If you ever consider writing romance novels, I highly, highly recommend that you go to the Romance Writers of America conference. The conference ended today, and I have to say that going to it was one of the single best things I could have done right now (even if I am in the middle of moving into a new apartment and I go back to work on Monday). The quality and variety of the workshops was amazing, and I feel that I got a lot of useful information about the craft, the industry, the research, and the mechanics of building a career. Even better, it was just so cool to see how varied and interesting the women (and handful of men) at the conference were; the professions that these women had before writing (doctors, computer systems engineers, lawyers, librarians, professors, etc.) just demonstrate how incredibly smart and talented this group is.
Today I saw several great workshops. The first was 'Writing Regency in the Here and Now', given by Stephanie Laurens (one of my favorites), Jacquie d'Alessandro (I'm sure I've read something of hers before), and Candice Hern. It was reassuring that they think that Regencies are going to stay popular for the long term, since that's what I want to write :) I then went to a session on blogging, which was good, but I was mostly interested in going because I wanted to see what they were saying about Google and the blog market, and when it became clear that I wasn't going to get a surprise, I left to grab lunch instead. After lunch, I went to "Doddering Butlers, Pert Housemaids, and Faithful Retainers", which was simply awesome -- the speaker, Janet Mullany, has done an amazing amount of research into the Regency period, and I got her card afterwards to that I can email her to ask for copies of some of the prints she was showing (via the transparencies I was so shocked to see in her presentation). I also stuck around at the end for a panel on paranormal novels; I don't have plans to write paranormals myself, but I enjoy reading them, and I was curious to learn more about that market.
I think the most useful workshop for me, though, was Stephanie Bond's workshop on how to make a living from writing romance novels. She really appealed to me, probably because she sounds really insanely organized; she was talking about how she will sign contracts to write books up to two years in advance, and all about her yearly calendar to make sure that launch weeks don't coincide with deadline weeks for a different editor. A lot of what she talked about revolved around creating a business plan for your romance novel career, but she also talked about understanding your own process. And, she made the excellent point that if you can write one page a day, you'll have a full book at the end of the year. Perhaps cutting down the goal and making it clear to myself that I just expect an attempt, and not succumbing to the 'must be 3000 words before I quit' or 'must be perfectly polished', would be a good idea.
So the conference was fantastic -- it got me reenergized for tackling the second draft and then getting some feedback and reediting as necessary before focusing on the query letter, the submission process, and the next books in the series. As long as I'm in a good place with my manuscript, I'm hoping that I can go to the next RWA national conference, which is in Washington, D.C., next summer. But by the end of the today, I was pretty conference'd out. I ended up skipping the awards ceremony dinner. Instead, I drove down to the safe and happy Mountain View area to have dinner and watch "Mamma Mia!" with Terry and Lauren (aka Subz). I'd already seen "Mamma Mia!" with Chandlord on Monday, but I was v. happy to see it again; it's just so ridiculous that you can't not love it.
Now I should really go to bed; I'm falling asleep over my laptop. One more day of freedom, and then I go back to work!
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