Ketchup

It's been nuts. I was gone over the weekend for the 24th annual Central Coast Writers' Conference, which takes place in San Luis Obispo, about three and a half hours south of the SF Bay Area. It was cool. I've never taught classes before, although I've done a bunch of book events and I figured the two things were rather similar. You want to be entertaining and knowledgeable, probably in that order for a book signing but in the reverse for a class, right? I was well-prepared with hardcore single-spaced ultra-dense double-sided handouts, which also functioned as speaking notes for myself, and none of my three classes had less than 30 attendees. In fact, the Friday night class was held in a big auditorium with 50+. Wow. Fortunately, I caffeinate well, and blabber on without much encouragement, and I got several good laughs and felt like I imparted what wisdom I have on the subjects of breaking into publishing, writing short fiction, and crafting suspense. Oh, and I got to sleep in both Saturday and Sunday mornings, which was gorgeous, especially because I've been nursing a head cold. Yummy.

I was out of it yesterday. Got some good editing done on Mind Plague, then turned my attention back to furthering the manuscript this morning and had a solid 2000 word day. More tomorrow. I'd like to get back into a groove and stay there until I have a complete first draft. No doubt there will be other interruptions.

Ketchup.

Labels: Catching up, Central Coast Writers' Conference, Ketchup, Mind Plague, the writing life