Last week I mentioned I was attending the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference. It possibly surprised some given that I don’t write romance, and don’t really write (anything other than blog posts and book reviews) full stop.
However, as I’ve explained in the past…. I. LOVE. TO. WRITE. I love words. I love phrases. I love the whir and click as a sentence falls neatly into place. And hanging with people who ‘get’ that is a wonderful thing.
Some of you may recall the post I wrote earlier this year about ‘why I don’t read romance novels’. The timing was ironic because no sooner had I hit ‘publish’ when I won a registration to the Australian Romance Readers’ Association convention in Melbourne.
Although I still had to pay accommodation and flights (and am again a mortgage-holder) I decided to go, and am so glad I did. The people I met were unbelievably friendly and it was wonderful to hang with people as passionate about reading and writing as moi.
I mentioned last week that I’d won a ticket to the Australian Romance Readers’ Convention. Which was ironic as I don’t read romance.
Nevertheless…. I decided it was most certainly a ‘sign’ and – though it wasn’t in my budget – I headed down to Melbourne to join romance readers and writers, hoping we’d have ‘something’ in common, and #spoileralert, we did. Namely… our love of reading and writing!
I almost called this ‘intention and other wanky words’. And that’s not to disparage those who talk about intention cos I do it too. I use many wanky words… like ‘authentic’, ‘intuitive’ and ‘journey’.
Indeed I’m a huge fan of the cliche and fall into their deep crevices more often than I’d like. Although sometimes it’s more a warm-soft landing than something sharp and cold.
It’s rare that I include a re-read on the blog. Although in all honesty I’m not sure I’ve ever finished The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. A friend put me onto it in 2006/7… and I sought out a copy at the time. I started working through the exercises and could very much appreciate what they offered, but flailed at some point. And life took over. In 2010 I again pulled the cobwebbed book off the shelf. And I wrote about my plan to unlock my creativity via the post: Morning Pages and Basketball Shots.
I cannot remember what happened with that attempt. However… as regular readers would know, life has changed a lot for me in the last 4+ years and I’m probably ready to delve a little deeper and recover my creative self.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending a local writers’ festival. It was a bit of a last minute thing as I only discovered it was on a week or so before, but this year Bundaberg WriteFest – usually held early in the year – was incorporated into that city’s October Crush Festival.
I’m a lover not a fighter. Okay, so that’s not true. I’m actually neither, but it sounded better than the first thing that popped into my head: I’m a dreamer not a doer. Or a planner not a follow-througher-er. In fact, my lack of follow-through is something I’ve talked about again and again. And again.
But I’ve spent a little bit of time contemplating how to improve my blog following my recent attendance at Problogger Event as (at the conference), we were encouraged to prioritise a couple of things and bloody well do them.
In my ‘lessons from Problogger Training’ post the other day I mentioned that I stayed securely in my comfort zone and attended sessions I assumed to be of interest – predominantly about content creation and writing.
My favourite session by far was one by Emily Toxward – a Gold Coast-based blogger and journalist. I love her Have A Laugh On Me blog and was keen to meet her at the event. I’d also enrolled in a workshop focussed on copywriting, but found Em’s session to be far more useful, covering more than the other sessions I attended.