222 – Strategies for Writers’ Conferences with Guest Grace Fox

Attending a writers’ conference can be intimidating, even overwhelming. If you want to make the most of your time at a writers’ conference, guest Grace Fox has some specific strategies to help you do exactly that. And some of them are even about your writing.

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Grace Fox

Grace Fox is a popular speaker at women’s events internationally. She inspires hope, courage, and transformation through God’s Word. She has served as a career missionary for more than 30 years. Grace has written fourteen books and published hundreds of articles in magazines. She’s a member of the First 5 Bible Study writing team for P31 Ministries and is a co-host for a podcast called Your Daily Bible Verse. Her book, Finding Hope in Crisis: Devotions for Calm in Chaos, won the Golden Scroll Devotional Book of the Year Award in 2021. Keeping Hope Alive: Devotions for Strength in the Storm won the same award in 2022. Her newest devotional is titled Names of God: Living Unafraid. You can learn all about her at GraceFox.com. 

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Erin Taylor Young: Welcome listeners into the Deep. Today is part two of our interview on writers’ conferences with Grace Fox, and we are discussing specific strategies for making conferences work for you. 

Karen Ball: So when writers attend conferences, what is helpful and what isn’t? 

Well, many writers wonder why they should spend the money to attend a writers’ conference if they don’t get a contract from it. How do they justify the expense to a spouse? Or maybe you think, “I’m ready to be published. I’ve got this,” but what if the professionals at the conference don’t agree? 

Haven’t they just wasted all that money for nothing?

Grace Fox: Absolutely not, because attending conferences is about growing relationships with those very professionals. It’s about laying a strong foundation for your career. You go to conferences to learn as much as you possibly can about the craft of writing. Which means you have to go in with a teachable spirit. To say, “I’m here to learn,” and take in as much as you can. That’s the first strategy. 

But conferences––all those workshops––can feel like information overload at times, so the next strategy is to tell yourself it’s okay to skip out on a workshop if you need to decompress. It’s so helpful to take time to get your notes in order and to get your thoughts put together again, or to just go to your room and have a quiet time and pray. 

With that in mind, it’s always a good idea to have friends praying for you as attend the conference. Because you don’t know what God’s purpose is for having you go there. 

Karen Ball: Exactly! Sometimes He calls you to go to a writer’s conference and it has nothing to do with your writing career. It has to do with you meeting people who get you on the right track as far as your perspective, understanding that God may be calling you to write something for one person, and if you write something and only one person reads it and it changes that person’s life, it’s worth it. The expense is worth it. The investment is worth it. It’s all worth it because you’re doing what God has asked you to do.

Grace Fox: That’s beautiful. It really is about obedience. And in my career with writing, I’ve met so many people who think that end all is writing a book—gotta write a book. Gotta write a book. But one thing I learned at a conference is that that there is a huge audience out there with magazines.

Think about it. Your book may only sell 2000 copies in its lifetime. But one magazine article can reach a quarter of a million people. You don’t know those things unless you start going to conferences and learning from those people that are in the know.

Karen Ball: That’s why it’s so important to get your expectations straight, to go in with an open mind and an open-hearted spirit and say, “What is it you want from me, Lord?” Not, “What are You going to give me, Lord?,” but “What do You want from me?”

Grace Fox: Because His plan may be to put you on the bridge to something entirely different.

Erin Taylor Young: You know, I love, Grace, how supportive your husband was. He justified the expense because God told you to go. And I love what you said about it being an education. I mean, people go back to school all the time and nobody questions that expense to pay for a class or whatever. This is the same thing. You’re paying for a lot of classes. And believe me,  it’s cheaper than college tuition!

Grace Fox: Amen. And again, the relationships that you make at conferences can last for years. I am still friends with some of the women that I met in 1999. We still communicate and [00:08:00] support each other in our writing.

Erin Taylor Young: Well, I met Karen at a writing conference. 

Karen Ball: Exactly. And so much came out of that, even beyond publishing Erin’s book, Surviving Henry. It’s amazing what God can accomplish if we’re open to letting Him do his will and bring about His plans instead of ours.

And Grace, I loved what you said in part one of this interview about not stopping until God tells you to. 

Grace Fox: That was a quote from Matt Anderson. 

Karen Ball: We all need to remember that, especially when we experience what you did, Grace. Where you told us in the first part of this podcast that you were so sure when you went to that first conference that you had everything down, that you were ready to be published, and you weren’t. Or when we’re’re told that we need to learn how to do this or this or this better…

That that can be just devastating. 

But from the editor’s side of the desk at writer’s conferences, I can say met a lot of wonderful writers, but not very many who were ready, at that moment, to be published. Writers have to spend time studying, writing, and  learning the craft.

And so if you go to a writer’s conference and they’re telling you that you need to do this and this and this, don’t look at that as something depressing. And don’t let it make you want to give up! Look at that as your orders, your marching orders. Don’t stop writing until God tells you to do so.

Grace Fox: That’s right because we want to do what God’s called us to do with excellence.

Erin Taylor Young: So, Grace, you were digging in and learning everything you could, and when you learned about articles, you explored that as a way to hone your craft. And to learn how to write to deadline. And you were building a reputation amongst editors. 

Karen Ball: One caution though, again from the editor’s side of the desk. We’re talking about making professional connections, and that’s great. But it was obvious to me when someone came to talk to me or sit at my table during a meal, and it was just to make a connection with an editor. It wasn’t because they cared anything about me as a person, or they were looking at me as an individual, or that God had asked them to sit next to me. It was that they thought talking to me was a strategic connection. 

It’s not about “connections” so much as relationship. The people that I met at these conferences, who shared passions for the things that I had passions for, who came to me with a teachable spirit like you’re talking about…

Those are the people who are still in my life because they know me so well and they know God so well and we can speak truth to each other and encourage and challenge each other. So focus more on building relationships. Just ask God who He wants you to meet. He’s got His reasons for direc