Maryland Writers’ Association Conference

March 25 • Crowne Annapolis

The Maryland Writers’ Association put on an excellent one day writing conference this year. The theme was the “writing roller coaster.” Maria Snyder gave an amazing keynote speech to kick off the event which vividly captured the way in which any publishing endeavor is likely to be a roller coaster of highs and lows. She shared with us some of the most interesting moments from her career with equal measure of the triumphant and the disastrous.

From there we launched into a day packed with pitch sessions, workshops and panels. John‘s seminar on tricks to meet word count goals was well-attended.  He also had to evaluate queries and first pages on the fly, in two panels, along with other editors and agents. They received many thankful comments on their critiques. It was great to spend some time talking about the business with Aimee Ashcraft from the Brower Agency and Roseanne Wells from The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency.

Jeffery Deaver‘s keynote speech capped off the event. He was an engaging speaker and he shared the main points of a book on writing that he is currently working on.

Overall we were impressed by the current growth trend in the MWA which has just about doubled membership in the past year. The conference provided great value for the money with a wide range of engaging guests, plenty of pitch time and a busy but not too crazy schedule. Congrats to Jess Williams for another job well done!