Due to injuries I suffered in an on-duty traffic collision earlier this year, I missed the Romance Writers of America (RWA) National Conference. I save money all year so I can attend this conference. Including this year, I’ve only missed two RWA national conferences in the past fourteen years. As you can see, it’s a big deal to me.

Since I didn’t go to RWA this year, I’ve still got funds set aside, and I’m wondering about going to some of the smaller conferences in the upcoming months. A number of years ago, I attended one inaugural small conference of an RWA chapter. The conference was outstanding, but I don’t remember if there were agent/editor appointments or not…I wasn’t at that place in my writing <g>. I do remember it was a more intimate conference and most people knew each other because most of us belonged to the same RWA chapter.

I’ve heard about some chapters ‘mini-conferences’, and fleetingly considered going. But I only have so much time and so much money and I have to ask myself if it’s worth it to spend about a third of what I would normally spend for the national conference which, for me, lasts about a week, and to take that money and spend it for a weekend?

I suspect many writers are in the same boat. With the economy the way it is, for many people, there probably isn’t a lot of extra cash for a weeklong conference. Perhaps for some of them, it makes more sense to go to a closer and cheaper convention. The key is, does a smaller conference offer a ‘same but smaller’ experience for the attendees? Does it offer a BETTER experience by the fact it is smaller and people can mix and mingle? Do those smaller conferences attract big-name speakers? Are agent/editor appointments available for those wanting to pitch?…I’m at that place in my writing now <g>.

What do you think? What do you know? What do you want to share?

Until next time,

KMA367

We’ve all had the experience. You go to your computer and click on a file to open it so you can get to work. But something funky happens. Maybe your computer coughs, hiccups, and hesitates. You get a little anxious and then, wha-la…the file opens. You let out a sigh of relief and get to work.

Your fingers are in frenzy, finishing off the final report of a pesky project at work, or maybe it’s the final draft of your latest novel. You go to save the file - and it won’t save. Your computer screen is frozen. Your heart begins to accelerate as you try to save, print, or even close your file. Nothing is working. You then resort to the old standby - control, alt, delete. Nothing happens. So, with resignation in your heart and heat radiating off your face, you shut down your computer.

As the screen goes black, you pray the auto-save did its job and you’re not missing too many of the words you typed. At this point, your mood is as black as the computer screen.

When you re-boot your machine, your mouth is dry. You click open the file you’d been working on. And there it is…an ugly box telling you your file has been corrupted. The little box asks you if you’d like to revert to the saved copy. You get a little giddy. Maybe the auto-save worked after all, and you’ve lost very little of your words and your precious time. Wrong! You open the corrupted file and see symbols, squares and squiggles. All of your work is gone.

We all know we should back-up our work. But I also know not all of us do. I’ve heard of cyber-companies where you can automatically back-up your work. There are a number of ways to back-up your work yourself. I know how I’m doing it - and frankly, it’s not efficient nor fool-proof. So, how do you back-up your work and why do you think it’s the best way of doing it?

Until next time,

KMA367

Since I’ve been home with a duty-related injury, I’ve had the opportunity to re-discover my love for reading.  I have no shortage of material to read.  My ‘to-be-read’ pile is overflowing on my shelf.  But often, what happens is that I forego my current stash of books and get books from my favorite authors.  But every once in a while, I pick up a book from a new (to me) author.   If the book is really good, I inwardly moan because now I have another favorite to try to fit into my reading schedule.

Sometimes, when I’m online and looking at books, I will read the reviews that go with that book - and yes, those reviews do impact some of my decisions.

Not too long ago, my daughter introduced me to Goodreads.com, a book review site.  I’ve critiqued some novels there and will probably do more.  Of course, I’ve left a few reviews on Amazon.com, and I’ve heard of Shelfari but haven’t gotten too involved with that site.  As someone who started out writing romance novels; I’ve read reviews in Romantic Times Magazine.

My question to you - especially if you are a writer/author:  Do you visit book review sites?  If so, do those sites influence your buying decisions?  Which sites do you utilize? If you’re published, have you looked up reviews on your own books?  How did you react to negative feedback (if there was any)?  If you received negative feedback on your work, did you continue to return to see what other readers had to say?

