Summary
- Grace discusses the history and venues of the conference, including missed years and the current venue at the Mar Monte/Hyatt
- There are 11 workshops going on at any given time in the morning and another 11 in the afternoon, covering topics such as publishing, marketing, audiobooks, and podcast interviews
- Grace mentions that all of the panels this year are author panels, and they discuss the success stories of authors who have been published through traditional or alternative methods
- Lisa and Grace talk about the role of agents in publishing and how some writers may feel nervous about contacting them, but the conference offers opportunities for writers to meet with agents.
- Examples of successful authors who started as beginners at the conference, including Fannie Flagg and Christopher Moore
- Grace describes the experience of first-time attendees at a writing conference, from trepidation to excitement and inspiration
- They provide information about registration and caution that spaces are filling up quickly, so attendees should register soon.
Transcript
Lisa: I’m here today with Grace Rachow, Director of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, happening this year June 18-23. I first attended the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1993. I was living in San Luis Obispo because I went to Cal Poly and some writers I knew from up there who’d been to the conference a couple of times said that if you wanted to know anything about the inside scoop of the Santa Barbara writers community, I needed to meet you. But I guess it was only your second or third year at the time.
Grace: Well, I guess my reputation went fast. I think it was due to maybe some notes left in restroom stalls that if you want to know about writing, ask Grace Rachow. But I don’t know how I got the reputation so quickly. But I did start it in 1992, which would have been just a year before you, but now is 31 years ago. So it’s been a long time. I was just a kid then.
Lisa: What brought you to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for the first time?
Grace: I wanted to go sooner, and I tried to sign up, but the conference was full. And so this was a beautiful marketing ploy on the part of Mary Conrad, who was one of the founders of the conference, where every year the conference filled up. But boy, if you didn’t get your deposit in and get your space in January, chances are you weren’t going to get into the conference. I learned the hard way that was the case. And so in 1992, I got my deposit in in January. So that felt really good. And I have been in ever since. I’ve attended every conference that has existed, no matter who is running it, who is part of it. I was there since 1992.
Lisa: I remember growing up in Santa Barbara hearing radio ads for it in the early seventies, and I remember telling my dad, wow, Charles Schulz, I know who he is. I want to see him. But of course, I was only I, I don’t even think I was eight years old.
Grace: It is the 50th anniversary of the first conference that was held in 1973 and June the third week of June, at Crane school. And it was at Crane school for a couple of years. Then it moved to Miramar. The question is, how many conferences have there been? And we have missed several years because of this thing or that thing.
The first year that was missed was the year 2000 because the Miramar closed and we didn’t have a new venue. And we also missed 2009 and 2010 because there was no owner of the conference right at that time. But we came back on board in 2011 and we’ve been at the Mar Monte ever since then, although occasionally they call themselves the Hyatt, but it’s always been the same hotel and that has been a good venue for the conference.
It keeps the conference a little bit smaller than when it was at Westmont and when it was at the Miramar or at the Fess Parker, now the Hilton. But Mar Monte really has been a good venue for us, but it’s a little bit interesting because it’s an old building built in the late twenties and it has a lot of the flavor still remaining of that era. While it has been nicely updated.
Lisa: Important thing is, they still have a bar or two there.
Grace: Yes. Now they have two bars and everybody knows writers love to drink, I guess. I don’t know. But there was one bar in the back and then they decided to put the bar by the pool and close the bar in the back. And everybody got upset about that. So they did another renovation and they opened the bar in the back again. Now there’s the back bar and there’s the pool bar. And one of them is always open, but seldom are both of them open. So you can have a change of venue for your wine or cocktails, whatever you want. And both are nice. Both have ocean views.
Coffee, coffee, coffee.
Lisa: And of course, there probably will also be plenty of coffee.
Grace: The hotel makes I don’t know how they make so much coffee. And I just can’t even imagine what they do to produce the kind of coffee quantities that are required when 200 plus people come into the hotel, all of whom require coffee and they serve the coffee from 4:30 early in the morning, they stop at 11 am.
So people need a coffee in the middle of the day, they have to get their own coffee. But if you go to the pirate workshops that start at 9:30, they serve coffee again until midnight. So if you need a lot of coffee, this is a great place to go to get free coffee. So I’m just pointing out to the world that you can get free coffee at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. If you want to learn about writing, you have to register. But just the coffee itself you can access for free. So that’s kind of a nice thing that happens at the conference.
