InkersCon 2022: What I Love about the Digital Convention
The InkersCon Mission Statement says it all!
“To spark the open exchange of information and inspiration through author networking and events.”
Dr. J. introduced me to InkersCon. I knew I had to check it out. This is the second year I’ve been involved and it’s absolutely fantastic. The things I’ve learned not only help me in the writing world, but some can even be used in my daily life.
The very first day the conference started, I joined in on one live q&a and binged all of the Craft Classes recordings. Yes. All. Of. Them.
While I would love to meet my author heroes in person someday, I absolutely love the digital conference option. It’s spread over 3 weeks so that everyone can try to join in on the various roundtables, q&a sessions, and more.
One of the best things ever is the doubling of online access to the various recordings. We can’t download them, but being able to go back and find that one tidbit of information that escaped the brain vault for six years is absolutely wonderful.
Roundtables
The roundtables at InkersCon are probably my number one love. Not only am I learning from other authors, they’re also learning from me.
Dr. J. and I cohosted three, yes THREE, roundtables of our own this year. We did Social Audio for Authors and discussed Twitter Spaces and how they can boost followers and so forth. Then, to promote the upcoming guidebook and to give authors a taste of what they’ll learn from it, we taught some of the Scenes with Sex course material. Then, after sharing my thoughts with her regarding another roundtable, we decided to create a resource sheet for sex education and did a Sex Ed 101 roundtable.
Favorite InkersCon Roundtables
Ask the Guys aka The Writing Guys
This roundtable is one of the best. You can literally ask them anything. Yes. Anything. And they’ll do their best to answer. Sometimes this RT runs amok and can last four hours. This year, they tried to rein it in a little bit, which I don’t blame them one bit. I got to stay over and chat with the guys about some interesting tidbits after the second roundtable. That was so much fun. They also have a podcast and they’re looking for diverse perspectives, so check them out!
Story Bible (Plottr)
Unfortunately, Ryan wasn’t able to teach this round table. However, Troy stepped up and delivered some amazing content on using Plottr to help write your story. You can also create a timeline for marketing and the writing schedule as well.
Plottr is constantly being updated with new features and they keep an ongoing list of what they’re working to add and have a place you can submit (or see if your idea has been submitted) to them for potential development.
I use Plottr Lifetime Pro and that means I can access my writing anywhere. It’s saved on the cloud and I can keep backups elsewhere, too. The support group is absolutely amazing. Quick, efficient, and polite.
What I Learned After Being Published for a Year Q&A
This was the first roundtable I attended. It was with Hannah McBride and all the ups and downs experienced during her first year after publishing a book. The big insight is using friends to read your work who don’t provide good feedback (i.e. ‘this is great keep going!’ is not good feedback) and how to train those friends to give you the feedback you need to improve the story.
Creating the Magic: World-building and Titling your Paranormal Romance
I’m not sure which name to use when it comes to the person hosting this roundtable. I’m also unsure if the name on their zoom was a real name or a pen name, so I’m going with not sharing their name for my own reasons (I don’t want to out someone in case they didn’t want their name out there).
Anyway. The roundtable contained excellent information regarding various things when it comes to writing paranormal romance. Do I write paranormal romance? Not exactly, but I’ve been known to write some spooky shit that’s definitely under the umbrella of supernatural happenings.
I think if I had the patience to build a complete world full of systems, I’d be able to pull it off thanks to the information contained in the roundtable and the handout we were given to help build the world and characters who live in it.
Favorite Classes
Plotting to Market with Ines Johnson and Write to Market with Kyla Stone
Two classes teaching about how to work the market in your favor. Both courses teach you how to navigate the genre(s) you want to publish in and how to keep your passion for writing. I honestly wonder what would happen if these two authors got together in a room and wrote a series together. Pretty sure something would explode. You know, apocalyptic style.
Books their Brains will Love with Melanie Harlow
This goes along with all the things Heather Whitaker teaches in her writing courses as well. It’s all about how to trigger those brain responses by using specific words, like action words. How to tap into those feelings and make the reader pine over the book long after they’re done reading it.
Writing using brain science is why have so many people have fictional book characters as imaginary partners. Don’t try to live up to them folx, it’ll never happen.
Handouts
One of the best things about InkersCon has to be swag, right? Since we don’t go to the official live in person event, we get most of our swag with handouts. Presenters share their slides and sometimes more. Many of the pre-recorded videos and all of the featured event videos come with transcripts as well. They try to make it as accessible-friendly as possible.
Office Hours and Sponsors
Companies who like helping authors do their best even have Office Hours for InkersCon participants. I haven’t watched these videos yet either, but I’m sure the information is excellent. This year we had Kobo, Draft2Digital, and BookBub.
Sponsors are many and range between publishing, plotting, coaching, and more. Honestly, check out InkersCon and all they have to offer. You’ll find 99% of the things you didn’t know you needed to know and the community to help you do them.
Overall Thoughts
The crew that runs InkersCon is full of amazing people. I’m grateful they hold this event. The number of things you can learn, the networking, the community, it’s all right here at this event.
If you’re looking to become a full-time author, no matter the genre, check out InkersCon. You can still buy a membership for this year and have access to all the items that were recorded.
There are always roundtables that don’t get recorded for various reasons, and that’s okay. We didn’t record the Sex Ed 101 so that people would be comfortable coming and asking questions and speaking their thoughts without filtering.
However, there is so much information contained you may feel overwhelmed. Remember, one step at a time. And listening to all the ways to do a thing doesn’t mean you have to do them.
It’s a way to learn how others do all these various pieces and parts of authoring and marketing and designing so that you can create a system that works to get working and having a fun passionate time, too.
