Loving the journey…DFWCon 2011

The DFWCon was my first conference trip in over eight months, since the worst of my thyroid symptoms took me off the travelling/teaching/networking in person train once again–just when I thought I was recovering. An amazing group. A great weekend. A great new step in my Revising A Year journey back to who I’m going to be on the other side of my health making all my personal, business, and creative choices for me…

It could have been merely a trying trip up. You know me and kenetic energy when I get stressed, and packing up for a long weekend was more stressful than ever after so much time off. To sum up: something large and heavy tried to kill my indestructible hard-sided luggage and nearly succeeded, leaving behind a dent the size of a dinner plate to remind me WHY I pay so much for hard-sided luggage; something killed my laptop on the trip up, barely scratching the outside case but destroying the monitor screen within, most likely when my bags fell over at some point and the laptop bag hit the handle on my carry on luggage JUST SO; and the screw to my glasses jumped to its death one of the first nights there, so the lens on that side of the frame could pop free and frolic across the bedspread rather than staying put so I could work in my room without feeling the need to scratch my contacts out of my eyes…

Which, I admit, all sounds pretty entertaining in hindsight. Especially since the DFWCon volunteers and staff did such a freaking great job with the event.I’ve spoken at and even coordinate my share of writing conferences, and I’ve never met a more professional and yet easy going group. The attendees were excited and eager to learn. Their enthusiasm to learn every craft and industry thing they could was contagious. The other speakers were generous and amazingly qualified. I had a blast.

And to the huge croud who attended my Character Plotting Satruday workshop–you were the best. We were condensing a half-day of material into an hour and a half, and you not only hung in there, you participated and helped make the brief interactive part of the program so much more meaningful than if I’d simply droned on by myself. I meant what I said. Check out the How We Write Wednesday  posts and ask any questions you have. Jenni and I will be back tomorrow (I’m taking the plot lead here on my blog, but she’ll be hanging about) talking about our process and yours. We’d love to keep the conversation going.

Finally, speaking of Jenni–I can’t leave my DFWCon wrap up without a nod to the ShoeCam (which didn’t work as well as I’d wanted, since I didn’t have my laptop and couldn’t log while there). Jenni’s lovely “casual” shoes lead this final look at some of the footwear we encountered. I’d be happy to post more in my next Shoes Are My Heroin post, if you guys want to email me your favorite pics!

Jenn
Jenni should have worn these all weekend, instead of throwing down with Moi and earning herself a passel of blisters for her efforts ;o)

black sandles
These beauties are MY idea of day shoes, only they were on someone else’s feet! LOVE THEM.

men's boots
The guys got into it. ROCKING boots, dude!

party all night
And these were Best In Show at Saturday Night’s cocktail mixer.

 beautiful new friends
Say hi to their beautiful owners!

Thanks DFWCon. I had an amazing trip, damaged luggage and laptop and glasses and all ;o)

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5 Responses to “Loving the journey…DFWCon 2011”

  1. Piper Bayard says:

    Hi Anna. I love the pictures of shoes. Between Jenni’s shoes and your hair you guys could be a book cover. Though your shoes were pretty smart, too, if I recall correctly.

    You have my total empathy on the thyroid thing. Lost my thyroid to cancer 26 years ago. It affects EVERYTHING. If someone cut off his left foot, I’d tell him to go get his thyroid checked.

    Great meeting you. Already looking forward to next year. All the best.

    • Anna says:

      It’s amazing, Piper, how many people have shared their stories with me, when I hadn’t really heard much about thyroid disfunction or cancer until I began my own journey a year and a half ago. It’s also amazing how little specialists really know about what happens to the body when you remove this critical but poorly understood gland.

      It was great to meet you this weekend, too!

  2. I still feel so bad about the suitcase, the laptop and the glasses. I have to say, seeing the Kenetic energy issues first has was believing. Maybe it was me? Perhaps I was the cause? I mean, I can go flapping my arms and tell the story of how the plane couldn’t be pushed from the gate because of all the snow we had here, or the man directing the plane kept falling because of the ice, or waiting for the runway to be plowed so we could after 2 hours of trying to leave the gate we could finally be the LAST AIRPLANE TO LEAVE THE AIRPORT BECAUSE IT WAS BEING CLOSED DUE TO A SNOW STORM! Yes, I’m still going to milk it.

    I miss you already.

  3. Jason says:

    Glad you ladies could come. It was the busiest I’ve been in a long time. Too bad we didn’t get to spend more time together.

  4. Mary Preston says:

    I can truly see your passion for shoes showing. I also think the boots are amazing.

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