Oh, I miss the summer and the crazy-ness and hi-jinks of writing conferences. Over the last couple of years, the main benefits of writing conferences I’ve found are:

• Finding friends and peers interested in writing literature.
• Learning by osmosis (craft talks, workshops, basking, etc.).
• Discovering new ways of writing, and viewing, literature.
• Learning to appreciate quiet spaces where you can write and think.
• Drinking lots of wine!

Over my “precious” weeks conferencing, I wrote and re-wrote several stories and poems, and completed my book proposal and sample chapters. After the latter acceptance, the rest of my summer was taken up with finishing the anthology for the early deadline. That now done, I’ve been sending work out to various literary journals, and recently have had a poem accepted into The Broken Plate. Perhaps appropriately, the poem was about Phillip Lopate (an accomplished writer) thrashing me at tennis! (Full disclosure: He’s 67!)