Romance and the City
The actual reason I went up to Sacramento was to go to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) meeting with Sarah. This month's meeting was at the YMCA and it was a potluck, lots of yummy food. Especially the peanutbutter cookies with a miniature Reeces Peanutbutter Cup in them. Gooey and yummy and they stuck my mouth together.
This month's thing was reading the first 3 pages of people's novels. There were more than thirty entries -- I think there were more like 35, total -- and I was honestly amazed at the quality of the writing.
Isn't that a terrible, snotty thing to say? But it's true. I've done a lot of writer's workshops, and there are usually a handful of stories where you cringe and wonder what you can possibly say to not completely destroy the writer's ego. The Sacramento RWA apparently has the highest percentage of published authors of any RWA chapter, which goes a long way to explaining the quality of the work presented, but still, I was really impressed. Out of this workshop -- because it was a workshop; we were given a minute or two to make quick comments before moving on to the next one -- there were no more than three that were actually awful, and there were at least half a dozen that were _good_. I mean, really _good_.
Sarah's and mine were fine. They were not among the _really_ good. At least, I didn't think so.
Out of the awful ones, only one was truly badly written. One had absolutely stunningly beautiful description but was boring as hell, but it had _tidbits_ of interesting possiblity; it was just that the author had chosen to focus on the wrong things for the opening three pages, I think. The description could have been put later and kept the audience, but the tidbits were where the story was, and it wasn't there. I said incoherently. There were a couple of others where I drifted off -- not a good sign -- and then the one that wasn't good was . . . badly written. I'm sensitive to things like using the same descriptive word close together; this one did that several times. The sentences were not well crafted, and the characters were sloppy and confusing.
_One_ _bad_ story out of thirty five is pretty damned amazing.
And the good stuff was really good. Good enough that I wished I'd written it; good enough that I wanted to keep reading.
Whether _I_ thought our stuff -- we turned in Josie and Emer -- was among the best, it did get some gratifying comments and reactions. We juggle 4 characters with spoken lines and 2 mentioned characters in 3 pages, and the woman who was reading them felt that, on the page, it was very easy to follow, although a few people were confused about who was speaking while they were listening. I wasn't surprised by that; I wasn't sure how well it would read aloud, given the number of people. But there was fairly pleasing collective doom at the end -- it ended with Remy promising Josie they'd be back, despite the storm.
No one, of course, believed it, which was how it should be. :)
And one girl, at the end of the Emer story, bounced happily and said, "Celts! I knew it was Celts!" So that was pleasant -- at least _someone_ out there wants to read an ancient Celtic romance! *laugh* Nice commentary there, too -- some compliments on how the action was slowed down and then speeded up by the choice of words, general agreement that while it was basically all setup, the reader wanted to keep going to find out what happened next.
What was weird about that, though, was that _I_ hadn't _read_ that version of Emer. The woman started reading and I was like, um. Um. What . . . um. Okay . . . . It was a better start than the one I'd seen last, but that was really weird.
I don't know anybody's names, but a blonde woman whom I think I'd actually met before came over during the break to ask Sarah if I was Catie. Sarah allowed as how I was (I wasn't there right then) and the woman said she thought so, because she'd been watching us during the readings, and she could see the exact same thought cross both our faces at the same time -- she could tell we were thinking the same thing and had been doing that for a long time, so she was sure I had to be Catie. :) I wondered what thoughts we'd been sharing. :)
And one of the organizers of the meetings, whose name I've also forgotten, asked if I was Catie, and talked to me about us doing a talk on writing partners -- this was something she'd talked to Sarah about a few months ago, and I thought it'd be great. So it was neat that she was still interested in us doing that, and that she asked me about it too. There's another writer in the group -- maybe the one who was doing the readings -- who works with a partner, and they wanted all four of us to do the talk. I think that'd be a lot of fun. Do a Q&A session. So that'll probably happen in January, and I'm really looking forward to it. :)
And now my brain has dried up on anything else to say about the RWA meeting, so I'm gonna call it quits and go work on something else. Zum.