In just a few hours I leave for the South Carolina Writer's Workshop writer's conference at Myrtle Beach. I doubt it looks as pretty as this photo, but here is a picture of the Myrtle Beach Hilton where it's being held. I would only go to Myrtle Beach in the off-season, so I'm looking forward to it.
Some friends from my writer's group are also going, so that will be fun to get to know them better.
But here's the thing that's got me thrilled beyond reason: I signed up for a critique session with an editor, and after he received my novel chapter he sent me an e-mail requesting that I bring more.
I'm not bringing more because it's not ready to be seen. But I'm hoping he'll want to see it when it's finished.
I might even blog from the conference, which would be a new experience for me, a former desktop-only blogger.
And, I've decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. Groovy is doing it, too, and is now one of my NaNoWriMo writing buddies. Ever wanted to write a novel? Now's your chance! It's free but you have to buy your own coffee. If you are Nanowrimoing, leave a comment on this post and I'll send you my "buddy" name so we can be buddies together in November. I don't know about you, but I could use 50,000 words AND an excuse not to go to lengths for Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, Paul and Lily have agreed to do everything for Thanksgiving (since I declared we were going to a restaurant.) Won't that be something?
There are crazy things going on in my life that I haven't blogged about because I really don't know what to say. The last time I heard from my father was a letter from his new lawyer in an apparent attempt to take back real estate my father gave me (and I've been paying taxes on) for several years and give it to Non-Saintly Brother. I won't whine here, but this is what I was referring to in my post where I said we were going from King Lear to Jerry Springer. I can't take it anymore so I'm not.
Anyway. I'm so grateful to my accountability partner, a woman I've never met who lives in Oklahoma. We write each other M-F and have since last January to encourage each other in our writing and our lives. You can't imagine how wonderful it is to get sincere, encouraging and inspiring e-mails every day from a person who cares and is praying for you, even if you've never met. We talked on the phone once. That was a real treat.
Our goal is to both get our books published and meet on a panel at a writer's conference somewhere. It's going to happen. It really is.
Y'all have a good weekend. And if this picture looks really tempting, just remember that it's supposed to rain on me all weekend. More time to listen and write!
Bless you all!
I would so love to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I did it two years ago and really enjoyed every minute of it. Somehow, I even came close to finishing my first draft.
Then December rolled around and there were tons of family demands on my time. I tucked said draft away for a while in the hope of returning to it in January. When New Years came, I'd spent so much mental energy thinking about where I wanted the story to go that I wound up second-guessing myself.
It was, I believed at the time, the single worst first draft ever written by any author at any time in the history of humanity. To make matters worse, after a couple of martinis I managed to convince myself that the thing was worth deleting off of my hard drive, if only to ensure my husband and kids wouldn't find it were I to suffer a sudden death.
Moral of the story: don't let martinis do the talking, and if they DO talk don't let them make your fingers do the walking.
Posted by: Venomous Kate | October 23, 2008 at 05:00 PM
Oh hey, sorry I saw this late ... hope you're having a fabulous time and I'm jealous--I want to go back to Myrtle! :)
Posted by: Anwyn | October 25, 2008 at 11:54 PM