So 2,000 Romance Authors Walk into a Bar ...

I’m writing this blog post on an airplane on the way back from the 2014 Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in New Orleans. If you’ve never attended, it’s a wild, fun, crazy, manic, exhausting extravaganza packed with authors, readers, bloggers, agents, editors, cover models, and every variation and combination of the above. You can attend panels on every topic from Rocking Street Teams to How to Write Hot Sex; or you can hang out at the hotel bar and just watch the elaborate costumes and enjoy the intense conversation.

 

No one talks as much as romance readers and writers. NO ONE. The decibel level inside the hotel bar was absolutely insane, a constant roar of noise. I happened to drop in at the bar a couple days after the conference officially ended, when the lobby had reverted to its usual state: a quiet place for muted conversation. Such is the madness of RT.

Only at an RT conference will you see huge blown-up pictures of naked male torsos in the elevators. 

Only at RT will you see card keys with more of the same. Only at RT will you see someone in an elaborate black-leather corset devil costume dancing with a dude in white angel wings. I don’t get much chance to dance these days, so I make sure to attend at least one dance party every RT and boogie my little heart out. Only at RT will you see 800 romance authors signing books in one place; this year the checkout line was so long some readers lost patience and abandoned their books. The list of people signing was mind-boggling. E.L. James. Lee Child. Eloisa James. Lisa Kleypas. Kelley Armstrong. Jennifer L. Armentrout. Susan Mallery. And hundreds more. Hundreds. Oh yes, and me too.

Every RT must include a fangirl moment (if not many!) and this year mine was Lisa Kleypas. I’ve been a fan for years, but had never seen her in person. I not only got to chat with her, I got to share a meal and soak in her presence. Just that one encounter alone made the entire trip worthwhile. But there were days of such moments, of reconnecting, soaking in information, meeting new people.

Of course there’s always controversy and drama. Which publisher is doing what with their contracts? What’s going on with the indie authors? When will sales of historical romance bounce back? How long will the New Adult craze last? Sure, many of these topics are discussed on author loops. But being with so many authors and passionate readers in one place creates a special high you can’t get online. It’s like sucking in helium; you want to buzz like a balloon from one conversation to another.

By, my balloon has pretty much lost its air. It’s a good feeling; I left it all on the field. I talked until my voice was shot, I survived on a few hours of sleep a night, I gave away all my swag and all my books. I saw as many people as possible. And I met Lisa Kleypas.

One of the last conversations I had was with a reporter doing a story on people who had traveled long distances to attend RT. I rattled off the reasons I found it worthwhile, and as I did so I realized that the RT conference, with about 2,500 attendees, is fully half the size of the town I live in. That’s a lot of authors and readers in one place, with one shared passion, but an infinite number of ways to express it. Will I go next year in Dallas? Ask me again once I’ve caught up on my sleep. But the chances are good. 

USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Bernard's latest release is FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FIREMAN. Read more at her website here.

Writing / Righting with Dyslexia

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You would think the last profession a person with dyslexia (seriously try and spell that word) would choose to be is a writer.

I was one of those kids who was called stupid and retarded because I couldn't grasp reading and I sure as hell couldn't spell, we won't even mention math. Growing up, there was a weekly spelling test in my 5^th grade class. Every Thursday I would pretend I was sick, going as far as to heat my forehead with the hot bulb from the lamp and sprinkle my face with water, even making wretched sounds in the bathroom trying to throw up. My mom was no fool and never fell for my antics, and off to school I was sent.  

I studied really hard for these tests, and I would fail miserably every week. Then there came the day when I was sent to the trailers. Those hot, airless, single-wide government buildings that the Special Ed teacher would come and pull me out of class—in front of all my snickering classmates—and then imprison me in this old smelling, cheaply-built room and try to teach me something I couldn't grasp. The labels were cruel and tore down what little self-esteem I had. I still fight the names today.

It wasn't until the end of the six grade that I actually finished a book—a short book, Ramona the Pest by Beverly Clearly. Eventually I read everything Beverly Clearly wrote. Things finally started to click in junior high, largely in part to my grandmother who was an English teacher and realized that I learned in pictures not with spelling or sounding things out. That's just a crazy practice.

Fast forward to today. I am still razed for my inability to spell. There are just some words that I will never spell right. The word dyslexia for one, and anything that has a lot of vowels, and just forget anything that starts with psy/phy.

