On Saturday morning, the conference held its Taco Tweetup. After a welcome and overview of the conference by Writers' League of Texas Executive Director Cyndi Hughes, we were turned over to a panel of experts moderated by Rusty Shelton of Shelton Interactive. Topics varied from synopsis and pitch to Facebook and Twitter itself.
I enjoyed the session, but left with only one sentence in my notebook. It was underlined. Three times. "Jack your ass back into the Matrix!"
Which is funny because in 2009, I purposefully jacked my ass part of the way out of the matrix. I was shifting my focus away from being online trying to save a buck to rewriting my book. I spent my precious online time trying to shift from putting the physical book in a customer’s hand to showing them how to get digital content. I found myself trawling tech gurus and searching for a way to keep my day job relevant in the retail world. But, that was trawling, not connecting.
This whole conference is about connecting. How do I hook my readers? How do I keep them connected to my characters? How do I get an agent? How do I build a platform? How do I find people who are in the trenches with me? See, connecting.
I know a few authors came away from the conference saying they needed to stop blogging and concentrate on their writing. In some situations, this is absolutely true. It's a delicate balance to say the least. As I write this post, I have an alarm that I've snoozed three times. My jacked-in part of the day is at an end until later this afternoon. Its no different than juggling the laundry, the family, the work schedule, and my book. It's a struggle to be sure, but what's another chainsaw into the juggling mix?
I had already started back into the matrix before the conference. I retooled the blog (and I will keep retooling it until I'm happy) and dusted off my Twitter account. Sure, there's lots of work to be done, but I'm already used to TweetDeck chirping away on the desktop. And, I've disconnected the computer in the closet for uninterrupted work. But, life is full of dualities, that's what overlaps and gives us lovely shades of gray.
As I sat reworking my notes late Saturday night, I realized that every penny I spent for the entire weekend was justified between the Taco Tweetup and the Back to the Future: Where Social Media Meets Traditional Literary Publicity panel. Sadly, as I had a quick chat with Rusty before the First Pitch session on Saturday night, I wish my CPU had processed it enough to thank him.
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