Writery Stuff That Isn’t Actual Writing.

I did a little work on “Jamie’s Story” on the train today, but after spending a good couple of hours on Meet the Larssons yesterday, I didn’t do anything on it this evening.

Instead, I registered for a writers’ conference, my first.  It will be here in Chicago next month, so I get near-instant gratification and I don’t have to travel — two big plusses.  I’ve been on the fence about this conference for a while, thinking it looked interesting but maybe I should wait until I finish the rewrite of MTL, or get a short story published somewhere someone might recognize.

Over the holidays, I signed up for a moderated discussion group for novelists at a local creative writing center.  It isn’t a critique group, but rather an opportunity to have a conversation with a bunch of other writers once a month about writing.  Because the only communications I have with other writers now is commenting on other people’s blogs.  My first meeting will be next Monday.  I’ll tell them you said “Hi.”

This evening, the moderator of the group emailed us about signing up for the conference, suggesting that since it’s local, it would be fun if a bunch of us went.  That was enough to push me off the fence, and I registered.

It doesn’t seem to be the kind of conference where you get to pitch your novel to agents, but there’s no way I’d be ready for that anyway.  Some of it seems very academic, but there are definitely some panels that look interesting.  I’ll report back on the convention in mid-February, but in the meantime I can say that screwing around on the convention website and then checking out the associated Facebook group allowed me to goof off all evening while still feeling like I was doing writing-related “work.”