(Okay, maybe not the top ten, but certainly the most fun)
10. I truly cannot party like it was 1999…or like I did when I was 25 (instead of 35.) Two days of workshops and parties, and I was ready for feeted pajamas and hot chocolate. FOUR days of the same? It might take me until…well, next year's conference to recover.
9. You can (and will) get very, very tired of the same restaurant for four days. (And yes, room service comes from there, too.)
8. Even though there are 2000 women at the conference, you will run into the same 3 or 4 people all weekend long.
7. The decibal level of hundreds of women talking and hanging out in one hotel lobby ranks up there with a Metallica concert. Hmm, maybe louder.
6. Your feet are going to hurt at the end of the day, no matter what shoes you wear, so wear the really pretty shoes anyway.
5. You actually can consume too much chocolate in a 72 hour period.
4. The Kindle will become an addiction that (if I had more willpower) I should stay away from. As it is, I'm frantically scurrying about the house for spare change to put into my "Kindle Purchase" jar.
3. If you get 3 or more women in a conversation together, no matter who they are (mega-romance-stars, first timers, editors, agents or anywhere in between), the conversation will always, always turn to hair.
2. An RWA conference is the only place where you can overhear five different conversations that include the words "sex slave" and not bat an eye.
1. Whatever is plaguing you as a writer when you leave for conference will get addressed, most likely subconsciously, in your workshop attendance choices. If you'd asked me, I had no rhyme or reason to the workshops I chose except that they sounded interesting… and from the sum of them, I came away with exactly what I needed to focus on in my writing. Go figure that.
No matter which workshop I attended, at some point one of the speakers invariably bonked me over the head with the obviousness of the answer to my concern.
So what was that thing? Since I imagine I'm not an original here (gasp at the shock of that), I'm happy to share. I currently have two stories in progress – one is the second in my Willoughby Family historical series and the other is an entirely unrelated suspense wth romantic elements novel. And yet, in both, I have the same worry – that I'm going too far, that the plot is too unrealistic and no one will buy it.
With every workshop I attended, I got my answer. The one that sticks out most is the PRO Retreat guest speaker, Linda Howard. She spoke of an editor who once told her exactly that: As publishers they can bring back an author who went out too far in their writing, but they cannot put IN what was never there to begin with.
Each workshop I attended reinforced that opinion, whether it be to trust my abilities, to trust in my story and not edit before its written, or just to believe… I came away with less doubt and a stronger motivation to write what I've got. If I need to change it after the fact, I can. But as the amazing Nora Roberts (who I did get a signed book and picture with, which I will shamelessly post here later) has said, you can fix a bad page. You can't fix a blank one.