Lisa: Yeah, especially if you’re going to the Pirates. And for anyone who doesn’t know what are pirates?
Grace: That’s one of the frequently asked questions. What are pirates? Are there pirates in the pirates? And the answer is yes, there are pirates at the pirates. The people bring their patches and their pirate swords. I’ve seen a lot of regalia. There are usually pirates stickers on the badges of the folks who like to frequent the pirates.
But simply put, the pirates are late night workshops and they got the name of pirates because in the early days of the Conference, there was no late night workshops. But people wanted to keep workshopping their work into the wee hours of the morning. And so they started having pop up workshops and the conference decided, well, gosh, if people want to do this, well, just get some good workshop leaders who like to stay up all night and we’ll have reading critique all night long.
And sometimes those workshops do see the dawn. It is summer so the dawn is early, but sometimes people really get going and they don’t stop until the sun comes up. And then they take about an hour or two off and then go to a 9:00 workshop.
Lisa: For people who don’t stay up all night, what other kind of workshops are there?
Grace: Luckily, there are plenty to choose from. We have 11 workshops going on at any given time in the morning and another 11 going on at any time in the afternoon. One of those 11 is a seminar style workshop that covers publishing and marketing and a lot of excellent topics that people want to know, especially if their book is done or maybe even published.
This is a way to learn how to get their author website published, how to do publicity, use social media, how to get an interview, how to have good interview skills. What kind of publishing should they choose. Should they go the traditional route or should they go with hybrid publishing. That’s big, a publisher that helps you out and a lot of areas that like a traditional publisher, but you contribute to the cost of the process. And then they talk about self-publishing, people doing publishing on Amazon. There’s so many options now for publishing that it’s hard to sort it out for people who are just starting.
If that’s not enough, we will talk about how to do audiobooks and also how to perform well on a podcast. It’s different than a lot of camera interview, different than face to face at a coffee shop type interview. Lois Phillips, who is an expert in podcast interviews, will talk about how to do a great job on a podcast interview. That’s just one of the 11 workshops that will be going on all day.
We have workshops in fiction. We have workshops in nonfiction, we have workshops in all genres. So no matter what you write, you might need to work on structure, you might need to work on how to get your story generated. Then we have children’s literature taught by Mary Penney Hershey, who is a terrific teacher and also a terrific writer for children’s literature.
We have a humor workshop, which is a long-time legacy started by Ian Bernard at the Miramar in the very early days of the conference. And Ernie Witham is now teaching that. And he’s a columnist, a humor columnist, and he really does a nice job teaching and helping people be funnier.
We have poetry, poetry, poetry, poetry. We’re going to have about six poet laureates at the conference, either speaking or teaching.
Lisa: You even have a couple of open mic poetry readings.
Grace: Yes, Wednesday and Thursday from noon until 12:45. So if you’re a poet, this is a great place to sit in. Those open mic readings are open to the public. You don’t have to be registered for the conference to come.
Lisa: And you get free coffee.
Grace: And you get free coffee. So it’s all good. Anyway, it’s a big conference with a lot going on and I can’t imagine anybody could not find something that would be enriching to them. The problem is which to choose. How to choose among the options.
What about the evening speakers?
Grace: The evening speakers concept has been a part of the conference from the beginning. We always try to get speakers willing to talk about writing, about their writing process so that it’s instructive for the writers, as well as the opportunity to meet a real life bestseller type of author.
We usually have one of the speakers who’s more on the literary side, one who is more on the humorous or light side, and then some other types of writers in between. We always have a variety. We have a really good lineup I’m looking forward to. I read all the books and I think they’re terrific.
Lisa: What about in the afternoon? Between the workshops and there are breaks for lunch and stuff like that. And then the other workshops and seminars and then panels too?
Grace: Yes. Every afternoon from Monday through Friday, we have a panel. One of the reasons for that is because there were so many authors associated with the conference who had books published during the pandemic. So during the years when we did not meet. I wanted to get all of those authors in on panels to give them a chance that they might not have had if their book came out on the late 2020 or early 2021, that sort of thing.
So we have all new books, but they’re some of them came out during the pandemic, so they’re not brand new books. We have a lot of people who have been published using alternative publishing methods like hybrid publishing methods who are doing really well. We’ll get to talk a lot about the different how successful the authors are with the various kinds of publishing.
