Suite101's Beverly Hill Takes Notes at the Emerald Coast Writers' Conference

Posted by Lima Al-Azzeh Apr 24, 2009

Suite101 is everywhere! Or at least this seems to be the case with our writers who attend numerous conferences, trade shows and exhibits about everything to do with journalism, writing, and publishing. We’ve invited some of our writers to chime in here on the Limelight Blog to tell us about their experiences.

Beverly Hill, Hobbies Feature Writer, shares with us her experience at this year’s Emerald Coast Writers Conference:

“I got the opportunity to attend the 6th Annual Emerald Coast Writers Conference in Fort Walton Beach, Florida this year, and was pleasantly surprised by what I experienced, hence the article ‘What to Expect at a Writer's Conference.’

If you're a writer trying to break into the industry, you can learn a lot at one of these conferences and I highly recommend it. I had the opportunity to mingle and talk with agents, publishers, aspiring writers and established authors, all of whom were personable and very east to talk to. In fact, I became fast friends with one author who turned out to be from my home town, and I also made a number of new local friends at the conference.

Among some of the people that I got the chance to talk to was best-selling author, Stephen Coonts. With 15 New York Times best sellers under his belt – including his 1986 novel Flight of the Intruder, which resulted in a 1991 movie of the same name – Coonts had a wealth of information to share with everyone at the conference and was even around later that afternoon to sign autographs.

Attending the workshops and talking to fellow writers is a great way of getting your head out of a current project and interjecting it with some fresh ideas. There's a part in one of my 'works-in-progress' novels that I've been stuck on for some time, and I now have the tools that I need in order for my hero to save the day.

For the amount of information that I came away with, attending the writers’ conference was definitely worth it. I certainly look forward to the next one.”