Conferences

The Inland Chapter of Romance Writers of America is having a fabulous time at Bear Creek Lodge, right at the foot of Mount Spokane. Not only are we eating great food, drinking delicious wine, and socializing with old and new friends, we’re actually getting some writing done too! This morning, fabulous author and RITA nominee Margaret Mallory led a great workshop on taking your writing the next level. She also generously answered questions about the writing business and what to expect out of a writing career. Kesar improves your sexual useful web-site canadian levitra performance in bed will surely get …

The universal answer to that question is, of course, CHOCOLATE, but I was looking for one that doesn’t increase my hip span. Oh, and wine works too, but after a few glasses I get too sleepy or too loopy to write. My main motivations to keep writing includes my critique partners, my local RWA chapter, and setting concrete deadlines for myself by signing up for a conference, contest, or class. These last few weeks, I’ve been enrolled in Candace Haven’s Fast Draft class where I committed to write twenty pages per day for two weeks. Think of it like NaNoWriMo …

The last few weeks I’ve been obsessed about e-pub vs. print and self publish vs. traditional houses. Over at Bark I blogged about how I learned that the term “self-published” is too filled with negativity, so the hip new term is “indie author.” I also wrote about how a writer friend emailed me Jim C. Hall’s very funny cartoon to get me to shut up about the whole thing. Well, I’m happy to report that I’m not longer obsessing. The Rose City Spring Intensive has renewed my enthusiasm for writing, given me new hope about getting published, and shown me—yet …

I’m at another conference this weekend. My second visit to the Emerald City Writers Conference (ECWC) is turning out to be even more fun than when I first visited it two years ago. Tomorrow I’m pitching to two editors and two agents and tonight I’ve fine tuned my pitch until the wee hours of the morning. Here’s my final version. Would you read this book? Twenty-six year old freelance forensic artist Molly Nyland doesn’t want anybody to know that the reason she draws such great composite sketches is because she can tell when what people say doesn’t match what they …

We so often put writing last on our priority list. We feel guilty for “stealing” writing time from our day job, our family, and our friends. Taking the time and the money to go to a writing conference seems selfish. After all, we can learn writing techniques and marketing tips from books and blogs, so why spend the money? Isn’t the time you’d spend at the conference better spent on writing? Sure, you can spend that time on you writing; slogging away at the keyword, pulling the prose out of your soul while you worry about all the other things on …