30 Days of Readathon - Red

It was fun looking on my bookshelves to gather books with red spines. The only one in this stack that I haven't read yet is Story Genius by Lisa Cron. I will be reading it soon, though. I listened to a presentation she gave at a writers conference in March and it was amazing and motivational. 

Take the Risk

I love this quote and believe it to be absolutely TRUE! I attended the California Dreamin' Writers Conference this weekend and it was amazing! Robyn Carr and Sarah MacLean were the Keynote speakers and both had wonderful and inspirational things to say about this writing life! The crux of both of their speeches was to WRITE! What a surprise, right? It was nice - and well-timed - to hear it, though. Another thing I took away from this weekend was a reminder to stay true to myself, my writing style and what I want to write!

I have been told a couple of times recently, "You can't write that. No one will want to read that." It was discouraging, to say the least. I was reminded during Sarah MacLean's speech today to "Take the Risk!" So I'm going to do just that - Take the risk! I'm excited, nervous and hopeful!

Writers Conferences

A writers conference is something I used to want to give a try. Now that I've been to two I know that I LOVE them! I will be going to my third one this weekend! Two years ago I went to the California Dreamin' Writers Conference for the first time and fell in love with the event! It was so nice and truly amazing to be surrounded by people - mostly women but some men, as well - on the same journey as me. We're all at different places in our career but the end goal is to be a published author and that camaraderie felt - and still feels - AMAZING!

Last summer I went to my first national conference for the Romance Writers of America. THis is an annual event and at some point I'd love to go every year. Hopefully that will happen before too much longer. However, I can't make the national RWA conference this year so I will go to California Dreamin' Writers Conference once again this weekend. The keynote speakers are Robyn Carr and Sarah MacLean. I'm looking forward to hearing both of them.

There are also several workshops I am looking forward to. Such as, Self-Editing: Ten Tips to Make Your Words Pop, Working Past the Fear, Writing the Romance Novella, Mastering the Art of Great Conflict and Pros in Your Prose t name a few!

I am looking forward to a great weekend with writer friends, possible new friends to be made and a lot of learning about this writers life that I love!

Goal setting

I went to a writing workshop this morning. During the session we heard about goal setting and your core story. Both sections were really good but I want to focus on the goal setting. The speaker shared tips for making smart goals. Make them attainable and make them something you can control! For example, saying I will have a book published next year isn't so smart. I'm not in control of the agents, editors or publishing world in general. However, I can (and AM) say, "By March 31, 2017 I will submit two novels." I'm actually almost ready to submit one and will most likely do so by the end of December.

Another thing that was stressed during the workshop is to WRITE DOWN your goals! We are 42% more likely to achieve our goals if we have written them down! Isn't that amazing? I thought about this fact and realized that it is the absolute truth for me! Another truth - in general but also specifically for me - is to set a deadline!

I want to share three goals I have with a deadline of March 31, 2017:

1. As I said above, I will submit two novels to publishing companies.

2. I will attend the California Dreamin' Writers Conference that is taking place at the end of March.

3. I will write the first draft of a new book.

These are attainable goals that move me forward on my career path. How about you? Do you set goals and if so do you find that you are likely to achieve them?

Cool view in San Diego

Wordless Wednesday: Readers for Life Literacy Autographing

RWA Itinerary

I am going to the Romance Writers of America Annual Conference this coming week. I am really excited about it because this is my first time going. They offer a 'First Timers'' orientation which my friend and I are definitely going to attend. However, as I was looking through all the workshops they will be offering I began to feel slightly overwhelmed about it. I had this vision of myself standing in the middle of the hotel feeling lost and out of sorts. I'm sure that won;t be the case but still - I decided to make myself an itinerary.

There are over one hundred workshops to choose from, Keynote speakers, an awards ceremony and other events along with all of the networking opportunities. I want to make the best of this conference and get the most out of it that I can. With this in mind I sat down the other night and started reading about every workshop that is going to be available. I made choices for each time slot. For the majority of them I was able to choose easily. However, there are a few time slots where I am interested in more than one class. In fact, there is one where I like the sound of four of the classes! Obviously I can only go to one but I love that there is so much to choose from. I feel better having it narrowed down and things written down.

I'm really looking forward to the conference and will share more about it when I can.

Author business cards

Yes, author business cards are a thing. I had no idea of this until I went to the California Dreamin' Writers Conference last year. I felt a little silly when someone asked me for a business card and I didn't have one. Then I forgave myself because you don't know something until you learn it and that was my learning experience.

So, with the Romance Writers of America national conference coming up I figured I'd better have business cards this time. I had a heck of a time deciding on which cards to order. There was an abundance of choice but I had a difficult time finding a design that was exactly what I wanted - which was and is, clean, simple and pretty. It doesn't seem like that should have been hard but oh it was. The RWA conference is in sixteen days and I knew I was running out of time to order the cards if I wanted them to arrive in time. So last night, I sat down with my laptop, the website open to order the cards and enlisted my husband's help. I'm so glad I did because he pointed out a couple of good things about the cards I was finally interested in. With his help and tips in mind I narrowed it down to two choices. This afternoon I made up my mind and ordered the business cards. They are set to arrive by July 6th. I can't wait to get them. Even more, I can't wait to have the opportunity to hand them out the conference.

