As you know I spent the weekend in Perth attending the Romancing The West writing conference. It went FAR TOO FAST but was absolutely fabulous. Here's a quick run-down!!
I picked up the lovely Janette Radevski from the airport Friday arvo and then went out to dinner that night with Janette, Nikki Logan, Fiona Lowe, Fiona Palmer and Tracey another writing buddy. We chatted writing non-stop throughout dinner and despite them never delivering our hot chocolates, it was a fabulous and inspiring night.
Next day was RTW!! I was the MC for the day and was nervous cos I haven't done any public speaking in a very long time... but I really enjoyed the experience. I went to Fiona Palmer's workshop first up, about First chaps and even First Paras. She made us rewrite the beginning of a famous nursery rhyme in a number of different ways and I found it a much useful exercise.
Next I did Nikki Logan's workshop on Branding. I'm still in the process of working out my romance brand (ie. what I want to offer my readers, so they know what they'll get when they pick up a Rachael Johns book) but Nikki's workshop really helped and I'm getting closer. I've changed the tagline on my website to 'Fun and Quirky Feel-Good Fiction' but I still need to work out a positioning statement!
Finally I did Fiona Lowe's Tension workshop and had light-bulbs going off left, right and centre in what was a very tired brain by that stage of the day. We did a bit of brainstorming about how to create tension in our own work and I worked on my next MH idea, which I'm soon gonna write up a synopsis for. One thing that really stood out was making sure my characters start out as opposites in a lot of things.
Of course... for someone who loves to talk! Especially about ROMANCE... probably the best part of the day was catching up with my romance writing mates and just hanging out chatting with them.
I'll attach some pics of the event to this post (postscript - I can't seem to add pics and position them properly anymore so they are ALL at the top)!!! First pic is of three good writing friends on the Saturday Night- Audrey Barton, Janette Radevski and Leah Ashton. The second photo is the bunch of us who had dinner on Friday night!
More photos are available on the Romancing The West FB page - of which you are ALL more than welcome to join! Click on the RTW link at the top of this post.
