Kristin and Bobbi's Write Life Wednesday: NECRWA Ahhhh the Romance

Bobbi and I are settling back into our normal routines after having a fantastic time at the New England Chapter Romance Writers of America Conference this past week. We had the time of our lives... seriously....

If you were at the conference, we are sure you also had a great time. And if you happened to come across us in the bar... look for your picture below :)

Okay, back to business. Here is a quick rundown of what you may have missed, if you were anywhere else but the Boston Marriott (conveniently located nowhere near Boston).

To start, there was lots and lots of...

The swag at this conference did not disappoint. Between the beautiful bags waiting to greet us as we came in, the books (purchased and free), and the postcards, pens, notebooks, bookmarks, buttons, gift baskets, centerpieces, candy (not pictured because I ate it before I thought to photograph it) etc., I think we all had to take a few trips to the car just to lighten the load! Here's a combo of pics I took of swag at the conference, one of lucky gift basket winner, Jen Doyle, and more pics after I got home. A great haul!

My picture here isn't the best, but I thought that this candle was a very clever idea from Kari Lemor (who also provided notepads, which I used when cornering a certain agent extraordinaire for her info--thank you, Kari!)

The conference offered two days of workshops, which were super easy to navigate in the program provided. This might sound simple enough, but you wouldn't believe how many conferences I have been to with programs that are anything BUT simple to navigate. 

We led a workshop on prompt writing, and had a wonderful, engaged and talented group of writers--what more can you ask for?

Then we were off to enjoy other workshops being offered. We went to a Master Class by Lauren Willig, where she talked about Creating Compelling Heroes and Heroines, before heading to dinner with keynote speaker, Susan Mallery.

So... ummm, I've sort of decided that Susan Mallery is my spirit animal, because the woman is pretty amazing, and a powerhouse of a writer (140 books and counting!), and she just simply tells it like it is, and so I am going to reserve an entire post to talk about Susan at a later date. For now, we will sum my impressions of her up with this image:

Twitter user @mullet863 created this image... amazing

There were a plethora of great workshops and the speakers were wonderful. Megan Frampton was an inspiration to those of us getting into this game with little ones at home especially, and my other fave workshops were Writing More by Susan Mallery, Long-term Strategies for Avoiding Burnout, Surviving Setbacks and Vanquishing Foes by Tanya Michaels, and Diary of Working Girls: Working with Your Agent with Megan Frampton and Louise Fury. I will probably touch upon all of these at a later date because I really enjoyed them all. If you were at the conference and have other workshops you attended, I would love to hear your thoughts on which had the most impact on you.

Last, but certainly not least, was the Literacy Book Signing, a wonderful way to wrap up the weekend by supporting my book addiction, I mean supporting fellow writers. Here are some pictures from that event.

What was your favorite part of the NECRWA (or any other recent) conference?