Curb Your Enthusiasm? No way.

I'm so excited, my head is going to split right open and butterflies and confetti are going to fly out (or gleeful imps and hell-fire). Last week was a great week, writerly-speaking.

First, I attended the Muse Online Writer's Conference. There was so much great information presented, I'm going to be going over my notes and handouts for the next six months! And I got some excellent critiques/comments on my work . . . including a few that resulted in palm-to-face, "oh my god I can't believe I did that" moments . . . like thirty exclamation points in a 500 word piece. But you can be rootin-tootin sure I'm not going to make those mistakes again (or at least, not until the embarrassment wears off, lol).

Second, a new local writing group started, with real live people! Though undead ones would be cool, too, as long as they refrained from eating my brain.

Writing, by it's very nature, is pretty solitary work. We spend so much time running around in our own heads, like Jonesy in Dreamcatcher . . . I'm sure that can't be good for a person. And being a writer from a small town makes the problem so much worse. There aren't many opportunities for interaction with other writers. There's not even a NaNo group near me. The only municipal liaison in the whole state is halfway across the state from me. We do have a once-per-year writing conference at the local college, and they've even added a one-day writer's workshop to it, but that's about it.

And while on-line interaction is great, but sometimes you want that in-person, real-time connection. After the college's writer's conference workshop, I always come home amped up, ready to write, bursting with enthusiasm about writing . . . that in-person experience, being around other creative people, is like falling in love with writing all over again.

So I'm really excited about the group!

Eight people plus the coordinator showed up, which is a heck of a turnout for an event in my town that doesn't involve hockey sticks!

So I have two things that have "fed my writerly fire" this week. What feeds your writerly fire?