And one of my favorite authors we’re going to have on a panel on the murder mystery thriller panel on Monday is Deborah Holt Larkin, who at the conference in 2019, she came to the conference as an aspiring writer, and found an agent at the conference and got her book published. It’s really a good book. It’s true crime. Told from the point of view of a ten-year-old, herself when she was ten years old. This murder happened in her hometown and she tells the story from the point of view of a child. But it’s really compelling, really well written, and it’s doing really well. So that’s a big success story of traditional publishing.
So quite a range of authors, there are five panels and there are four or five authors on each panel. So 20 plus authors and agents. Of course we do also have an agent.
Lisa: In the last 30 years publishing in general has really changed and especially in the last ten years. But you still have agents and you still have people meeting with agents and connecting with agents?
Grace: Yes, we do. We devoted all day to agents who are offering appointments and we’re almost sold out. They usually do sell out. There are two reasons people want to see an agent at a conference like this. One is they want to get over the nervousness, feel comfortable communicating with an agent and I’m not sure why there is such trepidation among writers. I think it’s because they feel that the agent might be judgmental, because if the agent isn’t interested in their project, they might say, Sorry, no. And that can be painful. So just getting used to that, the fact that you might have to talk to 50 agents, a hundred agents before you find one that wants to represent your work is something that all writers have to face. Some get lucky, but it usually takes a while to get the interest of just the right agent, and they get over their trepidation by having an appointment. The other thing that happens is that they get a chance to think about their work in terms of selling their work as opposed to writing their work or creating their work.
And then finally, every year we have at least one person who does find an agent and connects, and it becomes a published book through the traditional publishing method. So all of those are reasons people sign up for an agent. It’s really a lot of fun. And we have a resident psychologist to help people. I’m kidding about that a little bit, but we do help people get over their issues with talking to an agent.
Lisa: I’ve heard stories of people who have gone to the conference and, you know, maybe they were in the wrong workshop and somebody happened to be very crass and their feelings got hurt and they just gave up. So do you think people have to have a really thick skin in order to participate in read and critique, and meeting with consultants and agents and everything?
Grace: A thick skin does help if you’re trying to put yourself out there. It really does help. But the center of a writer’s conference philosophy is that we’re all there to help one another. We don’t have any requirements for attending. For example, you don’t have to send in a sample of your writing and qualify to attend the conference.
Some conferences around the country require a certain level of achievement before you can attend. We like to have everybody come. We’ve had a beginner who had really never written before they came to the conference and then became a bestselling author. For example Fannie Flagg, who was a TV personality, and she decided she wanted to try writing. She came to the conference and turned in a handwritten entry to a contest at the in 1980 something, and she got a first prize and she turned that little vignette her first novel. And she’s an author of about a dozen novels now and a beloved author. She also comes back and speaks because she lives here in town. So we often see her in the audience if she’s not speaking, she still comes to say hi and enjoy at least one of the evenings.
Lisa: it’s always a pleasure to see her. What other authors came out of the conference?
Grace: Christopher Moore was in Ian Bernard’s humor workshop. I was there when he was an aspiring writer and he wrote really funny. He was a novelist, but he had a really good sense of humor and humorous characters for his novels. And he’s been pointing out successful novels for years since then. I don’t know how many there are. I really enjoy reading his work and he’s come back to speak several times and I hope he will again.
Lisa: Since you’ve attended so many of the Santa Barbara Writers Conferences, what’s your favorite part?
Grace: My favorite part is seeing what happens to the first-timers. They don’t know what to expect. They’re trepidatious. They have a lot of questions that first day. They are like, Oh, what am I going to do? Then about halfway through the second day, you can see a little air space between the floor and their feet because they have started to float, because all of a sudden they realize they are among a group of really amazing people called writers that think like them, that are like them, that are even though there might be the exception once in a while in a workshop or somebody says something that’s not appropriate for the most part, 99 and 9/10 percent of the people at the conference are supportive and want to see the success of everyone. So they start being buoyed by that and they start getting excited about how it is possible that no matter where they are in their writing process, they can keep working on it and getting better. And they get really excited, they get inspired and they get into their work. And I love seeing that. With all that coffee…by the end of the week they’re a physical wreck, but they’re creative juices are flowing and they’re ready to go home and get busy with finishing whatever it is they’re working on.
Lisa: Do you have any advice or tips for anybody who might be coming to this conference whether it’s one day or for the whole week. Say they’re coming for the first time? Do you have any advice for first timers?
