RWA Conference in Atlanta

Wow, I don't know where to begin. It's been so long since I posted on here that it took four tries to get the username and password right.

RWA in Atlanta was amazingly cool. It's one of those things where you are surrounded by kindred spirits trying to accomplish the same thing so it feels really comfortable even though you are mostly surrounded be strangers. Obviously, since it's romance writing, most of the members are women. I wonder if that is the main part of the dynamic. Everyone was really friendly and helpful. I'm sure that jealousies occur, but that seems to be more in the background. Maybe I'm still to new to it to know better.

I got to meet up with three friends from RT in St. Louis last year. They'd been to the conference before so it was nice to have people to guide me over the rough spots and to hang out with. They are smart and funny women so it was a good time.

I went to a lot of seminars and was determined to avoid the free book signings as I was going to have to lug everything back to Tokyo. Didn't do too well on the avoiding thing. After I went to a couple of publisher spotlights, I decided I wanted to get some books so that I could get a better idea of the different lines. I can get English books here, but the selection is not that great. Mainly, only the big names make it here so it was nice to get some new authors. I also picked up a couple of RITA winners and nominees so I'm pretty excited about that.

I would say that I came away with three really important things.
1. being mentally charged up and inspired to return to my first manuscript
2. finding that I'm really on the right track for a lot of stuff and that I need to stick my ass in the chair
3. looking at writing as a career not just thinking of one manuscript at a time.

I don't want to finish manuscripts and then go, "now what?" True there is no career without a manuscript but a manuscript without a plan won't go anywhere either.