Meant to be?

I’m one of those people who believes in signs, and honestly, right now the signs are pointing toward the time being right for me to get my butt back in the chair and my hands on the keyboard. The signs are pointing towards me writing seriously again, and I’m following them. A big part of my momentum right now was the Novelists Inc conference in St.Pete Beach Florida at the start of the month.
Because I was slow in actually registering for the conference I ended up with a hotel room in the sister hotel to the one the conference was in. In my mind it wasn’t that big a deal really, walking on the beach for 5 minutes to and from wouldn’t be a hardship. Then, by fluke, things started to fall into place in a strangely fluid way. I heard about someone needing a roommate in the main hotel. YAY me, a chance to save money and be in the main hotel. Then another friend decided to go to the conference, and she was renting a car. Yay for me, a ride from the airport. Then when I emailed a friend who I knew lived in Florida, but not where, I found out she lived right there!!
Of course I was excited about leaving the brisk fall weather of Northern Alberta behind to spend a week at a beach resort in Florida,but even better than the beach, was the conference itself.
Last night I posted an interview I did with the fabulous Dr. D.P. Lyle, and tomorrow I’ll start posting some other bits and bites I video taped while there that will show I wasn’t the only one invigorated by this conference. (I might get some up tonight, depending on how I feel after work)
It would be easy to say the conference was such as success becasue it was at a beach resort, but in all honesty, thats only a small part of it. The beauty of the Ninc conference was in the speakers and the attendees. The conference started off with a bang with the one day Future of Publishing panels. A full day of people from the top of their profession, be it agent, editor, marketing, writing, or literary law, all talking openly and honestly about the industry. The best thing about it was that there were many differing opinions, and all were given a chance to speak so we could hear things from many angles.
In fact, that seemed to be the unspoken theme of the rest of the conference too. There were workshops on piracy, marketing, planning the perfect murder and contract negotiations, and each one exposed to us that as authors we have options. Now is a time to stop thnking about the way things should be done, an do them the way we want, be it writing the way we want, or publishing the way we want. We don’t all want the same things from our careers, so why should we try to do the same things?
Anyway, one of the high points of the conference for me was Friday night. I’d planned to head back to the hotel room after dinner, and skip the NightOwl sessions in order to edit some photo’s I’d taken that morning. Only something made me follow my roommate back down to the conference rooms and I ended up taking part in two amazing sessions. One was the GET CRAZY CREATIVE WITH STORY COMPASS©, with Melinda Haynes and the other was FINDING YOUR VOICE: FAN MAIL FROM THE FUTURE with Jennifer Stevenson.
Jordan Summers and I sat next to each other for the story compass one, and it was fun and yes, cray creative. We had many laughs,(like when I had to ask openly what a verb was *blush*) but we were both also very inspired by the whole thing. Then we moved next door for the Finding Your Voice one. My roommate, JoAnna Grote joined us as the three of us did the group exercises Jennifer lead us through and it was amazing. I could explain what we did, but really, my explanations would not do it justice. Just know that if you ever get the chance to take the workshop, do it!! Jordan, JoAnn and I got chased out of the room when the workshop was over because we were still discussing what we’d learned. We went and sat in the hotel lobby for another two hours chatting about it all, and that time alone was worth the cost of the conference.
If I wasn’t a believer in signs before, I certainly am now. So…what’s next for me? Well, right now I’n trying to organize some of my old short stories into something readable so that I can put them up on kindle. I want to explore all my options as an author, and I’m very interested to see what will happen with them. Look for a release from me in early November. 🙂
For those of you looking for some awesome recaps on the information from NINC, I suggest you check out Jordan’s blog. She’s much better at it than me, and she’s already got ones up on Piracy, Contract clauses and the future in general.