AUTHORS GATHER: LAURA EASLEY'S WRITING BREAK CAME WITH SEATING ARRANGEMENT

Laura Easley attended her first Heartland Writers' Conference last year, a wanna-be writer hoping to find a publisher for her children's novel. She didn't. But walking into the banquet late and taking the first available seat, she found herself passing the rolls to Louis Daniel Brodsky, the St. Louis poet and Faulkner scholar who also owns Time Being Books.

In the ensuing conversation, Easley learned that Time Being was developing a computer program tailored for writers but having trouble producing a manual. Easley, who had some informal experience putting together computer manuals for a previous employer, offered her help.

Four months later, she completed the manual for the Penman's Friend. When the program is offered for sale, possibly later this year, Easley will become a published writer.

That face-to-face exchange with publishers, editors, literary agents and working authors is the advantage Saturday's Heartland Writers' Conference can give writers, says Easley, a 32-year-old Cape Girardeau resident who edits the Heartland Writers' Guild newsletter.

"It's not a miracle that's going to happen to you, it's not a gift from God," she said. "It's an opportunity.

The conference will be begin at 8 a.m. Saturday at the Holiday Inn and will conclude with a banquet at 7:30 p.m. An autograph party for the guest authors will be held from 7-9 tonight at Waldenbooks in the West Park Mall.

At last year's conference, Easley also made contact with a children's fiction publisher. Afterward, she submitted her manuscript for "Crystal Visions," a novel about a boy's struggles with his mother's divorce, and a magical adventure that leads to self-awareness.

She received a form letter rejection.

"It's a crap shoot," Easley said. "You take your chances."

The Penman's Friend computer program itself will produce form letters for writers querying publishers, and will run a report telling what manuscripts currently are being considered by publishers. It also will report the history of the writer's exchanges with various publishers.

All these marketing considerations may seem to have little to do with writing, but writers who don't know their market and don't know how to work it seldom get published, Easley said.

"No one can afford to do that."

A voracious reader as a child, Easley was a military intelligence technician in the Army and a bored housewife before deciding to try writing.

"I felt isolated and I felt lost," she said. "I didn't have anything but a child, a husband and soap operas."

Encouraged by her father to try something new, she was attracted to writing by "the allure of being able to create."

She finished the first eight chapters of the novel in six months, but finding a satisfactory conclusion in the final two chapters required another half year. "That's real important for first-time writers you've got to have it finished," she said.

Writing is a discipline, Easley said. "On the manual, I sat in front of the computer and worked until 4 p.m. every day no matter how much I wanted to go to the sale at Venture or do those dirty dishes."

Easley, who is getting divorced herself, now would like to be able to establish a career as a technical writer while continuing her creative work. She does not prefer one kind of writing to the other.

"They're like children," she said. "You have one child who is a scholar and one who is a rock star. You're proud of both of them."

Before the conference begins, Easley hopes to finish the science fiction short story she has been working on. It's a venture into yet a third genre.

"I've never been one easily penned into a space," she said. That's not typical (genre-switching), but I'm not a typical person."

The conference is valuable, Easley said, because it shows writers how the process works and who the people they need to know really are, Easley said.

"It really gives you an opportunity to get your feet in the water."