Quickly, three practical points.

1. Get to registration as early as you can. The lines get long and your attendee kit has useful info to go over before things start.
2. You’ll be making a few hard choices between simultaneous sessions. Running midway from one session to another sounds like a better idea than it is. You don’t get the conclusions of your first session and you don’t get the groundwork of your second. Bite the bullet and choose.
3. Pace yourself. Don’t leave all your energy in the 9a session. These are long days and they require a lot of concentration.

WDC, the nation’s flagship conference for professional and aspiring writers, could scare a hotel ballroom’s carpet to death. You don’t want to be trampled, yourself, as more than 1,000 attendees converge on the Sheraton at Seventh Avenue and West 53rd.

Success in a setting of this kind belongs to those who parse the schedule  before hitting the lobby with its Starbucks-by-day / bar-by-night. (As Pogo once said, the moon is more important than the sun because it’s around when we need it the most.)

What I’ll do here is recommend a five-track way of looking at the conference. This isn’t the only way to sort out the general topic areas of the weekend. But it will allow you to consider a direction for yourself, based on your main interests. You know best what you need. When you have a chance, jump into something off your usual list, just to let some variety do its good work.

Our five tracks:

• The Business-in-Transition
• Self-/Digital Publishing
• Marketing
• The Craft of Writing for Today
• Agents (Pitch Slam)

And here are a few highlights of each area.

 

The Business in Transition

5p Friday – Agent Donald Maass opens this track and much of the conference with his 5p talk “Writing the 21st Century Novel.” What Don’s talking about here is a sort of hybrid approach, both literary and commercial, and, agree or disagree with him, his description of the form should be a good starting point.

9a Saturday – A fiction writers’ panel, “Ask the Editor,” is led by F+W Tyrus Books publisher Benjamin LeRoy and includes Scott Francis, Writer’s Digest content editor; and Millicent Bennett of Simon & Schuster’s Free Press Books.

1p Saturday - Barry Eisler ‘s keynote address, as mentioned, is “The New World of Publishing, and What It Means for You.” All flags flying.

10a Sunday – A nonfiction writers’ panel, “Ask the Editor,” notably with Writer’s Digest publisher and community leader Phil Sexton in the lead, joined by Karen Cooper F+W’s  Adams Media, Michelle Howry of Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone Books, and Meg Leder of Penguin’s Perigee Books.

12p Sunday – The closing address comes from Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo: “The Drive to Write.”

 

Self- and Digital Publishing

9a Saturday – Jane Friedman‘s “E-Publishing 101: The Major Services, How They Work, and What You Have to Provide” leads the conference’s presentations on the fast-moving and sometimes contentious topics of self-publishing and the rise of digital. An expert at discovering tools and innovative concepts for writers, Friedman is the only presenter at this year’s conference whose work (at JaneFriedman.com) has been voted one of this year’s Top Ten Blogs for Writers.

11a Saturday – Keith Ogorek of Author Solutions has titled his session “Seven Secrets of Successful Self-Published Authors,” and bases his presentation on his experience in working with writers as senior vice president for global marketing with Author Solutions.

9a Sunday – Jane Friedman and Keith Ogorek return to join Brent Sampson, Holly Payne, Jesse Potash on a panel termed “explosive” by conference organizers. Sit well back. The title of the session is “Navigating the World of Self-Publishing.”

 

Marketing

4p Friday – Even before Don Maass takes up the 21st century novel, author A.J. Jacobs ‘ presentation puts the shifting framework of contemporary craft and marketing into focus. “Writing About Yourself in the Digital Age” is supposed to help you put yourself across “without sounding like an egomaniac.” That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

9a Saturday – Teaching this pivotal session in the marketing track, Dan Blank, our host here at We Grow Media, draws on his popular course, Build Your Author Platform, for his session “Becoming an Author Entrepreneur: The Business of Being a Writer and Building Your Platform.”

10a Saturday – Christina Katz in “Mailbox Full of Money” argues that you can “Micro-Publish Your Way from Beginning to Book Deal” in today’s writing environment. This presentation is based in Katz’s  extensive online coursework – she may be best known by her Twitter handle,
@thewritermama — and her own writings: her latest book, The Writer’s Workout, was released in December.

11a Saturday – “Marketing for the Promotionally Challenged Author” is Rob Eagar ‘s session based on his experience in his WildFire Marketing program.

