Not going to conference this year? Me, too! Actually, this will be my second year of absence and I don’t feel guilty or left out at all.
But let me explain. Last year, I was eight months pregnant and of course, the weekend of conference my doctor informed me that I was dilating! (Also, everyone including my editor and agent promised to send me home if I so much as peeked into the Reno Hilton!)
This year I have a book to finish and well, it boiled down to the choice of spending our extra money to leave my boys behind for Atlanta; or go on our first family vacation. My boys and my book won hands down.
So I wanted to share some tips for those of you who aren’t going because you lost the battle of the budget, or you don’t feel ready.
1. Get together with some writer friends and talk about writing over coffee or cocktails. This might be the start of a critique group or even better, new friendships. The best things about conference are the people you meet and the ideas exchanged. Don’t get me wrong, the OCC suite, seminars and networking are priceless. But when I left the conferences in New York and Dallas, I went home invigorated and ready to write. You can only get that charge from fellow writers, so if you can’t be in Atlanta, round up some buddies!
2. Join a Book in a Week program. I can’t think of any better time to buckle down and make some progress on your WIP. Make yourself a promise that if you finish that WIP by fall, you’ll sign up for RWA National in 2007.
3. Write your writer’s business plan. If you plan to finish your WIP by next year’s conference, why not take some time out and dream? Your business plan doesn’t have to be super fancy or formal. It can be a place where you start thinking about how you want to be published. Or, you could make it fancy and formal with charts of your top ten agents, etc.
4. Clean your office, desk or PC files. I don’t know about you, but when I finish a draft, my office looks like a bomb went off and then the firefighters left a huge mess from their efforts to put out the fire. So I take a moment to clean up and when I’m done, I can take a nice big breath of relief. Also, I have this fear that the ghost of the previous draft will haunt me if I don’t clean.
5. Or, just take a break from writing. This worked for me last year … then again, pregnancy hormones and lack of sleep might have had some hand in it. Anyway when I came back to my writing (er, two and a half months later!), I was raring to go and oddly, getting back into the story seemed much easier.
Feel free to use any of these suggestions or ignore them. Either way, make the most of the week while the mice are playing. Sometimes us cats just need a break!
Mary Castillo
Author of IN BETWEEN MEN, Avon Trade
and HOT TAMARA, Cosmo’s Red Hot Read April 05
Please visit http://www.marycastillo.com/
or http://www.marycastillo.blogspot.com/
Last year I dreamt that I was trying to become a leprechaun. I was determined to fit into the green suit coat with a plaid vest, black Pilgrim shoes and knickers. No matter how much I took in the seams and contorted myself to jam my arms into the coat sleeves, the costume was either too tight or too loose. It was only when I woke up that I gave up this primal need to be a leprechaun.
But I couldn’t go back to sleep because I had no idea why I wanted to be a leprechaun. I would’ve had to have grown a beard. When I drifted back to sleep, I realized the dream was telling me that I had been spending way too much time and energy trying to be something I could never be. But first, let me give you some background.
Last year on February 1st, I walked into Barnes & Noble and saw my book on the shelves for the first time. I was living every author’s dream. Cosmopolitan Magazine picked Hot Tamara to be its Red Hot Read for April 2005, I had the honor of speaking to OCC RWA, I was on TV and in the newspaper and I was flown out to Phoenix for a booksigning! But as a writer, I was caught in a nightmare.
In December of 2004, I decided to branch out and try writing a drama about two sisters who never knew the other existed, and a young adult about a teenaged curandera. Even though my fingers bled at the keyboards from writers block, I fought the good fight and finished those suckers. I should’ve seen the signs that these stories would not end so happily ever after. The young adult was rejected by almost every house in New York, even though the New York Daily News touted Hot Tamara as a Hot, Hotter and Hottest Read. Oh, did my ego feel the sting! As for the drama, it was so bad, it will never see the light of the day. Or so I thought.
My agent told me I had some good stuff in that drama, all of which were the comedic relief scenes. The young adult had some great stuff, too. Yep, you guessed it, the comedy bits with my heroine’s pug, Vinyl. Shortly after my leprechaun dream, I came up with a new idea about two best friends – a stay-at-home earth mother and a wild single girl – who switch bodies and have to live each others lives until they can figure out how to go back. When I sat down to write the proposal, I was laughing so hard that I had to type with one hand and wipe away the tears with the other. My agent sold it within twenty-four hours.
Remember that drama I was telling you about? Those sisters, Sela and Dori became the wild Orihuela girls … the kind of girls boys dream about, and good Catholic mothers feared. In their story which I called, “Till Death Do Us Part,” they make a pact at their hoity toity brother’s wedding to see who can land the blue-eyed hottie at the bar. I rallied up some of my buddies – Berta Platas, Sofia Quintero and Lynda Sandoval – to create a fun, sexy anthology of stories about sisters. We sold it by auction within a week.
For 2006, I resolved to stick to my roots as a romantic comedy writer. I’m not a dramatic writer and perhaps I’m not a young adult writer (although that heroine still lingers in the back of my mind so who knows where she’ll end up). But comedy and a hot sex scene are what I do best and by gum, I’m proud! So I urge you to sit back for a moment and think about what you do best as a writer. Okay if you can’t come up with anything, ask your critique partners or look at comments on your work to see where the reader remarked, “good job!” Is it plot, setting, historicals that take place between 1843 and 1845, alpha males … whatever it is, resolve to do it and do it well. Don’t waste time trying to be what you aren’t, or trying to be your favorite author. Trust me, I’ve tried and it isn’t pretty!
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