With the RWA conference behind us for another year, this seemed like a good time to point out this article called, How To Ruin The Writers’ Festival For Everyone . Tell me that’s not the best title of an article ever.

For future reference, there are a few actions/behaviors you can engage in while attending a conference to make sure you get noticed. Because, really, who doesn’t want to act like a complete moron in front of her peers. Some of my favorites are:

*Ask At Least Three Questions: The presenter may warn that there are only a few minutes left before the end of the session, and ask if everyone can limit themselves to one question. Obeying this order is a trap for young players - remember, your question is so insightful and clever that this rule does not apply to you. Everyone will be grateful that you asked three questions because each was so brilliant.

*Prove You Are Smart: A convoluted and obscure reference point is the surest way to do this. Make sure it adds nothing to the debate and merely bogs the session down as the panel attempts to decipher your carefully memorized question.

*Share Your Life Story: People may have paid $20 to see a famous author but that’s only because they don’t realize how much more interesting you are.

*Attack The Panelists: Don’t think that just because someone is smarter, better educated and more talented than you that you can’t attack them on spurious and ill-thought-out grounds. Fire a broadside about a writer being commercial, accuse them of racism (saying that their writing is “colonialist” is even better), or say they stole their novel idea from you - it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re shouting.

Yeah, it was hard to pick out just a few highlights since the entire article cracked me up.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 6:10 am and is filed under About Authors, About Contests & Associations, About Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.