My Time at Write on the Sound 2016

I just got back from attending the Write on the Sound 2016 conference, about 15 miles north of Seattle in Edmonds.

I will admit to being a little skeptical. My dad and I chose the conference because it was conveniently located – quite possible the worst reason to choose a writing conference. I flew into Spokane, he picked me up and we had a little road trip out to Seattle where we stayed with some dear friends.

But it turns out, WOTS is a pretty great little conference. I say little. There were about 200 people there. My dad felt like it was huge. But the last conference he went to was the Idaho Writers Conference, which had about 50 people. The last conference I went to was AWP which had about 1200 attendees. So I guess “small” comes down to perspective.

Small or not, the sessions were, with very few exceptions, excellent. It was very well organized, and you just can’t beat that setting. The trees were dappled with gold and red and yellow. In the distance, the sound sprawled out deep blue against the Cascade Mountains in the distance. It was so freaking beautiful, and coming from LA where the heat has been pushing triple digits for months, I was downright giddy to have a little rain fall on my head Saturday evening.

At the conference, I focused my time on sessions that addressed the final stages of novel writing: syntax, significance of objects, themes and sensory descriptions. I found exactly what I was hoping for: motivation to take my story the final mile. In my limited experience, anything that makes me want to race home and work on my novel is a win, and I had that urge over and over this weekend.

I did get up early to write on Saturday, but I was just too wiped out on Sunday, so I have some catching up to do on my daily word count. I oscillate between feeling like I can totally hit my goal of sending this manuscript out in March, and thinking I will never get there, but all I can do is keep writing.

So that’s what I do.