When Writers meet Face to Face

As well as online fellowship, writers do enjoy meeting with other writers. This photo was taken at a monthly meeting I try hard to go to each time of the Society Women Writers Tasmania. We have our next meeting this coming Monday - a special Christmas luncheon time!
My apologies for not posting here for so long. We arrived home from Queensland late last Thursday. Hard to believe a week has already slipped by. We “oldies” were certainly ready for a holdiay to get over our two week working holiday, but instead have found ourselves very busy catching up on mail, email, restocking the fridge and helping our family – not to mention the usual unpacking, laundry, sorting out notes and paperwork from the Writer events.

The last few days I’ve spent too much time trying to sort out insurance re-imbursement for a bit of damage to our hire car and trying very hard to find my camera. Sorry there are no photos this time of our trip. The above one was taken last year but a good reminder of writers meeting face to face! They are all still on that camera – somewhere not in aeroplanes. airports, hire car company and apparently at our family’s homes!

However, our trip away was a great time of meeting with readers at book-signings, my extended Qld family and then of course other writers. The Word Writer Fair was even bigger and better this year as it continues to attract more and more of those of us who are writers. I’ve already heard about some pre-planning to make our face to face time together with writers from all over Australia even more exciting next year. I so enjoyed putting faces to names of other writers I've only "met" online here as they have commented on our blogs posts and also on other blogs and writers email loops.

On the Friday I was privleged to mentor four fiction writers. It was a busy but very rewarding day and hopefully we will see those manuscripts they worked so hard on published in the future.

Saturday was very special for me again this year. Ray presented a workshop on writing devotionals and I talked to writers wanting to write fiction who attended my workshop on what writers need to know they should know before they start a novel. There have been so many things I’ve had to continue learning over the years and so many things I wish I had known before writing my own first novels. I sure pray it will help other writers not to have to learn the hard way I so often have by making mistakes with my manuscripts.

The CALEB Award dinner was another time of fellowship for us all. I was thrilled to be one of the three finalists in the fiction category and am thrilled for the winner, Paula Vince, for her novel Best Forgotten. Not only did she win our category but was the overall Grand winner! Fiction ruled!

An extra special moment for me was the delight of seeing one of the unpublished writers I mentored last year win the unpublished category, and know she has signed a contract for that manuscript we worked so hard on. Congratulations Jo Wanmer!

Another delight for me was the opportunity to meet and share dinner with members of the newly formed Toowoomba Romance Writers of Australia group. Perhaps I will be able to share more about the details of that and other experiences out west in future blog posts.

Already Ray and I are seeking to know what and where and how we may be involved with writers’ events next year. Already I am booked to share with writers at Fusion’s annual Faith and Art convention here in Tasmania in January. I missed the Romance Writers Australia National conference this year and in 2012 will be held at the Gold Coast in Qld. There is planning afoot for an RWA Roadshow for writers of romance here in Tasmania next May. Then there is another Word Writers Fair in Adelaide as well as another in Brisbane.

Choices, always choices. Our prayer is we will continue to listen to God, let Him choose for us. May He continue to make the journey HE wants to take us on very, very clear.