RWA National Conference

In three weeks I will be at the Romance Writers of America National Conference. It is being held in San Diego which is fortunate for me because I can drive there rather than needing to fly so that saves some money. It's my first time going to this writers conference and I am a little nervous. I'm mostly excited, though. I've known about this conference for years but I finally feel like I'm at a place in my writing life where I can go. Of course, going to California Dreamin' conference last year helped me to realize this, as well.

The RWA National conference is four days. There area lot of workshops - about both the craft and business of being a romance writer. There are keynote speakers and an awards ceremony to announce the RITA winners for this year. I can't wait to go to the conference. I hope I learn a lot and make some excellent contacts and possibly even some new writer friends. I'm sure I will have plenty to share once the conference is done.

California Dreamin' Writer's Conference

This past weekend I went to my first writers conference. I can guarantee that it wont be my last. In fact, I wish I had taken the chance on attending one far sooner than I did - years ago would have been great. The California Dreamin' Writers Conference was held from Friday night through Sunday afternoon - March 27th - 29th. There were workshops galore, opportunities to meet with agents and editors, keynote speakers and so much wonderful networking! I learned so much and had an incredibly good time at this conference. I had to call my husband a couple of times just to squeal and get some of the extreme amount of excitement out in order to continue acting like a professional adult while I was there. I'm only exaggerating a little bit. I have taken the time to thank him for encouraging me to go to this conference. He has already agreed that it would be beneficial for me to go to writers conferences in the future - but more on that in a bit.

Friday, when I first arrived at the conference I was so nervous but excited, too. Little things were in my head bothering me - like whether I was parked legally in the hotel underground since I wasn't actually staying there all weekend. What if there was some sort of problem and they didn't show me registered for the conference? What if I didn't find anyone to talk to? You know, things that turned out to be silly but seemed like a big deal in my amped-up, nervous state. Check-in went just fine and I immediately found someone to have a chat with. She was a very nice woman who had done the conference thing before and put me at ease. She suggested the First-Timers Orientation which I had already planned to attend. I went to that and am so grateful that I did. There were a lot of people attending a conference for the first time and a lot of great advice was given - like relax, have fun, learn as much as you can. Yeah, I know, it all sounds obvious - now.

Over the weekend I attended eleven workshops, met with agents, an editor and a lot of other writers! Many were already published and many were pre-published. I don't know what the exact ratio of each was but I didn't feel like it really mattered, either. Every single person I talked to was nice, welcoming and willing to talk about writing no matter where they were at in their career. People were so generous with advice, too. I did come across one person who acted a little bit uppity about the fact that she was already published but I didn't let it bother me. So many others had been kind before her that it made it easy to shrug off her attitude.

While I learned a great deal this weekend and found something useful in each workshop I did have my favorites. Black Moments (the point in the book where all seems lost), Ten Rules for Writing Love Scenes That Readers Don't Skip, Query Letters - An Editor's Perspective and The Alpha Hero were so incredible and filled with information that I was able to immediately put to work in my head. I'd love to share some of what was taught in the workshops but I'm going to make sure that's allowed before I do. I will say that the Black Moments workshop completely changed my perspective as a writer, though. There were so many phenomenal sounding workshops at the conference that it was hard to choose which ones to go to. I am so grateful for the fact that I went to the four I mentioned, though.

While at the conference I was asked to submit a portion of the manuscript I was pitching four times. I have no idea if that is 'normal' within the conference atmosphere but I am super excited. Of course, due to how much I did learn this weekend I know I need to do some more revision on my manuscript in order to make it even stronger. I was honest about that fact each time and that seems to be all right. For the first time ever I'm not looking at revision as a chore. I'm looking at it with excitement and possibility.

A big part of the reason my husband encouraged me to go to the conference was for networking purposes. He also said, "Honey, you need to make some writer friends that you can actually meet-up with in real life, on a regular basis." I knew he was right and I'm happy to say, goal accomplished. In fact, there is a group of five of us who met this weekend and we immediately clicked. We decided to keep in touch with one another. We also made a pact to attend the national RWA (Romance Writers of America) conference next summer (2016) in San Diego. This year's conference, which is in New York City, is already sold out. So we're all going to SD together and we've agreed to be supportive to one another so we can all have completed manuscripts to pitch. I'm all for that but have to add that I intend to be published by then. I will have another manuscript ready to pitch but I'm planning for it to be to an agent and/or editor that I already have in my corner as I advance my career. And no, I don't think I'm being big-headed. I've planned all along to make writing my career and the conference is sixteen months off. My plan is totally doable.