Jolene in Real Life

I signed up for the Romance Writer's of America Conference in Anaheim this July.  I'm a little apprehensive, but I am incredibly excited.  I've already printed out the list of workshops and have marked the ones I am most interested.  Though this isn't my first conference.  I attended one in Edmonds, Washington called Write On The Sound (WOTS) a few years back, but haven't made it back since because of either budget or time constraints.  It had some great workshops, but this big one down in California has so many more and even research workshops.  For example, there is one on real-life hostage negotiations to help writers add realism to their hostage scenes. Our family was already planning a trip to San Diego around the same time so we just decided to roll it all into one which means my husband and two kids will be down there with me.  That should be interesting.  My husband will have to entertain the kids the all day while I'm in meetin...

I just recieved the email confirming my membership to Romance Writers of America and I'm so excited!  It's kind of sad that it has taken me this long to sign up, but, better late than never!  I wonder if that counts for my accomplishment for the week.  Sadly I haven't done any actual story writing since Monday.  This morning I came to the realization that laziness is not to be confused with procrastination, at least not in my case.  Being lazy would mean not doing much of anything.  But I find myself doing plenty, mostly as a way to put off what I really should be doing.  Even now, writing in this blog means I am too busy to tend to auction items I should be inputting.  And when I finish posting this, I plan to explore the RWA website a bit with my new access.  After that I might get some auction work done, if I have time before I have to pick up my son.  Busy, busy, busy!

I know that belonging to various writer affiliations will help to get an agent at least look at you work so I've been doing my homework.  I looked up Romance Writers of America (RWA) and that is an easy one to join, simply pay the membership dues.  The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers group (SFWA) requires another step that is still faily simple; publish a short story in any of the eligible publications listed on their website.  I have discovered that for all the science fiction that I watch and read, I can't think of a single idea for my own science fiction story.  At least not an original one.  Every time I start to come up with a plot, I remember what show I got it from.  I suppose I need to combine the elements of some of my favorite story lines.  What's frustrating is that most days I can hear a line from a song or a gesture of a stranger and next thing you know I've got a whole novel based around what I think I caught.  Three da...