Dan Smith (the awesome dude in the picture below!) did an amazing job of bringing this event together. I’m so grateful to him and all of the speakers who taught the classes.

A few of my big takeaways from the weekend:

• I was placed under the spell of true Storytelling by Saundra Kelley. Seriously, I’ve never heard anyone tell a story out loud like her. It was just… enchanting. I don’t know how else to describe it.
• I also attended Greg Trafidlo’s class on beating writer’s block. I feel like no one can attend too many of these classes, because the methods are always different. A particularly clever one Greg taught me was to pick two completely unrelated objects and ask “Why is a ______ like a ______.” Comparing cats and refrigerators turned out to be a really fun way of getting the brain to wake up.
• There are so many more options for marketing than I realized! Wow. Between Liz Long and Terri Leidich, my toolkit has seriously doubled. Expect to see some new things on my blog in the near future J Also on the horizon: I may be starting an occasional Youtube channel.