5 Tips to Beat the Post-Conference Blues

I wanted to talk with you today about beating the Post-Conference Blues. I know a lot of you are just coming back from Comic-Con and RWA National within the past week, so let's discuss the best ways to beat the post-con blues. 

5 - Sleep! As we all know, there's very little sleep at these amazing events. We're all so busy schmoozing the contacts, seeing old friends, absorbing the amazing community of like-minded people that we only get to immerse ourselves in once a year, if we're lucky, but most likely once every few years. So after you come out of this amazing bubble, sleep is necessary to recharge and prepare ourselves to face reality. 

4 - Work on the book. So after you've slept, spent a bit of time with your family, and slammed back into reality, you have to start putting all those workshops to good use and work on your WIP. Jumping right into the writing of it will help give you focus, allow you to use the excitement and momentum of the conference to hit the ground running while you work on the project. 

3 - Keep in Touch. Call your conference buddies, send them messages on Facebook or Twitter, add your new contacts to your friends lists or follow them. Keep the relationship building between you and these people. It will be a bitter-sweet kind of contact because you'll all remember the amazing time, and you'll miss being in your writing conference bubble, but you'll smile and laugh at the good times. Keeping in touch with these people will also help you feel connected to new friends and build a lasting bond, not just one you have while at a conference. 

2 - Blog about it, talk about it. One of the best ways to savor the conference, and ease back into reality is to keep a piece of the conference alive and well. Talk about the conference with other writers who couldn't make it, pass along your notes, your stories, your excitement to them. Talk about it with your family and friends who aren't writers, even though you know they just won't totally "get it" unless they're writers too. Follow blogs of those new and old friends who will probably be talking about the conference too. Go over the good times you had, and maybe read some insight for a panel or workshop you couldn't make it to. For the RWA conference I went to a couple years ago, they also gave us a huge file of all the handouts for the conference, which was a great help. You can also get the audio for workshops you couldn't make it to, though I believe you have to pay for those. 

1 - Plan for the next conference. The absolutely best thing you can do after you get home from one conference, is plan on going to the next one. Pick out roommates, book a hotel, start putting away money so you can afford the conference in 6 months or 12 months, or in two years. Even if the conference is long off, having a game plan and the "I'm going to be there again in a while" mindset will help you look forward instead of focusing on the hollow feeling in your gut when you leave the conference. 


So there you have it folks... some tips and tricks to use to battle the Post-Conference Blues. 


What else would you add to the list? 

Confessions of a Closet Introvert

Hey folks,

So soo sorry I've been silent as of late. I had a death in the family and have had another family member in the  hospital for the past nine weeks, sadly. 

But, as the saying goes, "the show must go on" and I'm ready to reenter the bloggerverse. 

First, a thanks to my co-bloggers, Nona and Danica for holding down the fort here at the Diva's Pad. I've been reading the posts, even though I'm not commenting much. :-) 

Now... onto some interesting stuff... A view behind the curtain of a single author's life...

The Post-Conference Blues! 

I used to call it the Post-Rez blues (post-residency) when I was still a grad student and going down to Seton Hill College/University for a week-long flurry of writing, learning, and absorbing the writing community. Since I graduated, I was able to go back this June for the In Your Write Mind conference, which was, of course, amazing. 

So I finally arrive at the hotel, after a very long 7 hour drive (after having worked for a few hours) and it was like coming home. The writing life is sometimes so solitary that authors forget to answer the phone, leave the house, eat, sleep, or do any of those normal human things! It's kind of scary actually. So when we get the chance to go to a conference, or a write-in, or anything else where we can be social and with our own brand of crazy, we jump at the chance. 

Two wonderful ladies from my local RWA chapter, Kara Leigh Miller and Nicole LaFleur, joined me for the conference, and we had a blast! 

Here we are at the Princess Bride themed ball. :-) 

I taught a panel on the Three Act Structure plotting method, and that went really well. I attended several workshops that were fantastic on world building, undergarments through the ages, revision, and all kinds of things. We call Seton Hill "Hogwarts for Writers" because there's a certain kind of magic that flows from the walls, and permeates the air, the ground of campus, everything. 

I mean, can you see the resemblance? 

So, after four days of this amazingness, you can imagine what it's like coming back to reality. It sucks, big time. Every time I leave a conference, it's a gut-wrenching kind of deal. Inevitably, there are some tears when goodbyes are said, as well as some laughs, and promises to keep in touch. 

At the same time, though, I know I wouldn't survive if conferences were more than a few days long! Being in that writer bubble, in that place where the real world ceases to exist and you don't watch any news, read a newspaper, or even check your email diligently, is amazing, but it's also exhausting. For a closet introvert like myself, conferences where you're always surrounded by people (no matter how awesome said people are or how close you are) are exhausting! It's like the most basic form of overstimulation (not that erotic romance authors believe in such a thing). But in real life, there's no way I would survive a conference that was longer than 5 days, 6 at the very most. I just don't like people that much... or maybe it's that I just have spent too many years alone inside my own head that I need that time to survive. 

But I wouldn't trade my weeks in writer heaven for anything in the world. Finding a community, a family like that is something few people ever find, and while I can only tolerate small doses of the crazy, I cherish it. 


So there you are folks, a sneak peek inside this author's closeted introversion. :-) 

Promise to be back soon with more, 

~Rach