Wonderful Wacky Wednesday

I have a lot of things to share today.

On Monday I celebrated my 500th blog! I had so much fun tripping down memory lane with you. And I promised that one of my commenters would receive a prize.

The winner is Sandy Elzie!! 
I'm giving you a $10 Starbucks Coffee Card!! 
:-)

The Heart of Dixie Online Workshops are gearing up for business again. As moderator, I want to share this great workshop with you. I hope to see you in the class.

2011 Workshop at Heart of Dixie

MAY
Prose & Contests: Everything  You Wanted to Know about Writing Contests But Were Afraid to Ask
Amy Atwell
May 2-27
Cost: $20

Description: Overwhelmed by the number of writing contests out there?  Unsure whether to enter?  Unclear about why you should enter?  This class is geared for unpublished writers seeking feedback and/or a chance to final in the hundreds of writing contests offered through RWA® chapters. 

Contests offer opportunities for feedback from published authors, agents and editors.  But contests cost money and valuable writing time.  This interactive lecture format will include handouts, examples and open Q&A to help writers understand what they can expect to gain from entering a contest.  The class will provide an overview of the contest process, sources for researching contests, help writers identify their motives for entering a contest, and even give tips on preparing your contest entry.

Bio: 2008 Golden Heart® finalist Amy Atwell has experienced every aspect of writing contests.  Having entered over 60 contests over the past ten years, her manuscripts have won the Winter Rose, Great Expectations, Beacon, Golden Gateway, Heart of Outreach contests and Award of Excellence.  She has over 25 contest finals to her credit, including The Maggie, The Sheila and The Daphne du Maurier contests.  Amy's also judged numerous contests including Romance Through The Ages, Great Expectations, The Golden Pen, The Barclay Sterling, More Than Magic, and she coordinated the 2009 Golden Pen Contest.   In addition to her writing, Amy runs the WritingGIAM community of loops to help goal-oriented writers improve their productivity.  Read more about Amy at her website: http://www.amyatwell.com

ROAD TRIP TO GEORGIA

I'm heading to Atlanta for the Georgia Romance Writer's day long workshop run by Nancy Knight. It's not too late to sign up. I'd love to see one of my cyber friends on Saturday! If you are interested in going, click here.

Stay tuned for another Road Trip blog. This time I'm bringing Darling Hubby with me to share the adventure in Georgia. I'm wondering how he'll survive being around so many romance writers, but he's getting kind of used to us now. While I am attending the Nancy Knight workshop, he'll be exploring Historic Decatur and, if I know him, reading some very complicated physics book. 

I'm considering this a training run for a bigger conference in his future. You never know. He might have to sit next to me when I wait for the Rita Winners to get announced :-)

I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday!

Spring Cleaning the Veranda

It's spring! Trees are budding, flowers are blooming, tornadoes are looming, and I'm making some changes. I'm switching my blog days to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I'll start this change tomorrow.

Wanting to look fit and trim for the summer? Me, too! As many of you know, I've embarked on a lifestyle change called Operation Skinny for NYC. You can read about it here and here. I'll be posting about my "lifestyle change" journey every Fridays. If you want to join in the fun, come visit the veranda on Fridays and let me know how you're doing.

I'm also blogging for Petit Fours and Hot Tamales on Fridays so I'll give you a link to one of my infamous confessions--stay tuned for Confessions of A Wannabe Techno Geek and Confessions of Teenage Drama Queen's Mother. I am working up those blogs for PFHT this week.

Need a little inspiration? I do, too! I'll be blogging about how I stay focused and on task throughout the month. And I'll also be sharing Debut Authors with you on Break out the Bubbly and Dark Chocolate. Lots of my friends are debuting their first novels this year. I can't wait to celebrate with all of them.

The RWA National Conference is in New York City this year, so I think I need to get my travelogues out and start planning my trip. An occasional blog about shopping for fun clothes for the event might pop up as well. And I hope that some of my Golden Heart and Rita Finaling friends pop in and say hello to us.

Want to read some other fun blogs? I'll be sharing some of my favorites with you on Mondays. Some of them might surprise you.

What are your spring plans? Making any changes to your blogs, your houses, your gardens, and your wardrobes?

Making Smiley Faces! Celebrating All Day

Today we celebrate with all the RITA/Golden Heart finalists. And we also celebrate with those who entered the contest but didn't final. All the entrants had to take courage by the hand and enter this contest. It's tough to send our babies out into the world and have them judged. Instead of focusing on the tears, let's focus on making smiley faces today.

First, here is a fun blog for every one to check out throughout the day as the announcements are called in. Judy Fennel does a great job rounding up the finalists' names. You can link to her blog here. I know I'll be checking it out all day.

Second, I plan to pop one of my bottles of champagne today. I believe someone I know will final.

Third, I'm going to share things that make me smile throughout the day. I would love to see what makes all my cyber world friends smile, too. So leave a comment. Let us know how you are doing as you wait for the calls. Let's make everyone SMILE today.

Here are few of my favorite things that bring smiles to my face:

Dowager Feline Clancy purring on my lap while I write.

Sunshine and flowers.

My darling teenager who has such a zest for life--she amazes me!

Hugs & Cuddles!

Crossing fingers and toes for all of the entrants!

Smile Everyone!

Celebrating All My Courageous Writing Friends

Tomorrow is a big day for many romance writers. Many of us have entered the Romance Writers of America's contests for published and unpublished authors. The RITA and the GOLDEN HEART contests are our industry's version of the OSCARS for writers.