Until next time,

KMA 367 

If you were at the Romance Writers of America recent national conference you know that one of the days the fire alarm in our hotel was activated.  Most of us were in workshops expanding our minds and gaining valuable writing knowledge. 

In the workshop I was in, the alarm sounded and the speaker stopped speaking and we all kind of looked around in bewilderment.  Was there a fire?  Was this a fire drill?  An alarm malfunction?  Along with the alarm and flashing lights a pre-recorded voice advised guests to “leave the building now.”

I was somewhat surprised by that directive.  My experience with similar alarms has been that the canned voice usually announces that the alarm activation was being investigated and further instructions would soon be issued.  But not on this day.  The voice to said  get out of the building.

That was when “cop-mode” kicked in.  Seeing a sign for an exit directly behind the stage where the speaker was standing, I moved in that direction.  However, when I was able to clearly see the exit doors, I quickly realized that the stage floor was about three feet above the ground and many of the women in the group would have a problem climbing down off the platform without injury.  So I directed everyone to exit the room from the entry doors and made sure we all got out of the room.  (I was the bossy redhead wearing a white jacket). 

As we exited the room there were a number of Marriott security officers advising the flood of women to exit the building.  But then another security officer came dashing by yelling, “False alarm!  False alarm!”  So we started moving back into the workshop classroom…until even more security officers arrived in the area.  Once again we were directed to leave the building.

Frustrated by the ever-changing instructions, I made the decision I was going to get out of the building and directed other women to follow.   Most of the women in the hallway and pouring from workshop rooms and headed toward the nearby escalators.  I deliberately avoided the escalators and elevators.  Walking across the hallway I chose a different exit that led to an exhibition-size hall and then some other doors that appeared, from my estimation, to lead to the outer perimeter of the building.  Our group was small - maybe fifteen or so women.  The rest had flocked to the escalators.  When the we reached the second set of doors that I’d thought would lead outside, we were confronted with a tall set of stairs that led to doors that opened to the outside.  One woman who saw the stairwell uttered words to the effect of “No flippin’ way,” and turned around to find another exit out of the building.  The remainder of our group climbed the stairs which took us to the loading ramp and to the driveway of the hotel to relative safety.

So what’s the point of this blog?  I want to tell you what was going through my mind during this event.  When the fire alarm first activated, I thought the natural thing…possible fire.  But as we all made our way to the hallway and I saw the huge mass of people waiting to ride the escalator to the lobby level I suddenly remember the news report I’d seen that very morning about two Marriott hotels in Jakarta being blown up by suicide bombers.  My knowledge and training dictated that I not “go the normal route”, just in case this was a terrorist attack.  If that was the case, where do you think an explosive device might have been left to detonate to harm the most people?  Perhaps near the escalators?  I was also concerned where any secondary devices might be placed.  I also wondered if our group, because we write about romance and sex and our heroines are smart, strong women, would be attractive to someone desiring to make a point to the United States.  

Now while my mind works by thinking of worst-case scenarios, that isn’t the way most people think.  Without further evidence that the event was nothing more than it appeared - someone activating the fire alarm - it would have done me no good to start shouting my thoughts to the hundreds of women in my vicinity.  In fact, it could have caused panic and possibly injuries.  So my decision was to get as many people as I could out of the building safely by the quickest and best route I could find, and that’s what I did.

I later learned that the day before, the over-flow hotel, the Omni, had also had a similar occurrance with a fire alarm activation.  Which makes me wonder if perhaps this was a “test run” by someone studying the response of guests and emergency responders to an emergency in an American hotel.

I’m not writing this post to scare you.  I’m writing it so that if you are faced with a similar situation you will think ”outside the envelope” and do your best to keep yourself safe. 

One final thought…If this had been a real emergency I would have been a lot more assertive in my directions and there is no way I would let anyone who was within sight of an exit door go back inside the building to find another exit.  One way or another I would get you up those stairs and out of that building. 

Watch for Part Two of this blog within the next several days.

Until next time…

KMA367

If you saw my blog from yesterday I was talking about a writing challenge I’m in and how I’m keeping track daily of how many words I write.  Although I’ve been writing for a long time, I’ve never kept track of my output before.  I’m liking it!  Today, I did three times the goal I’d pledged to do.  (Always striving to be the over-achiever!)