9a Sunday – The panel “Hardcore Author Marketing: What To Do To Rise Above in the Digital Age” brings together Dan Blank, Christina Katz, Rob Eagar and F+W digital marketing manager Kate Travers for a roundtable o “what can get you ahead of the literary pack” when “everyone is yelling and screaming for attention.”

9a Sunday – Author, blogger and nonfiction editor Nina Amir‘s “How To Blog a Book” session is a meeting of craft and marketing, with blogging as the basis for book publication.

11a Sunday – Author and golf columnist I.J. Schecter titles his session “How to Make Money with Your Writing (Even When the Economy Sucks).”

 

The Craft of Writing for Today

10a Saturday – Don Fry‘s session “What Your Teachers Didn’t Teach You and How To Escape What They Did” is an “unlearning” exercise to free up a writer’s creativity, particularly in approaching nonfiction.

11a Saturday – Suspense author James Scott Bell – a good example, by the way, of an author mining the benefits of both traditional and self-publishing – always is a highly regarded presenter at the conference. This year, his session is on “Conflict & Suspense: How To Keep Readers Turning Pages in Any Genre.”

10a Sunday – “Writing and Selling Your Memoir” with author and blogger Paula Balzer brings together both craft and marketing elements.

10a Sunday – “Making Good Ideas Great” with author-instructor Jack Heffron offers a process for concept enhancement in writing.

11a Sunday – “Kidlit Craft and Trends: How to Publish Middle Grade and YA in Today’s Hot Children’s Market” features agent Mary Kole of the Andrea Brown Agency.

11a Sunday – “The First 50 Pages (and Why Getting Them Right Is the Key to Your Success)” is led by Jeff Gerke, founder and publisher of Marcher Lord Press.

 

Agents (Pitch Slam)

I consider agents and the process of seeking representation to be a track of its own at this conference because one of the key elements of WDC is the Pitch Slam. The conference is given over to the Slam on Saturday afternoon. Writers make 90-second pitches to active, working literary agents, who then respond to those authors for the remainder of a three-minute period. It’s a major draw of the conference and this year offers more than 60 agents – in what Writer’s Digest tells us is a roomier setting than in the past.

6p Friday – You couldn’t have a better prep for the Slam than the “Pitch Perfect” session with author and Guide to Literary Agents editor Chuck Sambuchino. If you’re headed for the Pitch Slam Saturday, be sure to be at Sambuchino’s presentation. He’s going to give you specific points of protocol for your fast encounters with agents.

10a Saturday – Chuck Sambuchino leads an “Ask the Agents” panel with agents Mary Kole, April Eberhardt, Diana Fox, and John Willig.

2-5p Saturday – Pitch Slam

A final note. Christina Katz wrote recently about reasons to go to WDC. She listed “(a) the people, (b) the learning opportunities, and (c) the connections and ongoing relationships you can cultivate afterward.”

I can vouch for that. I can also second her when she says she hopes you’re not going “to get discovered.” The real discovery, as she notes, has to do with yourself – where you are in your career, who you understand well among your colleagues, who you can’t follow to save your life, which sessions make perfect sense, which ones leave you nervous and determined to get more info.

I think I’d just add to Christina’s list of three good reasons, one more of my own:  the chance to get close to the energy of the industry.

Writers work in so much isolation (no wonder we gather like moths to the flames of social media).

Getting into WDC, as full of warm friends and laughs as it is, can wipe the giddy smile right off your face at times. And that’s good. There’s enough serious business represented by the leadership here that at times you feel the flame come close to your face. At WDC, nobody’s kidding.

What most people call the “inspiration” or “motivation” of the conference is simply the updraft of that heat at the heart of a big, pounding industry in painful transition. And you’re part of it – part of the uncertainty, the changes, the potential.  If you can get yourself to that registration table, you’re in. You’re one of us. Welcome.

My site – PorterAnderson.com – will be displaying my concentrated live-tweet coverage of select sessions, top to bottom, on the home page, along with hashtagged tweets from others, as well. You can monitor the progress of sessions there (the page will auto-refresh) without tying up your own Twitter stream. And you’ll be able to join in on Twitter with hashtag #wdc12.

Check out the previous posts in this series:

• How To Get The Most Out Of A Conference
• Your Guide to Writing & Publishing Conferences, 2012
• Preview: Digital Book World Conference & Expo 2012 (Jan 23-25, New York City)