In just over two weeks I’ll be heading to my favourite writing conference in the whole, wide world. Back to the motherland of my writing journey – the Maine Romance Writers Retreat. Yippee! Can you tell I’m excited? Though short (1.5 days), small (one meeting room), and intimate (attendance capped at 40), the Retreat is jampacked with information and fun.
Check-in is Friday afternoon, during which I’ll reconnect with wonderful writing friends who I only “see” via Zoom during our chapter meetings. And you can’t really have a good gossip in a Zoom group, can you? And then we start our learning.
Jennifer Probst will host two workshops, Write Big, Write Smart, Write Naked (I hope clothing is NOT optional), and Tips to Grow Your Audience, and we could all use a bigger audience.
Jamie Schmidt will present Pitfalls of Publishing, and one assumes methods to avoid those pitfalls? And, really exciting, Making Friends with AI. It’s here to stay, folks. I already use ChatGPT to help me fine-tune my back-cover copy and I can’t wait to learn how to use the tool for more of my marketing. (And since Ms. Probst will show me how to grow my audience, I’ll have a huge fanbase, right?)
Last but not least, Ellen Joy will share The Joys of Self-Publishing (see what she did there?). As a hybrid author, I already appreciate the benefits of maintaining complete control of all aspects of my publishing empire (in theory), but sometimes all that control steals the joy of writing. One thing I’m sure to get from Ms. Joy’s workshop, and from the entire Retreat, is a rekindled excitement and optimism about this thing we do.
And I haven’t even mentioned the fun and delicious meals we’ll share or the lobby bar we’ll invade.
Luanna Stewart has been creating adventures for her imaginary friends since childhood. She spends her days writing many flavours of romance. When not torturing her characters, she’s in her kitchen baking something delicious. She lives in Nova Scotia with her patient husband and a hen.
1 comment:
Luanna, how fun to be able to spend some time (albeit short) with writers you know and enjoy as well as learn something and have Delicious Meals! Enjoy!!! And do share what you learned from Jennifer, Jamie and Ellen.
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