It’s Official! My Women in Publishing Summit Talk is Approved

If you didn’t hear that raucous whoop of delight earlier from the vicinity of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, I’m kind of surprised.

At 4:01 Central Time Friday afternoon, an email dropped into my in box. From the organizer of the Women in Publishing Summit 2021, it read in part, “Our team has reviewed your presentation and it has been approved!”

I can scarcely describe my exhilaration as I read those eleven words. After I uploaded my presentation Wednesday night, I felt such relief at having that task crossed off my to-do list (ten days early). It never occurred to me to be nervous about it. Dreading, sure; nervous, nah! Although, to be honest, I’d been antsy about using Zoom to record the talk because, well, technology (hey, I still use a flip phone).

I first mentioned the conference in this blog post several weeks back. And now I can give you more details. The conference kicks off March 1 and runs through March 8. It’s an international event, geared toward women in various aspects of the publishing world: writing, editing, design, publishing, marketing.

This past summer, the organizers put out a call for workshop leaders. I’d led several workshops on character development and figured I had just as good a shot as anyone. So I sent in my proposal. Months later, I got an email saying they’d fielded hundreds of submissions and were busy culling through them; they expected to narrow it down to 50 finalists in a few weeks’ time.

The next email informed me I was a finalist. In the third email, they extended an invitation to be a workshop presenter. From more than 200 applicants, they invited about 30 speakers, all credentialed experts in their respective fields.

We had the first of two meet-and-greet Zoom calls this past Tuesday, with about half the presenters – women hailing from all over the U.S., as well as Canada, England, Germany, Bahrain and South Africa. Each is a bona fide expert in her particular field. I’m honored and humbled to be counted among them.

Each day of the conference will focus on a different aspect of the overall process, from writing and editing to design, publishing and marketing. They’ll feature fiction, nonfiction and children’s tracks in all five areas.

In my presentation, scheduled for Day 3, we’ll go over how to create a realistic three-dimensional character; then we’ll create a scene… and finally, we’ll take “show, don’t tell” to a new level. It’ll be fun. I promise.

Plus, because the whole conference is online, you can watch individual sessions as your own schedule permits.

And if you sign up now, you get to take advantage of early-bird pricing! The full week of sessions (including what promises to be a killer one-on-one chat with Jane Friedman and a live interview with Brooke Warner to close out the event on International Women’s Day) is a mere $97… but only until February 14. Then this sweetheart of a deal goes away and the price goes up to $147. And if you wait until the conference begins, you’d have to pay $197 for your all-access pass. And you don’t want to have to do that, do you?

So listen to your Persnickety Proofreader, huh? Click here to get your pass now. Where else can you get seven full days of literary advice and inspiration from women at the top of their profession for less than a hundred bucks?