Conference Countdown...

This time in 5 weeks I'll be in Fremantle, Western Australia for the Romance Writers of Australia conference. This close and I'm starting to cycle through a whole range of emotions:

• excitement - at seeing my friends
• nerves - at how my pitching will go
• happiness - at some down time from the family
• sadness - at some down time from the family
• stress - at getting everything ready in time (home and work)

But overall I can't wait for conference to get here. I've enjoyed every conference I've attended; this will be my 5th. Conference is like a shot in the arm. I've never needed motivation, I have that in spades, but conference gives me a renewed sense of belief that I will succeed.

I can't wait. What about you?

Motivational Monday

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just

as it should be.

~ Mark Twain ~

Motivational Monday

 I have a love-hate relationship with the writing life. I wouldn't wish to have any other kind of life... and on the other hand, I wish it were easier. It never is. The reward comes sentence by sentence. The reward comes in the unexpected inspiration. The reward comes from creating a character who lives and breathes and is perfectly real. But such effort it takes to attain the reward! I would never have believed it would take such effort.

~ Elizabeth George ~

Motivational Monday

Know what you love. Try imagining the book that would light your heart and mind on fire if you came across it in a bookstore - the one that would quicken your pulse and keep you up all night reading. What would it be? Details, details: when, where, what, who? Think it up, imagine it fully, then bring it forth. That's the book you should be writing.

~ Laini Taylor ~

Motivational Monday

It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story. 

~ Frank Yerby ~

Motivational Monday

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

~ Harlan Ellison ~

Motivational Monday

Most beginning writers (and I was the same) are like chefs trying to cook great dishes that they've never tasted themselves. How can you make a great (or even an adequate) bouillabaisse if you've never had any?If you don't really undersand why people read mysteries (or romances or literary novels or thrillers or whatever), then there's no way in the world you're going to write one that anyone wants to publish (this is the meaning of the well-known expression 'write what you know').

~ Daniel Quinn ~

Motivational Monday

 

Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.

~ Madeleine L'Engle ~

Motivational Monday

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.' And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. when I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

~ Maya Angelou ~

Motivational Monday

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

~ Stephen Wright ~