Workshops and back to work on the novel

The workshops at tomorrow's Field's End conference look to be informative, and I'm motivated to hear from the variety of presenters. This conference caters to writers of non-fic, fic, and poetry, so it will be much different than the RWA conference that I attended earlier in the month. I'm aiming to attend the following workshops:

1. Jennifer Louden: Writing Naked (with your clothes on): How to nurture your creative truth, romance your muse, and get the work done. (Note: Devlin ought to enjoy this one ;))
2. Suzanne Selfors: Finding Your Genre. This one interests me because I'm writing both a mystery and a women's fiction.
3. Page One: Fiction; with Laura Kalpakian and Alice Acheson, moderated by Sheila Rabe. During the Page One workshop, the presenters will pull from first-page samples anonymously submitted by workshop attendees and critique before the group. I will be submitting the *current* first page of Falling Short, but they don't get a chance to critique all of the submissions.

Beyond the world of conferences and workshops, I've made progress on Deception. Presenting the first page of Falling Short to my critique group has been constructive and it's fueled my interest in that story as well. I can't continue to bounce back and forth, however, so I am determined to keep at Deception until I feel it's ready for a full MS review. With family commitments and all, I've made embarrassingly slow progress since the first of the year.

On a personal note, I adopted a new exercise schedule when the spring weather finally arrived. It's been a long road to wellness since my adrenals gave out in May of '05. This past week I've been rather sore but thankful that I can push myself a little further each day. For the first time in 3 years, I'm hopeful about getting in shape.

One thing leads to another

At the NECRWA conference, I had the opportunity to chat with Susan Wiggs (http://www.susanwiggs.com/). Susan is the author of many books, one of them Table For Five, which I just read and enjoyed so much I immediately passed it along to a woman sitting next to me on the airplane. Susan is from the Pacific Northwest, too, and she encouraged me to look into Field's End, a conference in our area.

I did, and I'm registered. Susan, it was your pictures that sold me! Who can resist such a beautiful setting? (To find out about this conference, go to http://www.fieldsend.org/).

My friend Ellie is going to attend with me. It didn't take any arm-twisting. All I did was email her the conference info and she called and said, "I want to go!" I'm looking forward to spending the whole day with Ellie. It's been...gosh...since my Tyler days...? *Snicker* are you wondering what my "Tyler days" were? Hint: Tyler was tall, dark, full of himself, and terrified of my husband.

That was fun :) On to my writing ~

I'm applying the work I did a few weeks ago, where I nailed down some elements of the plot that desperately needed to be nailed down. KEY elements, like whodunit. Writing a mystery is not like writing a more literary story where the plot is character-driven (my other novel is women's fic). While it was fun writing a mystery and being in the dark myself, I fear I've wasted an awful lot of time. And words. A few of the changes I made dovetail right into the existing MS; others require a bit more work, but that's okay. I keep telling myself that I don't have to get every word PERFECT on this draft, but then I linger and agonize over scenes, trying to figure out why it doesn't resonate the way I want it to. I need to stop lingering and just get the changes down and into this draft and THEN go back and rework the scenes.

One more thing: the world may be getting smaller thanks to the internet, but it can't overcome the distance between me and my writing friends. The drawback to belonging to an international writing group is that the face-to-face meetings are few and far between. Instead of being filled with gratefulness for the opportunity to meet two of my longtime internet friends - which I should be - I'm feeling the empty, lifeless air of the miles that separate us.

Maybe a trip to Starbucks will fill that void...

NECRWA Conference

For my first conference, I couldn't have chosen a better conference to attend. The workshops applied to all genres: going deeper with point of view, setting as metaphor, weaving in backstory artfully, critiquing, the business of writing. The guest speakers were witty and insightful. Everyone was approachable. And meeting my friends? Well, that was worth every penny spent.

What I found at this conference was validation. To describe the validation in cliche: Writing is a lonely business. I can't think of a better way to describe it. Like all other writers, I pour my heart and soul onto the page and hope that someone will enjoy the words I've conjured into (hopefully) living, breathing characters. Publication is wonderful, as are critique groups, for making you feel like a real writer, but a conference makes you feel like you're part of the writing community.

More later. I still need to process all that I experienced! The fun with my friends, the professional input, the increased motivation...there's just too much to fit down in one post.

NECRWA Conference

ONLY ONE MORE DAY!

It feels like I've spent days getting ready, from making arrangements for the kids for while I'm gone to deciding what shoes to wear with my LBD.

On the road

The NECRWA conference is next weekend! I'm getting excited. I'll be travelling all the way across the country on Monday and staying with my writing friend Madison Leigh. Another of the members of our international writing group will be joining us at the conference. Mad and Jen and I have been busy emailing about our upcoming visit.

This will not be the first time I've travelled alone since my adrenal failure in May of 2005, but it will be the first time I've travelled alone to somewhere I've never been. You would think travelling to a foreign country on my own would have been the more intimidating experience, but there are a few aspects of this trip that have me a bit nervous. I'll be flying into Providence, renting a car, and driving to my friend's house in Massachusetts. Eek! But I'm a big girl, and I have a GPS navigation system with my friend's address already plugged in. Right now as I sit in my house in the Pacific Northwest, it tells me I have 2,454 miles to my destination.

On the aspect of writing, I have not done much of anything. I feverishly scribbled down the start of a longish short story, the one my muse handed to me when he should have been concentrating on one or the other of my novels in progress. To say that this short story is outside of my usual would be an understatement. Near as I can tell, this one takes place in the late forties or early fifties and is set in a tropical climate, most likely somewhere in South America. And it begins with the aftermath of an earthquake.

I think I'll let that story simmer for a while and get back to my mystery.