When writers ask me what’s the best thing they can do for their writing careers and ambitions, I say just like my early writing teacher Kathryn Fanning did: Attend writer’s conferences. Here are a few things I gained from attending writer’s conferences that I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else: At the first conference I attended,…
I hold a bachelor’s degree in nursing. You might wonder what that has to do with writing. Well, not much. All I can say is that the 20 years I spent in nursing gave me plenty of fodder for stories. That’s why when I started my writing career I felt intimidated. I expected my writing…
I went to my first writer’s retreat with a proposal I wanted to finish. First off, let me say this: the word retreat is somewhat misleading. There’s no spa treatments or beaches involved. Sure it’s fun and hopefully you’ll come home with fresh inspiration, but there’s a lot of work to do. It’s the kind…
I distinctly remember the first conference I ever went to. I still to this day don’t know how I got the mailing list, but a postcard announcing the conference came shortly after I’d made the decision to pursue a publishing career. It was like I was meant to go. That turned out to be true….
I pulled onto the Turner Turnpike and merged with traffic heading from Oklahoma City to Tulsa. Beside me, Cheri Fuller writhed in guilt. “I shouldn’t be going! Melanie, why are we going to this conference? What good will it do us?” Those were valid questions, but I didn’t pretend to have the answers. I’d never…
Winning the Guideposts contest has been a dream of mine for at least a decade. I’ve made several submissions and have always anticipated the contest deadline for months prior. This year. Not so much. The deadline blindsided me. It snuck up on me like this week in Oklahoma when Old Man Winter showed up in…
