011, Algonkian has successfully assisted and networked writers into more than three dozen agent and publishing contracts covering all genres."
It smacks of an implied promise that the workshop cannot deliver. Thousands who don't attend will get contracts regardless. Of those who do attend, those whose only writing talent lies in writing a check, will never be published.

That shouldn't be what they're selling.

(On a more personal note: I've made my living by writing for more than twenty years and I'm still unclear on what's meant by "high concept." Isn't that film making again? "It's Romeo and Juliet -- with garden gnomes!" Why would a novelist want or need that?)

Deleted member 42 · Mar 1, 2011

James D. Macdonald said:
(On a more personal note: I've made my living by writing for more than twenty years and I'm still unclear on what's meant by "high concept." Isn't that film making again? "It's Romeo and Juliet -- with garden gnomes!" Why would a novelist want or need that?)

It's from TV, actually.

And if you use the phrase now in Hollywood, you'll be laughed at.

I'm bothered as well by statements like this:

Algonkian Writer Conference said:
Everyone is looking for reasons to reject, and why shouldn't they? Hundreds of projects are right behind yours, all clamoring for publication, all written by ambitious yet soon-to-be-disillusioned writers who believe all they ever needed for success was Writer's Digest and their local critique group to get it all straight. After working with writers for many years, we know that isn't true.

It's got that salesman selling a miracle product sound, and well, that always worries me.

mccardey · Mar 1, 2011

James D. Macdonald said:
(On a more personal note: I've made my living by writing for more than twenty years and I'm still unclear on what's meant by "high concept." Isn't that film making again? "It's Romeo and Juliet -- with garden gnomes!" Why would a novelist want or need that?)

I wonder if it's the tv version of "literary fiction"?

(And then I have to wonder if they have internecine battles about what High Concept actually is and whether it really exists? I kind of hope so... :tongue

Why should writers have all the fun? )

mscelina · Mar 1, 2011

Actually, the only character assassination I've seen in this thread has been the disturbing and completely unsupported implication that genre writers are somehow less than writers who write *literature.*

Last time I checked, literature didn't have any requirements about subject matter. *shrug* But what do I know?

I'm thinking that insulting the large number of genre writers who fork over really good money to go to conventions and conferences is probably not the best way to expand the Algonkian Writer Conference bank account. Just sayin'...

Stacia Kane · Mar 1, 2011

ROF said:
One of the things that attracted me to this conference is that they claim to have information that I won't find at any other writers conference/workshop. Needless to say, it peeked my interest.

I can understand why that would pique your interest. But it's not true. There is absolutely zero evidence here or anywhere else that they have information you won't find at any other conference or workshop. In fact, given the ratio of published books to attendees over the years, I'd say their percentage of successful attendees (I'm using "successful" to equal a professional sale to a royalty- and advance-paying publisher) is quite small compared to many of the conferences mentioned in this thread.

The conferences have been going on for roughly ten years. According to their website sixteen sales have been made by attendees in that time. That's 1.6 per year.

They hold the NYC Pitch & Shop 4 times a year, with a maximum of 60 attendees. That's 240 attendees per year. According to their website this has been going on since 2000; I'm saying ten years, then, which means a total of 2400 attendees.

The San Francisco Write & Shop is held at least once a year; I was unable to find the exact number of them annually. Nor was I able to find out for how long the conference has been taking place. All I found were references to two prior W&S cons, in 2010. Those have an attendance, according to the website, of 80-100 people. For the sake of, well, kindness, I only assumed 80 (their minimum listed) and since I found no evidence of any W&S workshops/conferences before 2010, I've only counted two of them, giving us a total attendee number of 160.

The Fisherman's Wharf and other conferences--Algonkian Park, etc.--also didn't list how many times per year, etc. However, the Shaw Guide site lists Algonkian as holding 10-12 conferences a year. Since I already had six between NY & SF, I decided again to be conservative with my numbers, and assume four of these total per year (bringing us to a total of ten, which is two less than the maximum Algonkian gives); in other words, two FW and two AP, or whatever. The maximum number of attendees for these is fifteen. That gives us 60 attendees per year, which means 600 people.

Which brings us to a total--and remember, I went with the minimum number of attendees listed for the NYC P&S, and cut three potential workshops/conferences altogether, not to mention that for all I know the SF W&S has been going on for years--of 3,160. It may be as high as 4,000 or more, but I'm fine with 3,160.

