The San Francisco Writers Conference: Selling Pans and Shovels to Gold Rush Dreamers?

   I haven't posted after returning from the San Francisco Writer's Conference until now.  I am still digesting the avalanche of information, discoveries, inspirations and disappointments of that experience.  The more I ruminate over what I came away with the more discouraged I have become.  In fact, the conference broke a steady stream of daily writing that had persisted for several years. I have written very little since San Francisco.
   It is difficult to separate the effects of a concurrent experience that I had in San Francisco where I also visited my mother. She is ninety-five years old and living at home with the help of in-home care. I didn't know until I went to see her in her home that she had been very ill, and had been put on hospice care.  For the first time in my life, she didn't know me.  It was difficult to determine whether it was from being snowed on morphine to treat severe pain from a gigantic infected bedsore, or from a more general cognitive deterioration.
   My preoccupations have thus moved away from my novel and toward my concern for my mother's condition. Maybe I will write a much-needed book about how the health care system deals with aging.  A wake-up call is needed for the aging boomers.
   In any case, I wanted to comment on my absence from this blog.  Yes, I have felt down, and I have focused thus on the disappointing aspects of the conference.
   Since I've brought this up, I may as well mention a few.  First of all, I discovered that there were no agents at the conference who were interested in historical fiction from the first-century era. There was only one interested in historical fiction at all and her interest was limited to, I think, the 19th century or some other specific century.  She promised to refer me to an agent whose name she could not remember if I emailed her and reminded her of our discussion.  I did email her but did not receive a response.
   I had gone wild with the auction prior to the conference and had won coffee dates with four authors and a lunch date with a pair of author-agent-editors, and a year's membership to the Alliance for Independent authors. Three of the authors never contacted me, I never received my membership to the Alliance, one of the professionals for the lunch date couldn't make it and the other didn't like my "voice," based on a reading of the first two pages.
   I did find an editor willing to read my book and give structural recommendations. Her fee would be about five thousand dollars. Another offer came in at about three thousand dollars.
   I would rather they just tell me after two pages if they do not like the book. I contacted Heather Lazzar who Andy Ross also suggested and referred me to but she didn't like my "voice either."
   I found the conference mostly directed to first-time authors not yet published who were hoping to make a living from their writing. The emphasis was on how to be commercially successful as a writer. Most of the mentors were in the early stages of their careers as writers as well, and many, if not most of the agents had failed to make a living as writers themselves. Everyone seemed to be pushing books they'd written on how to push books you've written.
   I'm sure when I'm in a better mood, I will be able to say more flattering things about the SFWC. For now, I feel discouraged with the real world.
   I still like my book, however.  I am just less optimistic that it will ever get read by anyone else.
   I did discover that I'm a "Literary Fiction" writer. That was a cool realization.  It was also not the focus of the conference.
   I also thought of a name for my future publishing company: "Note in a Bottle Publishing."
   If anyone out there finds this note in a bottle and is inclined to offer words of encouragement to me now would be a good time.