Writers' conference, a lot of work

I signed up for it. I paid good money for it. I've now worked my rear off for it, so I can't complain.

Let's review what work this has so far entailed:

• Rewriting, polishing and editing a 10 page manuscript (thankfully double spaced with 1.5" margins)
• Writing up a synopsis (one page summarizing 300, not as easy as it seems)
• Writing up a sales pitch (30 seconds which stumped me annoyingly for days, but now it's done)
• Researching who my instructors are (the conference notes highly suggests you do that, I don't know why when you know the first day of class they'll introduce themselves for about 10 minutes)
• And the worst part, reading and commenting on your classmates' manuscripts and synopsises.

Let's get the grammar and spelling mistakes found in my fellow students' work out of the way. When the spellchecker didn't understand you meant 'to' and not 'too', I'm guilty as much as you. When it's obvious you didn't bother to run the spellchecker is when I mind. I don't mind a few grammar mistakes sprinkled throughout, heck as long as I can read through it without having to figure out what you really meant, I'm good. It's just when you open the document in MS Word and the entire first page is underlined in green (meaning grammar errors galore or one long sentence fragment, I don't know which is worse), that I mind big time.

If English is your second language, I tried to read it in what I thinks is your first. I can do a decent job with Spanish, and the couple of the manuscripts I was able to do this with showed promise. You're talking to a woman who knows what it means to do marketing work in a locale that demands a language that isn't your first. My heart goes out to you.

The one writer that was Indian, I read just for plot. With a little more cultural information, I thought it had promise. That was the gist of my feedback. That said, get an translator/editor.

What seemed to drag me down was the topics people choose to write about. I'm a goody-two shoes queen (although I have seemed to have tarnished my crown recently by giving a quote about "papaya virgins" to a trade rag) so reading the following topics was extremely difficult even with the best writing (and no the topics weren't covered with any such skill):

• Mother telling her daughter why she got an abortion. The story ends noting that it was probably the 30th time she had been told about it.
• A gay guy tries to flirt with another guy (sexual orientation unknown) by teaching him yo yo tricks. Were there sexual innuendos abound in the tricks? Don't know. My comments were rather tame in the hopes that the author stays mum about such things during the class.
• Princess Diana didn't die, she had a terminally ill patient 'sit' in for her. You'll be glad to know that she was able to go to her son's wedding.

Conference starts on Wednesday, meeting Cheryl and hubby for dinner Tuesday night. I'm excited.