Last week, I attended my first professional conference since MacWorld 1995 (which I covered for my high school newspaper, true story). At the RWA Conference, I did not receive any free mousepads or laser pens, but I did cart home approximately four million books. I’m going to be in the weeds with my reading list for a long time.
One Major Thing happened, and I learned Three Important Things.
The Major Thing that happened was that I randomly met Jane of DearAuthor, ie my first Romance Blogger ever, and she ended up inviting me to serve on a Today Show discussion panel. The panel was severely edited but still contained a money quote from Sarah of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog. (Awesome). And I ended up meeting one million writers and bloggers, all of whom are slowly making their way onto my blogroll as I painstakingly read each business card.
To prevent myself from writing an endless post about every workshop, every half-drunk cup of coffee, and every time I was subsumed with hero-worship when I saw Beverly Jenkins and she smiled (in recognition! of ME!) I will condense, quickly, the Three Things I learned in my whirlwind of learning time.
1. I am so resistant to writing tools, but GMC is changing my life instantly. One of the myths I have always believed, as a fledgling writer, is that good writing magically appears in 12-point Times New Roman, as long as you are a genius, requiring no editing or even spell checking. Since my writing didn’t work that way, I assumed that it was simply because I was not a genius. It appears that writing is slightly more complicated than that, and my manuscript is getting all glowy now because I can find the central theme of the novel. Glowy good.
2. Speaking of being resistant to writing tools, I was so glad I attended Elizabeth Boyle and her husband’s invaluable workshop about organizing one’s writing like a project manager. Treating my writing like the career that it is, taking deadlines and progress seriously, is essential for a master procrastinator such as myself. Why not respect myself by respecting my writing? It’s not a hobby, it’s what I do. I even made an Excel worksheet (!) to log in my writing time today (!), not that I need an excuse to make a worksheet. Brilliant!
3. I finally know what a synopsis really, really is, thanks to Pam McCutcheon’s workshop. (I really like the Socratic method, by the way. It was the last seminar we attended, and it really woke us up.) She tied GMC to the synopsis process, and I appreciated it.
Now everything about writing makes perfect sense, and my manuscript rewrite will be done in the next five minutes, just kidding. But I had a wonderful time, even if my inner introvert was extremely tired by the end. I won’t be making eye contact with anyone for a few weeks.
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