A Report on LTUE 2016

It's been nine years now since I discovered this little gem of a writing conference, and I haven't missed it since. It's an amazing deal and so much fun... even if I can't seem to get my writing (or bookish) friends to go with me!

My writing resolve has suffered pretty much since I wrote the enthusiastic post about how great I was going to do this year. I've been feeling guilty ever since. I was hoping this conference would kick start the enthusiasm, but so far, it hasn't.

Not to say it wasn't great, because it was. Just to say that I'm not feeling the writing thing at the moment and that makes me all sorts of crazy sad.

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the event:

• watching two hours straight of six episodes of Writing Excuses. I got tired sitting there, but my brain was engaged the whole time. Subjects they talked about: fashion in writing, the question of wonder, environment in writing, self-publishing, how to get the great ideas, and etc. It was awesome all around.
• Shannon Hale's keynote speech about gender bias when it comes to books and reading and how boys should have the choice to read and like any book, the same as girls do. It was passionate and powerful.
• Kevin J. Andersen's keynote speech about how it's important to just jump right in and get your hands in all sorts of projects. I loved the stories he told about his friendship with the band Rush and how he wrote many of his books inspired by their music. So awesome.
• I tend to enjoy the one person presentations over the panels. I went to presentations about tips on productivity, how to write horror, techniques to show more and tell less. I feel like in presentations I take a ton of notes whereas in panels I just listen and absorb.
• some stuff I starred: come up with a sentence memorable elevator pitch hook, think of an event and go back ten steps answering "why" and go forward ten steps answering "what if," all writing is telling but we need to show by giving the reader triggers to feel stuff, cliches work if you do them right....
• the program was printed wrong which made me miss the panel on finding your tribe, which is something I really need to do. So that made me sad. I was hoping they'd say something really enlightening that I hadn't thought of that would make all the difference.

And a few pictures:

Brandon Sanderson, Lee Modesitt, and Mary Robinette Kowal

Dan Wells and Howard Taylor

Shannon Hale

Kevin J. Anderson

Learning about the future.

Anyway, it was a great time as usual and I look forward to next year already!