LtUE: Day 2

So hopefully I can take a few more minutes on this post as I was running between workshops during the Thursday recap which can be seen here. Hence it was a bit rushed.

LtUE  wrapped up yesterday. I will be doing a recap of yesterday's workshops in th next few days as well as an overall LtUE review. Look for that soon.

Friday was Valentine's Day and my loving husband worked from home so that I could go to a full day of workshops and panels. I learned all sorts of things, but below are a few of my favorite panels/workshops.

Sandra Taylor did a workshop on building a community among your readers. I think the biggest thing I learned is that it takes awhile to get a following--years even--and that that is ok. I'd rather build slowly and have a real community of people actually interested in my work than just a bunch of likes on facebook/ followers on twitter that really aren't interested.

Next I went to an awesome panel on how to see your short stories. This was fantastic! I have a few short stories in various stages of completion, but I have always found it difficult to figure out where to submit my work. This panel helped me tremendously. The (Submission) Grinder just by itself is going to be amazing to use. It allows you to search a beta database of places that are currently accepting submissions. For example, I plugged in that I have a horror short story of 1500 words and it gave me a list of 136 potential places I could submit. Of course, I'll have to go and whittle that list down, but at lease it gives me a starting point. It also allows you to keep track of your submissions. Pretty cool. They also mentioned another site (ray[something].com) but I didn't get the spelling. I wish that I would have spoken up and had them spell it. Ah well. Live and learn.

After lunch, I went to a panel about using Folklore in your writing. Super duper cool and helpful. It was just neat to listen to how the authors have taken elements of both popular and obscure folklore and woven them into some very original and awesome stories. One of the panelists, S.A. Butler, talked about one her books that looks amazing. Its on my Kindle now and I can't wait to read it.

Another great panel was all about Edgar Allen Poe. It was super duper small, which was a bummer because the topic was great. But the smaller crowd made for a more intimate discussion. I was obsessed with Poe when I was in about 5th grade. It was cool to hear form other people that were and are just as obsessive as I am. Did you know that he self-published his first two books? Pretty cool.

The last panel that I attended was about learning from you mistakes. It was another great one. One of the things that one of the panelists said was this: "Writing is crazy--you take the worlds inside your head and put them down on paper in order to try to create a world inside someone else's head." And another: "Writing is crazy--so embrace the mad scientist inside and accept that it is a crazy thing to do." Super good stuff.

After all the workshops, there was a mass book signing. I got to meet all kinds of great people and do some networking. A few of the people that I met and that I'd recommend checking out are Fiona Ostler, Christy Dorrity, Mikey Brooks, Jenniffer Wardell, and Ariadne Kane.

All in all, my experience on Friday was great. Look for my final recap and review of LtUE coming in the next few days. Anyone else out there attend? Let me know in the comments.