My address is 2025 Avenue of the Stars.
This is as it should be, of course. 90067.
With my sunglasses so firmly in place that I can barely read anything on the screen, I’m writing to you on the eve of Phil Sexton’s Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference in Los Angeles. It’s at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza again this year, the kind of hotel that’s designed to look good on you.
My Unboxed co-star Barbara O’Neal will be here at #WDNWC this weekend, too, teaching both a three-hour boot camp on writing romance and a 50-minute session on revisions.
And I’ll be doing an onstage interview withJosh Malerman, weird-wunderkind author of the Ecco Books debut that Hollywood has snapped up, Bird Box.
All wearing our shades. (Josh may wear his blindfold.) We are so on.
Cam to the left, smile, Barbara!
And just in case anyone in the novel-writing congregation forgets that our conga line is snaking across the former 260-acre Twentieth Century Fox Studios backlot, we’re also dancing parallel to our sister F+W Media conference here,Screenwriters World, #SWC14 Those guys eat squares of red carpet for lunch. And like it.
There are certain dangers here, naturally. If the paparazzi are spotted, you can be trampled by starlets running toward them. And parts of LAX still seem to be undergoing the same renovation project that put Hangar No. 1 into place in 1929.
But one of the side benefits of being in Tinsel Town from time to time is a reminder that being on is no longer just something stars and motivational speakers worry about.
The more we talk about authors needing to market themselves, their brands, their work, the more we’re really saying that they need to be aware, be alert, stay on top of issues, to position themselves in and around the going media story about publishing and books and writing.
In short? Like a Hollywood hopeful, you want to be…on.
Read the full article at Writer Unboxed
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
Writer Unboxed: You Are So On (Because They Are, Too)