My approach to workshops is to first determine the creditials of the instructors. Thanks to you and Dean this thinking is automatic. Like the others here I filter everything I’m told and weigh it carefully to determine if it’s factual, and if it applies to me and my work.

As an example, we all recieve e-mails from well meaning friends warning us about X, the next big terrible thing being unleashed on us. I immediatley do an internet search to determine if it’s true. 9/10 times it’s false.

To me this means all information must be filtered to ensure its accuracy, and to satisify yourself that author is who they say they are.

Thanks for continuing with this. Very good stuff.

And the anonymous blogger? Are you kidding? I have a delete button! As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon!”

Thanks, Carolyn.

First, the importance of vetting. I have a terrible BS-O-Meter. To counteract that, I ask advice of not just one but a wide variety of friends and experts. You know who you are, and thanks. I also do significant amounts of vetting (that’s the official term for doing the research and asking around to flush out the quacks pretending to be ducks).

Second, for those of you who are vetting any of the above mentioned teachers and authors — named, not anonymous — all are bona fide experts and you would do well to take these classes. Kristin Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Kevin J. Anderson, David Farland/Dave Wolverton and Brandon Sanderson — write down these names and find a way to learn from all of them.

You guys rock.

Carolyn

Perhaps the complaining author was upset about the dollar figure attached to Superstars? Yah, it’s not chump change. It requires a serious investment. But with the impressive names on the roster of instructors, if I’d not already committed this year’s learning budget to an earlier workshop in Lincoln City, I very possibly would have tried for Superstars. If Kevin and Co. run Superstars again — especially with that lineup — I hope to attend some time. Because I am sure I’d get a lot out of it.

Good post, Kev. Sorry you got the flames–yes, that happens to us too when we teach although not from people who study with us, generally. They’re supportive and turn out to be quite helpful to the newbies in our group. All we ask our students is that once they become successful, they pay forward–and they do. We lose money on our classes, but we figure that’s money well spent. As readers, we’re investing in our future. Besides, I figure we’ve earned all of this knowledge; it would be criminal not to share it–just in the hope of helping the right person at the right time. I know you feel the same way.

I recently put on a three-day intensive “Superstars Writing Seminar” at the Pasadena Convention Center with my wife Rebecca Moesta, Dave Wolverton, Brandon Sanderson, and Eric Flint. We filled each day with lectures on the economics of publishing, developing an intellectual property, how editors look at manuscripts, balancing the real world and a writing career, literary agents, networking, self-promotion, collaboration, e-books and self-publishing, social media, and writing productivity.

We are all successful bestselling writers with collectively about 100 titles and 40 million copies in print, 70 or so national or international bestsellers, translated into 30+ languages, and several movie deals in the works. Each of the five of us gave up a great deal of our writing time to put on the seminar, and it certainly wasn’t cost effective — we would all have made more money if we’d just stayed home and worked on our books. But we had a terrific experience, helped a lot of people, and plan to do it again.

However, when the bookstore Mysterious Galaxy did us a favor and promoted the seminar on their site, it triggered a firestorm of peanut-gallery comments “It’s a scam! Stay away!” — one of them by a man who’s published half a dozen books and is now writing novels for Lucasfilm. I was blindsided by the reaction. I wrote the guy, “How can you say that? We certainly have the credentials and the experience. Look at the curriculum. This is material that new and even established writers need. Why is it a scam?” He answered, “They’re all scams.”

Well, they’re not, but you have to consider the source. Do the speakers know the material they’re teaching? Do they have careers you want to emulate? Are they successful and make their living by writing, or is their main income from teaching seminars?

KJA

I can think of one particular instance in the last 12 months where a very well known SF pro was giving out what I considered to be terrible advice to aspirants and newbs. He had scads of people at my level going, “Yah! Exactly!” And I kind of just went, “What? That’s crap, guys.” The response from the others was mostly, “You need to shut up because SF Pro knows what he is talking about!” In my younger days I am sure I’d have been cowed into going with the crowd, on what this SF Pro was telling the newbies to do… And I would have missed out on my first two pro sales as a result.

That, to my mind, was a good personal example of how it’s highly important to develop a critical thought process on every piece of advice that filters in — from the web, from cons, from workshops, etc. Take the data, examine it, compare it to other data from other people, ask yourself if it even makes sense at a basic level, does it appear to work for you and your process, etc.

Again, I can’t speak for others, but I know what I wanted most when I first started out was a “check box sheet” that showed me The Way to succeed. You do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, and then you’re golden. No worries. It’s tried and true and you cannot fail.

But now that I’m penetrating — just a toe in the professional ocean — I’m seeing that virtually everybody who is a long-time freelance fiction writer has done it “their way” to one extent or another. Nobody has the same path. Everybody has different opinions on what works, and doesn’t work. And lots of pros will insist — sometimes loudly — that their way is The Way. Understandable, as once you find something is working you want to shout about it from the roof tops.

But the key seems to be to know when to say, “No, I am going to disagree on this and this or that and that,” and not get wrapped up in dogmatic debates about The Way. Instead, look at all the different Ways — compare and contrast, analyze, pick and choose, etc.

On the one hand, that scares the crap out of the part of me that still longs for check boxes and taking my ticket and being a good follower who waits his turn in line for success. On the other hand, it’s exciting to learn that there isn’t a line, no tickets, no check boxes, and that the best thing I can do is just pay attention to a wide pool of knowledge, discern, test, apply, and repeat. What works, works, what doesn’t, doesn’t, and this will be different for me as it’s different for others.

Great post, Laura. And good points. Kristan, Bowersox said it last week on the elimination show. Then Katie, the girl with the pretty hair, said it yesterday. (Good on her!) The rude ones anger me as well. I don’t understand the yelling at someone you don’t know, even if you disagree with them.

And Ryan, thanks for that. I would hate to think that people did exactly what I told them. I’m wrong for me much of the time; I can’t imagine being right for others 100% of the time. 🙂