#FollowFriday: #RWAus14

Romance Rocks, the 2014 Romance Writers of Australia Conference, is taking place in Sydney this weekend. Under better circumstances I would be down there, but the new mortgage put a pin in that plan earlier this year. This makes me sad. Last year, the RWA conference was the best event I attended as a writer, and this includes a year that was capped off with a trip to World Fantasy.

Which means, this weekend, I’ll be tuning in to the official twitter hashtage of #RWAus14 to see what I can pick up.

See, the RWA conference is a pretty phenomenal experience, and of all the writer out there, they romance folks are generally the crew that has their shit together when it comes to talking about writing and publishing. I killed a note-book at last year’s conference, filling it with notes covering everything from aspects of craft through to some fairly detailed publishers and agents advice that went way beyond the 101 conversations you’d ordinarily have a writing event. Their readers were early adopters of digital reading, so Romance is where a lot of the discussions about digital publishing are at their most advanced; listening in on their discussions about digital and self-publishing is a glimpse at what the rest of us will be dealing with three or four years down the line.

Basically, the RWA conference is a bunch of the savviest writers you’ll ever meet getting a chance to come together and talk about their work. Twitter affords us an opportunity to eavesdrop on those conversations, so why the hell wouldn’t we?

If you’ve got some free time this weekend, do a search on that hashtag and look for the people taking comprehensive notes at the sessions (there always seems to be one or two live-tweeting their way through the event).