The RNA Conference is one of the highlights of my writing
year. It’s the chance to catch up with writing friends, go to lectures and
learn from multi-published authors and go to those all-important one-to-one’s.
This year, the conference took place in the beautiful Harper Adams University.
As always, delegates are offered a wide choice of lectures
and talks and although I’d have loved to have gone to them all, here’s a quick
roundup of a few of the ones I did go to.
RITA winner and USA today bestselling author Sarah Morgan and Nicola Cornick gave a lecture on social media and how it can work for
writers.
Alison May and Bella Osborne gave a very entertaining talk
on the pros and cons of differing writing styles. It turns out that I am very
much in Team Bella, being a plotter rather than a pantser.
Now you may have gathered from previous posts that IT is not
my strong point so it was with a certain degree of uncertainty that I went to Laura James’s talk on IT in writing. I needn’t have worried as Laura took us
through step-by-step the benefits of a number of apps and programs but in
particular Facebook. My first-ever attempt at a Facebook live video can be seen on my Facebook Page with the lovely Janice Preston.
My Eureka moment however came from Fiona Harper’s talk on
building characters where she very generously shared her wealth of knowledge.
But as always it was the chance to catch up with writing
friends and meet online friends in person that added sparkle to the whole conference.
Louise Fuller, Rachael Thomas and Gina Hollands
Me with writing friend Melissa Morgan
My writing mentor and guru Kate Walker and friends Marie and Sallyann
Generous Lara Temple who is one of the historical authors in the The Unlaced Bookclub on Facebook.
And yet there was still time for a quick explore.You can take the girl out of farming but you can’t take the farming out of the girl!