The Writer's Life: So What Do You *Do* With All That Time?

Whenever I talk to my mother, invariably the topic comes around to the fact that I'm currently not working full time and (with my husband's blessing and generous financial support) am dedicating myself fully to this writing thing. And her main response is always, "So what do you do with all that time?"

If she only knew.

Writing full time sounds great, and it is (holy crap, but it really, really is), but especially once things start happening with publishing, there are all these little things that need to get done. I am so, so blessed to have four pieces under contract right now (3 shorts and 1 novella), but man. There's just all this stuff.

For example, yesterday I didn't manage to write a single word on my manuscript, but I sure did manage to kill some time. Things I crossed off on my to-do list include:

• Proofing the galley and blurb for Bug Boy (my short story for Dreamspinner's upcoming Higher Learning anthology)
• Writing long and short blurbs for A Gift of Trust (a Christmas story that will be releasing in December)
• Cold-emailing blogs asking to guest blog in support of Unacceptable Risk
• Keeping up with all the author blogs, book review sites, and writer discussion lists I stalk
• Editing a short for a critique partner
• Editing my own short story so I could send it to a critique partner
• Scouring the internet for calls for submission so I can hopefully keep getting my work out there.

It may not look like a ton, but especially since I'm new to all of this (and terrified of people) all the blurb-writing and editing and cold-emailing seem to take forever, and it's super easy to have a day just fly by.

All that said, I'm really not complaining. I love this life. But seriously, Mom. There is never any lack of things to do.

Why Writer's Conferences Rock

This past weekend, my friend H. Hunting and I met up at the annual Penn Writers conference in Pittsburgh. Neither of us had ever been to a writer's conference before, and we were both very nervous going into it.

Our choice of conferences was mostly based on geography and timing, but I have to say that on the whole, as an author who is just starting out, this felt like the perfect conference for where I'm at in my career. (If nothing else, it's given me the confidence to say the words "author" and "career" in a sentence about myself. This is huge progress, people. HUGE.)

While a lot of what I've been hearing at the sessions has been stuff I already knew, listening to agents and editors and authors has helped me gain some much-needed focus, and it's helped put the whole serious writer thing in perspective. So many people have been so encouraging, and I'm feeling energized and armed with the knowledge I need to hunker down and make things happen, both in my writing and in my plans to get my words out there. It's been so great to be surrounded by so many friendly, creative, positive people, and I would encourage anyone who's just getting started to seek out this kind of opportunity.

Over the next few days, I'll be blogging about some of the information I picked up at the conference, but for now, I leave you with my summative statement: Writer's Conferences Rock.