Wednesday 22 August 2012

Workshops

Alexandra Sokoloff's book is awesome
I haven't been to "school" since university. Nearly *cough* twenty *cough* years ago.
But I am still learning. And I won't ever stop.

At the Romance Writers of Australia conference on the Gold Coast, I attended some awesome workshops. The all-day workshop on Friday with Alexandra Sokoloff was wonderful. It helped me tick things off on my list - as in "yay, I'm doing that already, go me," kind of way, and a great many "ooooh, that's how I'm going to fix that bit in my manuscript," kind of way too.

Saturday a mind-blowing workshop about the brain's reward centres from Nikki Logan, and how a reader's brain goes off (in a good way) with your book.

Then more on Sunday, including the clever and funny psychologist Dr John Barletta, about how good relationships really work, and how bad ones get worse. (Again, more personal moments for me thinking, "phew, I'm doing that right!")

Nikki Logan's book blew my mind
I have to admit, by Sunday I was a little punch drunk and overwhelmed. The thing about workshops is, there are many people in there who are only just starting out, and some in the middle, some just about ready to submit to publishers/agents, some already published, some multi published and some multi-multi-published.

Even when a workshop is for brand-new writers, I still end up getting something out of it. Not every style will work for me, but it all helps.

I don't ever want to stop learning.

2 comments:

Heather said...

Sounds like a great time! I agree, even in workshops meant for newbies I always learn something. It's good to go over the basics to recall the things we've forgotten.

Ebony McKenna. said...

That's so true Heather. A workshop that's similar to one I've attended years before will still give me something for the book I'm writing. Or the one that's yet to come.