Today, as an unpublished writer, I'm getting all twitchy because I have two entries in the GOLDEN HEART. I have other unpublished friends who have entered as well. Tomorrow we will most likely be nervous and anxious as we wait for all the finalists to be announced. We'll pretend we don't care, but we do. It's a huge honor! A huge feather in one's writing cap. It opens doors. It doesn't guarantee publication, but it does mean that you've become part of a select sisterhood of writers. So it is a big deal. A very big deal. It's like getting a college degree: once you have it, no one can take that honor away. For unpublished writers it is also a huge affirmation that they aren't whistling dixie against the wind and completely delusional.

This is the creme de la creme. A finalist gets all kinds of writing princess perks. Who wouldn't want to be a Princess for four days at the RWA National Conference?

A lot of my wonderful published friends entered the RITA. This contest is important to them, too. I know it generates more interest. Gets agents interests, booksellers interested, but I'm not published so I have no idea how much extra oomph a RITA Award can give a published writer. I do know this: it's beautiful, bright and shiny. I touched one at a writer's meeting. The winner brought her RITA Statuette into the meeting and shared her victory with us. It was sweet. It was a moment. She was a Princess for four days during the RWA National Conference. Then she shared her sweet Princess moment with us.

The award mattered. A lot.

But for all the people who final, or win, these awards, there are many who don't. Tomorrow will be a day of highs and lows. Therefore I thought that today I'd focus on why we became writers--why we strive to create stories. Because we have to have more than shiny awards and statues to keep us going as writers. We have to have an inner drive that supersedes material recognition. Otherwise we won't keep writing--writing for no pay, no recognition, no awards.

So today, before the announcements are made, I want to say that YOU ARE ALL WINNERS! You entered, you wrote books, you took a chance, you put your heart out there, you risked losing. And in risking the disappointment you grew as writers.

I have a few quotes I want to share with you. Quotes that keep me going as a writer. Quotes that remind me about why I write:

I hope that your measure of success will be not the gratification of getting an agent or seeing your name on the cover, but putting together a novel of real depth--of having something to say and saying it in a story with lasting power. Donald Maass

The object of goals is getting there... the object of dreams is the journey. Delle Jacobs

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. James A. Michener

Tomorrow will be a big day. I have three bottles of champagne chilling in the fridge. I plan to open one of them and to celebrate everyone's successes. I am also going to have a THINGS THAT MAKE ME SMILE party.

So join me tomorrow for a special blog that celebrates ALL of the writers who have entered the prestigious RITA/GOLDEN HEART contests. Let's be happy for the finalists. Let's celebrate their victories. But let's also remember to celebrate the gift of having the courage to enter the contests because we all love writing compelling stories that move people.

And that is what we're all about: writers on a journey who encourage and celebrate each other!!

See you tomorrow!

Now Where Did I Put My Sparkle?

There have been a lot of posts about how to pack for the RWA National Conference, what to bring to the conference and how to prepare for the conference's many offerings. You can read all about the various ways my fellow bloggers are getting ready for conference on some of these blogs:

Lynn Raye Harris
Okay,  Listen Here
Writing Playground

I won't add much to their words of wisdom other to say that along with all the clothes, shoes, makeup and hair products I plan to bring, I also pack a corkscrew. Now you know where my priorities are. Also, once at the conference hotel and situated in my room located in the beautiful Walt Disney Swan Resort, I will also trek down to a spot I know sells wine by the bottle and snacks (the Beaches Disney Vacation Hotel along the lagoon). This will help offset some of my costs while I am at the conference. Again, gotta have priorities.

I've got my main stuff ready: pitch, general packing list (always stored on the computer, then tweaked for the different events), a dress (actually 2!) for the Golden Heart/Rita Ceremony. Now I have some last minute preparations which have little to do with selling my work and more to do with finally beautifying myself for presenting my work and having fun with a group of women who are highly charged on romance and estrogen. And let me tell you, romance writers who usually sit around in jammies or work out clothes to write with their tied up in ponytails and who wear no make up on their faces transform into princesses for this RWA Annual Conference.

We Writing Caterpillars love to put on our sparkle for the the main ceremony: the Golden Heart/Rita Awards Ceremony for writers. The Golden Heart is the Oscars for Unpublished Writers. The Rita is the Golden Globes for Published Writers. And we love to celebrate all of these fantastic writers as they bask in the Golden Aura of their successes. So we trade in our slippers for fancy shoes, and we put on our Cinderella dresses. We toss our hair into coifs fit for royalty, and we powder sparkle on our skin. And voila! We become Writing Butterflies!

But oh, the transformation is not as easy as Cinderella's Fairy Godmother's wave of a wand and a "bippity boppity boo." Nope. At least not for moi, the voluptuous 40 plus "gee I feel like a watermelon with toothpicks for legs" writer. The transformation happens in stages. In no particular order, they are:

*buy a dress
*buy shoes
*buy bling for the hair
*buy bling for the neck, ears and wrist
*get hair done
*treat writing hands to a very necessary manicure
*treat feet, especially summer heels, to a super necessary pedicure
*use wrinkle erasing products around eyes and on forehead
*find elusive Miss Oops deodorant line smudge eraser
*buy anti puffy eye cream
*pray for a fairy to come erase 10 pounds and some cellulite (or buy spanks)
*find sparkle
*trade slippers and jammies for sparkle clothes and shoes

Somehow, I have to transform from this:

 And become fabulously sparkled enough to wear all this!

Let the sparkling begin!