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.