Saturday morning came and it was a new day for the conference with new friends, made friends, and more workshops with hopefully helpful advice and hints about writing.  I printed out my entry for the competition early that morning as well as the first 6 pages from my detective/mystery story for the Read and Critique I had told Laura taylor I would be in so that she can read it, and slaughter it. She may have slaughtered me but she and Jeff really helped me and has inspired me to work my butt off to get it to where it is tight, clean, and BETTER for the readers.

   Once again my husband drove me to the hotel and told me all will be well.  We kissed, he left, and I entered the hotel determined and more ready this time, not as nervous as the day before and ready to talk to Jeff, Monte, Christopher, Indy, and a lot of the other people I had met as well as meet new people.

Raul Ramos Y Sanchez, an author, was the speaker for this workshop and I found it very interesting and very helpful. He gave a lot of great insight of what writers/authors should use to network their books and their unfinished products. He gave us website after website, some I agreed on, others I did not, but I wrote it all down so that when I am really ready for that step I will know where to go in order to start networking and hopefully meet more great authors, agents, editors, and publishers.

He told us that networking is the key to our success besides writing a great book and that networking will help promote our stuff because other authors and writers will help promote by making status’ and posts about what we are writing and what we are going to do i.e. conferences or book signing.

Some websites that he gave us I will now share with you:

MySpace

Twitter

Face book

Groups on Yahoo

Librarything.com

Shelfari.com

Redroom.com

Ning.com

Goodreads.com

And of course any blog sites where you can blog about your website and your books. I have used twitter once before and did not like it but I might sign up for it again in the future just to help promote myself and my work. But we will have to see...

He highly recommends redroom.com which is supposed to be great for the writing community. I will definitely be checking this one out myself later down the line when I feel I am ready for it. He also highly recommending befriending people from the conference on facebook which I have yet to do but I will definitely get to that soon. As well as look into Yahoo groups where there are writers interested in writing the same genres as me. If you have a common name, such as I do, Raul says to add an initial or something unique to your name so that people can find you NOT everyone else with your same name; hence why I go with my nickname Crazdwriter, unique and no one else has it!

He said to Google up a man, Michael Steven Gregory I believe his name is for help on book trailers. Raul said that adding a book trailer to your blogs, your website, and other websites mentioned will help promote yourself and your book to hopeful readers.

He handed out bookmarks instead of business cards and said that both are a good idea for any writer to have but more when the book is finished and ready for editing and read to be sent to an agent. Another person in the workshop saw this and told us that if you ask Barnes & Noble’s they will allow you to place a bookmark about your book in bestsellers or other books to promote yourself. I really liked this idea and will definitely keep it in mind when I am ready to do this. Though I think I need to make myself business cards to hand out at conferences because all the other writers did and of course I did not.

Some great strategies he told us about were:

• Be Social
• Do not spam other people's pages
• Engage the people in dialogue, just don't promote yourself but actually ask them questions about their work and again BE SOCIAL!
• Be generous and a great way of doing that is by promoting other authors on your pages!
• And of course have time to do all of this because it will take time but in the end it will be well worth it

Great workshop and great information. Time to move on to the next.

I actually picked this workshop before I knew that Monte was going to be the speaker but I am glad that I did find out he was the speaker. I was able to talk to him again, no didn’t get his information still, but I am hoping someone else did so I can get it and keep in contact with him.

I was looking forward to seeing Monte again and get to talk to him before the workshop began. Once again I was totally at ease talking to him, like talking to an old friend from the past. He has a great personality to him as well as a very welcoming aura so I think that is why it was so easy for me to just talk to him.

He told us that it is important to find our own style and our own voice with our writing as well as to make sure that we read books from the same genres that we write to help find our style and voice. He said that it is okay to sound a bit similar to books that have been written but to make sure that it is YOU writing and that it is YOUR voice coming through on the pages, not the other author you are sort of mimicking. He also told us to make sure that we know where you are in your writing; meaning knowing where you want to take your story from the point of where you began your writing.

He said something that sort of surprised me but it is completely true. He told us that it is okay to “steal” from other books and other things BUT you have to make sure that it sounds like you and isn’t completely word for word from someone else’s work. A good example he gave us was Shakespeare and how he had stolen the story Romeo and Juliet. I never knew this; you always learn something new every day.

He told us that we should read plays to help us with dialogue and to read poetry to help us improve our imagery writing. He told us that we should always have FUN when we write and to play around with language, imagery, and style in order to find our voice and style for our writing. And this means to read a lot of books from the same genre or at least try to read books in the same genre or any genre to better ourselves as writers/authors. He also said to make sure that something happens in the book and went on to describe a book he had read where NOTHING happened and it was just a conversation in this house between a brother and sister and it was the same dialogue throughout. And to never use ‘none descript’ when describing a car or house because in the end you have described it but very poorly. It is better to describe what it is you see in your mind’s eye i.e. a ford car or a 2 bedroom frame house.

