Conference Impressions

Current Project: Current WIP
Status: I actually wrote a couple of pages on the plane back from DC!

I've been trying to make sense of my notes from the RWA National Conference so that I could share a few great insights, but I'm afraid all you're going to get are my jumbled impressions and odd thoughts. That seems to be the way my brain works these days, so I'm truly not surprised. I should mention that this was only my second RWA conference--my first was last year in San Francisco.

I can't tell you how fortunate I felt at being able to attend the conference this year in Washington DC. It's been almost 20 years since the last time I was in DC and I arranged to arrive a day early so that I could at least go to the National Mall and see some of the monuments. The Mall was as awe inspiring as I remembered and I overloaded my poor brain at the Smithsonian, only making it to Air & Space and Natural History.

I stopped in only very briefly at the Literacy Signing. The picture I took doesn't do the room or the crowd justice. It seemed to me like there were more people -- both authors and readers -- at this signing than at San Francisco. It could be, though, that the room was a bit smaller and so felt more crowded. Still, the signing raised over $60,000! I was just too pooped from sightseeing and too in need of quiet away from crowds to spend much time squeezing through the rows of tables.

The opening session of the Conference was fabulous. Instead of a prepared speach, Janet Evanovich answered pre-submitted questions. Her answers were funny and honest and inspiring. Did you know it took her ten years and a packing crate full of rejections before she was published? It's so easy to look at successful authors and forget that they started out just like me -- at the bottom and hopeful about breaking in.

Linda Howard gave the Keynote speach. She was really very funny (and I'll never look at a riding lawn mower in the same way). Her message (and I'm paraphrasing) was essentially: Everyone has distractions. Don't let those distractions become your excuse not to write. Do your best, hang in there, and eventually you'll make it.

I tried to attend a mixture of craft and career workshops this time and I think I succeeded. Two standouts for me were Suzanne Brockman's workshop on "Breaking the Rules" and Jenny Crusie's workshop on "Turning Points." Both of these women are funny and passionate about what they do. In fact, all of the workshops I attended were informative and fun. It constantly amazes me at the open sharing and honest encouragement that happens within RWA. This is a professional organization like no other I've been a part of and I'm very, very happy to be a member.