The last two weeks of March, I pretty much disappeared from everything, but I was online 14-16 hours a day. I was at the Catholic Writers Conference Online.
Most of you know how much I love online writers' conferences. I love learning from others, making friends, and teaching all from the comfort of my own home. I also enjoy the chance to work on new material, be it queries, scenes or background for my next novel. Often, you cannot do that in a live conference, but you can online!
This year, the CWCO broke up the workshops in to forums one week and chat the second. This helped me a lot because it gave me time to concentrate on homework, read lessons, etc. (I think everyone who participated preferred it.) I developed my query letter and synopsis in Joan Edward's pitch class and especially in Jan Lebak's query letter class. I have some synopsis tweaking, but then The Old Man and the Void is going out--probably this month. Tanya Stowe did her plot and character workshops again, and I used them to figure out some stuff for Gapman. I love her workshops because they make me, a pantster, do a little before-hand plotting and thought. I may have an easier time writing Gapman because of it. I enjoyed Sarah Reinhard's blogging workshop, though I kind of took everyone on a left turn during her "staying alive" lesson. (Yes, I posted a photo of John Travolta and was on a disco kick for days.) John Konecsni had some great advice for fight scenes and critted a couple from Neeta Lyffe 2. John Nichols started a good conversation on bad guys. Joe Wetterling's forum on The Baptized Imagination was wonderfully inspiring. In fact, we asked him to post some of the lessons at the CWG blog during the 30K for Christ Challenge.
Also kicking off the 30K for Christ challenge is Barbara Nicolosi, whose chat, "Towards Literature Which is Catholic" was posted on April 2. We had a lot of terrific chats this year; some inspiring and some very practical.
I taught a few workshops, too. The best one was the Housekeeping for Writers. We had forum lessons and chats where we got together to clean house. I'll be teaching this again through Savvy Authors: http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/showevent.php?eventid=1324
If you missed the conference, the e-book will be available soon and is available with a $10 donation to the Catholic Writers Conferences. You can order it by using the button on the sidebar at http://catholicwritersconference.com.
Now, it's time to catch up. Step one--finish putting the school planners together. Then editing Neeta and The Old Man and the Void, and starting Gapman.
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