Conference Is Over...Now What?

If you are just home from the Romance Writers of American conference, the odds are that your brain is spinning. Not only has hit been a busy couple of days, you have been immersed in the full culture of publishing. Marketing, Workshops, Networking, Conversations and a lot of reading material. The odds are that you also took time off from writing your latest novel.

So now what? Here are some suggestions:

1. Unpack that suitcase.
2. Get that laundry going.
3. Have an alcoholic beverage
4. Sort through all of those books you brought back.
5. Sort through and stack all of the workshop material you gathered.
6. Have two alcoholic beverages
7. Clean the house (the odds are your family didn't do squat while you were gone).
8. You might need the whole bottle at this point.

What you will notice is that I have not done a thing with your manuscript and that is important.

Because you have so many ideas running through your head, it will take a lot of time to sort through that material. If you are not a hard-core novel planner, diving back into that story with all of those ideas is going to create a lot of problems.

First of all, every person you talked to, or listened to, told you their ideas was incredible and flawless. Of course they did, it worked for them. But the reality is that it might not work with your story. When you last left that project, you had a clear vision of where you were going. Deviating from that decision is going to create issues that you simply cannot work through.

Secondly, many of those ideas you heard will likely contradict each other. One told you to keep dialogue short and narratives long. The other said the reverse. Again, which one was right and which one was wrong? The answer here is neither is wrong. However, using that ideas will likely not be the choice for your novel

So, when do you get back to your story? AFTER you have read your story from the beginning and immerse yourself into that project again. It shouldn't take long, but you will once again be in better shape to truly get back to writing.