Why My Brain Hurts Every Fall

by M. L. Buchman

Growing up (I'm about to date myself here rather badly), two of the funniest television shows in history were on for the same years. Both were using humor as social commentary and I miss both of them (no matter how dated they've become). They were Rowan and Martin's Laugh In and Monty Python's Flying Circus.

It is from the latter that I get this month's topic:

Okay, now that we have that out of the way...

There is something about the fall. Each year I gear up for it, and each year it slams me unexpectedly up side the head.

Yes, it's writer conference season. They're never in the spring for some reason, and only barely in the summer.

Romance Writer's of America national conference is technically in the summer (late July), but what really happens is you go to RWA when the summer is warming up, barbecue season is in full swing, and the summer to-read pile is only lightly covered in dust. You don't come out the other side and go, "Oh, wasn't that fun. And look, it's still July."

No.

What happens is you stagger home from to some distant location, so full of new information, that it is leaking out of your ears and spilling on the terminal floor for the airport janitors to vacuum up in the night. You spend August digesting this new knowledge and trying to turn it into action lists.

September is suddenly here, leaving me to wonder quite what did happen to summer. Then other conferences crop up. I spent the end of September at Novelists, Inc. This year was particularly surreal as I live on the Oregon Coast, and this years two big conferences for me were less than 100 miles apart in Florida.

RWA can be fun (except for the loss of all the new information that poured out on the runway taking off from the Orlando airport). It includes newbies, wannabes, working at it folks, and seasoned pros. Always a fun time.

Novelists, Inc. (for which you still haven't wholly recovered from the loss of the last half of summer) is almost entirely the seasoned pros. What was curious, interesting, and educational at one conference is suddenly deep, intense, question-packed, probing, and intense business discussions from 7am to midnight--at least when I got to bed that early.

Okay, after leaving more brain cells behind on the beach, this too is survivable.

Until this week. Now it's October and I'm on the other side of the podium. I'm co-teaching a Business Master Class for 50 students who all think that I have the answer. I'm having trouble telling them that the answers they really want are sprinkled on runway at Tampa International's runway 19Left and that I'm not really expecting them to catch another flight any time soon.

Thank goodness there was nothing else going on. Other than a short story every month, the launch of a new Delta Force novel, writing the next Henderson's Ranch novel, completely revising my 2018 publishing schedule--twice--based on the first two conferences of the fall...

They say that if you want to learn, teach. So, finishing up day 3 of a 7 day conference, I wonder what I will have learned by the end of the week. Because it seems that I didn't learn enough at RWA and NINC or...I wouldn't be teaching all this week. I have a theory that next year will be easier, that I'll manage to spread my learning year round...but then that's what I thought last year.

So, I'll just leave you with one final thought. Fall is fast sliding toward winter and...

M.L. Buchman started the first of over 50 novels and as many short stories while flying from South Korea to ride across the Australian Outback. All part of a solo around-the-world bicycle trip (a mid-life crisis on wheels) that ultimately launched his writing career.

Booklist has selected his military and firefighter series(es) as 3-time “Top 10 Romance of the Year.” NPR and Barnes & Noble have named other titles “Top 5 Romance of the Year.” In 2016 he was a finalist for RWA's RITA award. He has flown and jumped out of airplanes, can single-hand a fifty-foot sailboat, and has designed and built two houses. In between writing, he also quilts. M.L. is constantly amazed at what can be done with a degree in geophysics. He also writes: contemporary romance, thrillers, and SF. More info at: www.mlbuchman.com.