The Escrivivir Congress held its fourth edition in Valencia, from September 18 to 20 at the La Petxina Cultural Center, with more than 300 attendees present in person, in addition to those connected via streaming, gathering authors such as Marta Sanz, Sergio del Molino, Andrés Neuman, Paco Cerdà and Jordi Sierra i Fabra, among others.
This year I participated in a conversation with Isabel Barceló titled “Recreating Other Worlds: Setting and Verisimilitude in Fiction.” This is a matter close to my heart, because I have spent many years writing historical novels. When you place a story a thousand years back, you must achieve something that seems contradictory: build a world that the reader knows does not exist, and yet, as they read, make them absolutely believe in it. We talked about settings, journeys, and the idea that researching isn’t about proving to the reader how much you know. Quite the opposite. The documentation must disappear within the story. The reader should feel they are walking down a sixteenth-century street, entering a castle, or listening to a conversation from another era without perceiving the work that lies behind it.
I have attended many literary gatherings so far this year, as you may have read in my articles on Zenda—festivals, book fairs, reading clubs, launches… But Escrivivir is different, since it is directed especially at those who are trying to break into writing. And I know well how hard this can be.
The publishing world can seem from the outside like a fortress hard to conquer. Which publisher should I send my manuscript to? Do I need a literary agent? How do I contact one? What should I send?
Escrivivir features talks by established writers, editors, and specialists in different literary aspects, where advice is offered and experiences are shared. But it also has a significant extra: participants can hold brief one-on-one interviews, speed dating, with publishing professionals to whom they present their project. Specifically, there are four ten-minute interviews, half with literary agents and major editors; the other half with independent houses that are seeking new writers to publish.
Ten minutes may seem like a short time after spending two years writing a novel, but they can be enough to explain who you are, what you have written, and, above all, to spark the interest of the person you are facing.
In this way, Escrivivir concentrates on one of the great challenges for writers: the distance between the author and the publishing world. From the outside, editors and agents can look inaccessible. At Escrivivir, for a few days, that distance is shortened.
This congress cannot promise anyone that their novel will be published. No one can do that. Writing and publishing remain difficult and enormously competitive. But it can offer something far more realistic and perhaps much more useful: knowledge, contacts, and opportunities.