
For the third year in a row, I was invited to speak at the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. I gave my popular talk, “Polishing Your Work for Publication,” which teaches you some of the most common problems plaguing creative works and offers tips on how to resolve them and strengthen your writing in the process. Here’s the talk description:
Approximately 3 million new titles were published by traditional houses and self-publishers in 2010. Every writer knows—or soon learns—that it takes multiple revisions to create a piece ready to compete for book buyers’ attention. But where do you start? This talk will introduce you to the most common problems that plague written works and offer simple ways to identify and resolve them in your own novel, short story, or memoir.
This conference sells out quickly every year, and this was year was no exception. My classroom of 50 seats was completely full, with a handful of folks hovering at the door to hear what they could. It’s always exciting to have a packed room filled with fresh faces, though I recognized several friends and repeat attendees in the crowd.
A few attendees had this to say about my talk:
Ally’s energy and obvious joy in the writing craft, not to mention her knowledge, permeates her presentation from the very beginning, a manner that engages the listener and holds his/her attention.—L. William Gibbons, Mardela Springs, MD
…succinctly covered the current publishing landscape, common manuscript pitfalls, and offered practical tools to avoid them.—Christina Brockett, Frederick, MD
I enjoyed this talk very much. I took more pages of notes (by far) during this talk than any of the other meetings I attended at BTO. It was extremely valuable.—Jim Brown, Bowie, MD
I also enjoyed my one-on-one manuscript consultations, especially with my former student Susan Yanguas. I read the first ten pages of Susan’s novel draft, which she’d just started, several years ago in my Build a Better Novel class; it was really great to read the current version and see how far the story and its author have come! The consultation coordinator—Bonnie Feldstein, who writes novels as Anna Gill—had this to say about working with me:
Working with Ally Peltier is always a pleasure. She is a lady who knows what she wants and communicates that clearly. It made my scheduling so much easier and being that Ally is not only articulate but is on the cutting edge of literary issues, I was able to partner her with the appropriate submissions and writers. I very much look forward to working with Ally again next year at the Bay to Ocean Writer’s Conference.
If you’ve never been to the Bay to Ocean conference before, I highly recommend it. The venue (Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, MD) is lovely with all the high-tech equipment one could need and a nice big cafeteria for lunch. The organizers always put together an interesting lineup of experienced and entertaining speakers, too. This year I was pleased to be in the company of my friend and colleague Angela Render, social media maven Mindie Burgoyne, and CityLit founder Gregg Wilhelm and dynamo mystery writer Austin Camacho, neither of whom I got a chance to catch up with, sadly (hi guys!). There were plenty of other great presenters and topics of discussion as well. You can see the full program with all the talk descriptions and presenter bios here.
Founder of The Writer’s Ally, Ally E. Machate is a bestselling book collaborator, award-winning editor, and expert publishing consultant who loves using her insider knowledge and experience with the publishing industry to lead serious authors toward success. She and her team live to help make great books happen, whether that means showing a writer how to improve a manuscript, get an agent, or self-publish; or coaching an author on growing her platform to sell more books. Since 1999, she has supported hundreds of authors on their publishing journey and takes pride in serving as their books’ best ally.
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