The most compelling thing he told us, well to me anyway was that not everyone will like what I write, or what other writers write. He said that everyone things differently and that goes the same with writing. He told us to write to please ourselves, to make us happy with our story but don’t be mediocre when you write. He said that if you make yourself happy and that your write something you are proud of there will always be those who will hate it and those who will love it but you should always please yourself then your readers. I always had thought that I should please the readers first and then myself but now I see it his way. If I’m not happy then the readers won’t be happy so I have to change my way of thinking and please myself when I write and then in the end hopefully my readers will be pleased with what I have written as well.

I really enjoyed listening to Monte and what he had to say and will definitely remember a lot of what he had said about voice, style, and pleasing myself when I write. I just hope that I’ll be able to find his information from another conference writer so that I can keep in touch with him and talk to him again. And I do hope that our paths cross again.

Before Laura Taylor got to read any one's story, we had an hour lunch. I met up with some friends and met a couple new ones and once again ate lunch in the cafe. It was okay, nothing to write home about as the saying goes, but at least it was something to eat before I let her read my story.

I walked into the room where Laura Taylor was going to be for the read and critique workshop, more nervous than ever, reading myself to be slaughtered because I know my work isn’t as great as the others who are there. Thankfully Jeff was there and he helped ease the anxiety a bit and he actually read it before Laura did and told me that I can either get it read or afterwards he can sit me down and help me out.

I took the plunge and after she read 3 people and gave them some advice as well as the others giving advice, I held up my 6 pages to be read. I told her to have fun slaughtering it and she looked at me, smiling reassuringly and laughing a bit at my comment. I literally seem to shrink in my seat when she began to read, Jeff looking at me and trying to silently reassure me but it didn’t work.

I was ringing my hands nervously and wouldn’t even really look at her, Jeff, or anyone else present in the workshop, knowing that my story sucked and wasn’t even worth being read. She stopped reading after 4 pages and I knew it was horrible. But she didn’t slaughter me; she gave me sound and very helpful advice, which I was happy to hear. And once she gave it back to me, Jeff took it and began to make changes to help show me what Laura was talking about.

Laura told me that I have a great idea, a great story here but that I need to take creative writing classes in order to help me put down what I am thinking in a better format. She told me that I need to watch being redundant and to pick a point of view in my story, because apparently I jumped around a lot in my point of view. She told me that I need to work on producing a better way of writing my craft; that I indeed have a great craft but I need to figure out a better way in writing it down and she told me that the classes will help me to do this. I also have a hard time keeping to one tense while I am writing and she told me that it is common in writers to do this but that I do need to proofread and correct the tenses. She said that it is okay if I was going into the past to use the pass tenses and then switch back to present but not to use past in present writing.

She also told me to be careful on writing and keep on writing in either first person, second person, or third person. I accidentally switched from first person to third person in my writing and hadn’t noticed it until then.

But she did tell me that I had a great idea and that she was before she became a writer and editor, in the police force and that she would love to read the finished product because she is sure that I can make it fun and a great story.

Once she was done with me and Jeff started to help me, I felt better, and that I had great advice and even more reason to really write and have fun with my writing. They both inspired me to go back and I will be doing so soon in order to better my writing.

The advice Jeff gave me was to show me how to tighten my work by changing a lot of my ‘ing and ‘ly words, which I do have a tendency to rely on when writing.

But I am glad that I had her read, she and Jeff really helped me and I am definitely making sure I keep in touch with Laura and of course Jeff. They are great people!

  Sadly this workshop wasn't at all what I had thought it was going to be like and I didn't really receive any good information from the speaker, Gary Phillips, an author.  But I did attend and even though I left it, it was somewhat interesting.  Though all we did was list the different genres that are combined, i.e. mystery/horror, mystery/romance, etc.

I did have Gary for another workshop that I will talk about in the 3rd hub but in this one gary didn't help me at all.

I know that if I go to another conference, hopefull I will get to, I will NEVER go to one of these panels again. The agents made it sound like we will never get published and made me feel very disheartened. The editor was okay but again still felt like I should stop writing and never pick up a pen again.

If you do ever go to a conference and they have one of these my best advice to you is SKIP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I already have decided to email Wes and Michael and tell them that they shouldn't do this again because I was ready to give up after hearing these people talk.  Yes it may be all true but still, agents and editors are supposed to be helping not crushing people's dreams like these people did.  It was horrible and I will never go to one of these again!

Saturday night had come and my husband showed up with some nicer business like clothes for me to change into for the banquet. I was excited because I was going to be able to introduce my husband to the great people I have met at the conference so far. Sadly he didn’t get to meet Laura or Monte because they were both not there but he did get to meet the others and he was glad I had met them. We even met a couple at our table that I hadn’t met before and it was great. More new friends and I said hello to them again Sunday when I ran into them.

The Banquet was nice, we sat with Rick and his wife, Jeff, Jill, and Christopher. We talked, laughed, shared stories about working and writing and just had a great time. The food could have been A LOT better but it was okay and still edible. And of course the best part was the company. I also introduced my husband to the table next to us because the other friends I had made were there so why not.

And on Sunday a lot of my friends were saying that we make a cute couple, and that they were glad to have met my husband. I was glad he got to go too.