Grace: The best advice for a first-timer is to give things a try. Try something if you like it, keep doing it. If you don’t like it, try something else. There’s so much to choose from that there’s something for everyone. If people are having a challenge with knowing what to write or how to write or getting their story out several of the workshops are designed very much around that. Marilee Zdenek is great at drawing out stories, discovering the story that you want to tell. Karen Ford also is very much interested in figuring out from a person’s offering what they have written, narrowing that down to what it is that they really want to write.
Once the person understands what they really want to write, they tend to go faster because they understand what they’re writing. It seems kind of a crazy thing that people wouldn’t know what they want to write. People do often get the urge to write before they know what it is they want to write.
For example, I’m that way. I can write fine, but I don’t know what to write. I need to go to Marilee Zdenek’s class and get that drawn out. So there’s some good workshops that way. And then on the other hand, if you have a lot of writing and want to get feedback there are a lot of workshops that are read and critiques. So you just have to ask around if you’re new, which workshops fit your writing. Volunteers at the info desk will give good advice about which workshop to try, but that’s my advice.
Try something and if you don’t like it, try something else.
Is there anything that’s a make sure you don’t miss this?
Grace: Well, it’s like saying which is your favorite child or your favorite dog. Now, you may have one, but you better not say. I’d say the thing you shouldn’t miss is attending. No matter what you’re doing, you will get something good out of it.
If you want advice from a particular person, that person will probably have something. I love some of the workshops I’ve attended. I honestly haven’t attended all the workshops we have because they don’t let me, I have to work during the conference so I don’t get to see what everybody is doing. But I have a pretty good idea because I attended a lot of workshops in the past and a lot of our workshop leaders are experienced and they’ve been with the conference for a long time and they really know that the whole feeling of having a conference, what we want to impart to people who attend will give them inspiration and support and help them on their journey.
What is your favorite workshop?
Lisa: The humor workshop, even back when Bernard was teaching it. And Ernie, of course, he’s hilarious. He’s done Chicken Soup for the Soul, probably thousands of entries in Chicken Soup for the Soul by now. But the panels are great because you’ve got more than one perspective, you get so much advice from so many different people.
And, and like you said…. Actually my one claim to fame is a quote I gave. I told Barnaby Conrad after the first time I attended the conference that at the end a friend I’d met there, she said, Boy, you know what? Now I feel like a real writer. And that’s how people feel after they have attended this conference.
Grace: Yeah, it’s a beautiful quote. I love that. And you so you heard somebody say this and then you snapped it up and made it your own. I love it.
Lisa: Yes, I did. I am also famous for stealing ideas.
Grace: We all do it. You hear a good idea. Why let it lie there? Take it to the world. I really appreciate that. I feel like a real writer now. I feel like a real one. I think that something that is a real factor in you’re telling the start of a writer’s conferences, it creates that atmosphere where people who don’t know what they’re doing are become have a sense of becoming real. They know what they’re doing. They know that they are a writer. They’re not afraid to say that they’re writing. A lot of times people don’t like to tell anyone that they’re writing, but they do. They do write. And they appreciate the fact that they can say that in public they come out as a writer.
Lisa: For anybody who wants to attend this year, what are the dates and how can they find out more information.
Grace: On the website SB writers dot com. SB, as in Santa Barbara, SB writers dot com the registration is online and it’s really easy to do. You can have any choice of one day, two days, three days, four days, five days, six days. They’re priced accordingly so that you get a price break as you go up the chain. The one thing I want to caution people if they are interested in attending. They should register soon because for the first time in a number of years we are getting close to running out of spaces. That’s exciting to know because we when we decided to hold the conference again, we didn’t know if anybody would come and people started coming in. As soon as we opened registration, we had someone signing up, a brand new person. How do they even know we were open for registration? I don’t know. But they signed up within about an hour of us opening the portal for registration in January, and the registrations have been steady and good ever since, and we’re way ahead of where we were in 2019. So there’s a good chance that we will run out of space. So I advise people to sign up early and if they can only come for two or three days, that’s fine. We will love to have them for that amount to time and they’ll still get a good value.
Lisa: Afternoon panels and evening speakers, those are open to the public for a charge?
Grace: Yes, that’s right. $15 for the ticket. And I think it’s well worth the price because you really get a good value and you can hang out before and after and talk to writers.
Lisa: Thank you very much, Grace. Nice speaking to you again, and I look forward to seeing you again in person June 18th through the 23rd.