Over three thousand attendees. Sixteen published books. That's half of one percent of all attendees.

The Algonkian website claims that "more than three dozen" books received publishing contracts or found agent representation (in a small box on the right, under the "Write and Pitch" logo). I counted all of the titles they listed for publishing contracts only and got sixteen.

Even if we want to double that and claim thirty-two published books, that's still one percent.

That's pretty much the exact same percentage of writers who get published "in the wild," without spending the money to attend an Algonkian workshop.

I personally would expect that a group claiming to be exclusive and to have inside, secret info you won't get anywhere else would have a much higher percentage of successful attendees.

Let's take a look at another conference. How about Clarion, since it's come up?

Here is a list of published Clarion alumni. There are 77 of them listed. I don't believe that's a complete list, but we'll say 77 for the sake of argument. (In fact, on this page they say "over a third" of their graduates have gone on to be published, but again, I'm doing the most conservative possible calculations here.)

Clarion is older than Algonkian. So let's ignore the hard numbers, basically, and look at the percentage/attendees/etc. Clarion's been around for 43 years, so 77 sales is 1.8 sales per year; not much higher than Algonkian, right?

Except Clarion limits its annual participants to 18. Total. Which means that 1.8 per year is twenty percent.

18 per year times 43 years = 774. 77 published names from that is just under ten percent, but again, Clarion says it's more like thirty percent, and I believe them, just like I believe Algonkian in its claims.

Viable Paradise limits its number to twenty-four per year. There are pages and pages of published graduates, and that list hasn't been updated in a few years.

I couldn't find a list of published students from the Aspen workshops, unfortunately.

But I think it's clear from the above numbers that the Algonkian folks don't know some secret trick to being published. Nor do they have information you can't get elsewhere. If they did, I'd think a lot more than one-half-of-a-percent of their alums would be published, frankly.

When someone claims--as they do--to know the "secret," and to give you an "in" no one else can give you...well, it's up to them to prove that, isn't it?

Their website is covered with books that have been published due to some effort on their part, which tells me they've been successful in helping writers to become published.

No more successful than any random group of aspiring writers in a room by themselves for a week, frankly. Their percentage isn't one bit different from the general standard; the percentage doesn't show any added value from their workshops at all.

In fact, considering that for many of their workshops they claim to only take people with real potential, it makes me think there's even less of a benefit; I'd think out of any random group of fifty people whose writing had been judged by an expert as having real potential, more than one of them would end up published (and I point to AW as evidence of that, actually); more than one-half-of-a-percent, in other words.

Everyone might consider me crazy for still wanting to attend after all that has been written here, but I do like to "judge" things for myself rather than taking things from others, especially from those who have admitted to never attending. I will take everything written here as a "warning" or "beware" and when I return I'll be able to speak from experience on this particular conference.

Hope this helps,
Robin

Not crazy. Perhaps new to the business, but not crazy, no. You're perfectly free to attend. You seem to enjoy conferences and such, and if you do, I'm sure this is a great one for that; attendees have spoken highly of the bonding and fun, and hey, if that's why you're attending, I say go for it! And I hope you have a wonderful time.

But if you're going because you think they have some secret tricks to getting published...again, you're free to go, but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. There is no secret tip or trick to being published; there are no shortcuts in this business. It takes time and it takes hard work, and no matter how much money you spend or how many conferences you attend or how many agents you get to chat with for ten minutes, it's still going to require the exact same amount of time and hard work.

James D. Macdonald · Mar 1, 2011

Oh, heck. You want the secret handshake? The information no one else has?

This is it: Just use the word "goldfish" somewhere in your cover letter. That's the clue to those know-nothing New York editors that you're the Real Deal and they should send you a contract.

(When those guys re-typed the Faulkner and sent it around they didn't put "goldfish" in the cover letter. Naturally, it was rejected. What more proof do you need?)

Algonkian Writer Conferences / WebDelSol

New Fish; Learning About Thick Skin

'Twas but a dream of thee

Girl Detective

Hagiographically Advantaged

Oh, the humanity.

Your Genial Uncle

Deleted member 42

Hagiographically Advantaged

Your Genial Uncle

Deleted member 42

Your Genial Uncle

Seen 'em come, seen 'em go

USA Today Bestselling Author

Hagiographically Advantaged

Your Genial Uncle

Deleted member 42

Teh doommobile, drivin' rite by you

Girl Detective

Your Genial Uncle