How does this affect being a writer? Editing is hard, the bear of my existence, and I usually spend way more time on editing than a lot of my writers friends have to.  I will see the right word and it's the wrong word. Unless someone points it out, to me it is the right word. I miss little things with my posts on social media no matter how many times I reread them, and yet I'm a writer. I should know this stuff, right? Feeling stupid is sometimes a daily struggle. I know I'm not stupid, but when a mistake is found, I am once again that defeated little girl pretending she is sick to get out of taking a spelling test.  

It wasn't until I recognized my own child suffering that I starting researching dyslexia. For so long this was a thing that I was ashamed of. Well, that thinking had to change and change quick as my child was not going through the hell I did! I have mother bear tendencies. What I found was surprising and I wish I could tell all those who made fun of me the strengths that dyslexic people have.

They are creative types and think in pictures. This comes in handy being able to put myself in the shoes of my characters. It also helps with three dimensional problem solving. Dyslexics tend to be entrepreneurs as they want to control their environment. They also have cognitive and emotional strengths even though they have difficulty in decoding words.

When I got deep into the research and realized how many successful writers were dyslexics, it helped push me to take my writing seriously. The real problem was finding the courage to let people read my writing as they were going to pick it apart word by word and make fun of me. Not to mention opening myself up to REVIEWS! Luckily, I have connected with some wonderful critique partners who don't judge me, except me for my eccentricities, and for the creative visual writer that I am. Developing a tough skin over the years has helped too.

For more information about dyslexia, and a list of 25 famous Writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Agatha Christie—just to name a few—check out this site. http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/success-stories/famous-authors-with-dyslexia  

Another great resource, and the book that changed my life, is the Gift of Dyslexia by Ronald D. Davis. Here is also a fun youtube video if you are or know of someone struggling with dyslexia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEpBujdee8M
 

Tiffinie Helmer is a USA Today Bestselling Author with twelve books currently out with her thirteenth, BUSHWHACKED, due to be released on May 19^th. To learn more about her and her books please visit her website at: http://www.tiffiniehelmer.com
 

I Got the Writing Monkey on my Back

Writing can be a difficult undertaking. You spend a lot of time alone, in your head going over things that don’t exist except there in that brain of yours until you commit it to paper or computer screen. You have to accept and deal with rejection, a saturated market, and very low pay for long hours. Why am I doing this to myself!?  - I am doing this because I am an addict and what I am addicted to are those incredible jags of blissful joy I experience when I fall into that groove and the world disappears as I completely go there - to that place in my mind, where my story lives. I am in my brain in this place it’s created and my fingers are furiously tapping out words, flowing onto my screen, filling it unhindered with sentences and then paragraphs. I am alive with my characters, feeling the rain or the sun on my face, smelling the scent of a birch forest, newly mown hay or a battlefield.

My characters on occasion will do things not in any draft that I’d come up with. For a moment I will go, “Where did that come from?” and then go okay and keep going because often it works with the story or makes it better. I had one character outlined to be with Fellow C, but when I got into the groove and was progressing with the story, she showed me whom she wanted and it wasn’t Fellow C at all, but a charming side character I’d created for credible historical background and it was beautiful and meaningful, more so than it would have been with Fellow C.

I don’t want to leave this state and am trying to get back to it as often as I can. Sometimes there are days when I can’t into that grove and I feel like that last kid in the Pied Piper of Hamlin, who wasn’t fast enough and he’s knocking at the door, begging to be let in. When those doors open and I enter that state of creativity it is one of my greatest joys and it keeps me coming back to write more.

It so happens that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of psychology has defined this state of being and he calls it “The Flow”.  Athletes experience this as well, Japanese martial artists refer to this state as “mushin no mushin”- mind without mind, Chinese Taoist call it “Wu Wei” – without effort.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his colleague Jeanne Nakamura came up with a list of things that happen when one is in the flow. 1) You experience focused and intense concentration. 2) Action and awareness merge. 3) A loss of reflective self-consciousness. 4) A sense of personal control or agency over the situation of activity. 5) A distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.  6) Experience of the activity is intrinsically rewarding also referred to at the autotelic experience.

According to Csikszentmihalyi three things need to happen to create the flow. 1) One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals and progress. This adds direction and structure to the task. 2) The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows them to adjust their performance to maintain the flow. 3) One must have balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and your own skills. You must be confident in your ability to complete the task at hand. There is also a cycle: Apathy, worry, anxiety, arousal, Flow, Control, Relaxation, Boredom.

I will share some links and videos on my Facebook page if you’d like to further investigate the wonderful work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I leave you with a quote from a Titan of a writer.

People spend a lifetime thinking about how they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'   Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Wrath of Aphrodite: Book One by C.G. Williams https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/368898

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