Last weekend, I attended the Historical Novel Society conference in Maynooth, Ireland. Here are 5 things I’d tell someone heading to their first writers’ conference. 1. Stay On Site If you can, stay on site. Workshops matter. So does everything in between: the pub after sessions, walks between workshops, breakfast conversations, and chance encounters. 2. Make it easy for people to find you. Bring a card or QR code linking to your website or socials. Make it ridiculously easy

Waiting is the worst part. There is no doubt about it. Good news or bad, waiting is the worst. Christmas Eve. Doctor’s results. University acceptances. We spend an extraordinary amount of our lives waiting to find out what happens next. Ask a group of writers about the hardest part of the writing life, particularly the strange limbo of querying agents, and I suspect many will say the same thing: the waiting. Although the worrying comes a close second. Will anyone like the man