I survived my first nationals experience at the RWA conference in Orlando last week.\u00a0It’s been five\u00a0days since I’ve returned and I’ve just climbed out of the mountain of chaos that exploded at work while I was gone. And of course it was all my fault because I dared to leave without my co-work absorbing all of my skills before I left which caused her to\u00a0unknowingly create havoc.\u00a0I wish I was joking about that, but alas, I’m not.<\/p>\n
So on to much more pleasant things. Nationals was crazy. Everyone who asked me about how my week was going, received the same response. “I don’t know. I’ll have to tell you next week when I’ve processed everything.” And it was true. It has taken me several\u00a0re-tellings of my adventures to grasp the reality of what occurred.<\/p>\n
The first event was the literacy signing. Five hundred authors all lined up to sign and sell their books. I don’t know if you can picture just how sprawling an event like that is, but try not to, it will short circuit your brain. Especially when you wonder how you will, or will not, fit in there when your book finally sells. A daunting thought.<\/p>\n
There were so many people milling about that it became impossible to sort them all out. Many of them, and I do mean many,\u00a0you don’t know. There are a few that you do, names you recognize from group loops or from the books you pass by in the bookstore. Life becomes surreal when two tables down\u00a0at cocktail hour is Nora Roberts,\u00a0then later\u00a0Deborah Cooke passes\u00a0you in the hallway and stops to chat because she recognized\u00a0you from ECWC last year. Yeah, that was my favorite author moment.<\/p>\n
I did arrive in Orlando with a few goals. 1. Meet at least 15 new people. More than accomplished. 2. Pitch to at least two agents. Done with requests for partials. 3. Attend workshops and learn more about my craft. Done. I also had a bonus\u00a0benefit by learning more about some of my chapter-mates, and I realized that I had more in common with some of them than I thought. So on that level alone, nationals was a great success.<\/p>\n
As I sat at the Rita awards ceremony, several thoughts zipped through my numbed brain. If nationals had been my first conference experience, I would have hyperventilated and felt like such a fraud. As it was I was still overwhelmed. You’ve heard me say that in the publishing business I am an embryo. Surrounded by 2500 people will drive that\u00a0thought into your brain. But I’ve learned so much over the year that I only felt like hiding in a closet once or twice. Instead of sitting at that table thinking it will never be me on that stage, I could actually envision being the one receiving the Rita for my superhero book. Funny how my Rita acceptance speech sounds a lot like my Oscar speech.<\/p>\n
So now it’s head down and polish up my submission to the requesting agents. I will not be among the 90% you never follow through. How I can I succeed if I don’t even try?<\/p>\n
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A first timers thoughts of RWA National Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,15],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-conference","tag-rwa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39eCR-33","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}