I remember how the character James Caan played in the movie Misery had a cigarette and a bottle of wine (?) when he finished a book.  And Kathleen Turner’s character, in Romancing the Stone, fed her cat on china, and I believe she also had wine or champagne.

I’ve finished two books, but haven’t established any writing rituals.  I think the first ritual I’m going to employ will be documenting my output each day.

My question to you is: What are your writing rituals? 

If you’re not a writer, maybe you have some other task that you complete where you have a routine or ritual when you get the job done.  I’m curious…what do you do?

WHAT’S PLAYING ON MY IPOD RIGHT NOW:  Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing Baby by Michael McDonald

Until next time,

KMA367

I’m currently participating in a writing challenge sponsered by one of my Romance Writers of America chapters, LARA (Los Angeles Romance Authors).  This particular challenge is called Stop Procrastinating Everybody Write - or as it is more commonly known…SPEW.

The idea to SPEW is an off-shoot of another writing challenge - Book In A Week, aka: BIAW.  The idea behind Book In A Week is that you pick one week in your life where you schedule your life (as best you can) to do nothing but write.  Obviously, there are some commitments that you must honor - like feeding your family, going to work, etc.  But with BIAW you let everyone in your life know, that for this one week in time, every minute that isn’t consumed by mandatory obligations will be filled with writing.

Has anyone finished a book in a week?  I’m not sure.  I haven’t heard of them if they have.  If you’ve finished a book in a week, you’ve worked hard for your accomplishment…and you should probably be a little more diligent in letting the world know.  I know I’d be impressed.

Now, about SPEW.  As I understand it, LARA realized that writing a book in a week could be a tad daunting for most writers.  So they created SPEW.  This is my first experience with SPEW.  LARA is a pretty supportive group and in addition to the satisfaction of completing your goals, you get e-mail encouragement from other participants.  In addition to that, some of the participants e-mail photos of nice looking gentlemen to the participants.  (I’m still hoping someone will post a picture of Tom Selleck in a tux.) 

Even though I’m on vacation and should be able to SPEW pages and pages each day, I decided to not sabotage myself and only committed to one page a day.  (I know, I know, I’m a wimp!)  But the good news is that each day I’ve been able to exceed my mandated one page a day.  Not by vast amounts, but enough so that I’m currently one page “ahead of schedule”.

Probably the most important thing I’ve learned from SPEW is how much I like seeing those numbers on the tally sheet I keep.  In my writing career I’ve heard a lot of people say how helpful they’ve found it to keep track of how much they write each day.  I’ve even tried it a time or two.  But I was never successful.  This time, I think the results will be different.  I’m learning that it really doesn’t take that long to write one page.  And one page leads to two.  And two pages lead to three, and so on and so on.  And that my friends…makes me a writer.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO ON MY IPOD RIGHT NOW:  Rockin’ Years by Dolly Parton and Ricky Van Shelton

Until Next Time…

KMA367

Two of my writing groups are currently struggling with postings to their writer’s “loops”.  Each group is trying to figure out a way to reduce the amount of posts while still holding true to the “core value” of of the loop…disseminating information.

One group is concerned with posts to the loop regarding member announcement’s of their blogs.  The other group wants to make it easier for loop members to wade through messages from other  writer’s organizations announcing online classes, contests, guest speakers etc.

I truly get the gist of this dilemma - I recently returned from a week’s vacation to four hundred e-mails.  It took me almost 3 hours to go through those e-mails.  That’s with a totally different group in digest form.  Oh, you’re probably thinking I have too many “groups”.  That may be true, but those loops are how I stay in touch with my writing peers.

I could put all my groups on digest, but I have the feeling I’m not seeing all the posts that way.  I find people talking about posts that I haven’t seen on previous digests.

Could the problem be that there is just too much information out there?  Has the “internet-highway” reached gridlock?  Is the problem that writers (romance writers in particular) are highly educated in the way to self-promote, therefore, they do a lot of promotion e-mails?

I don’t have an answer, but I do have a delete key.  And for right now, that’s going to be my answer.

WHAT I’M WATCHING ON TV RIGHT NOW:  Desperate Housewives

Until next time,

KMA367