In Which I Hodge-Podge

Here we are, another Monday. Yay?

On the plus side, I've turned in my final assignments for my first semester of my MFA, which is awesome. Now I have a month off until semester two starts. Which is good because I'll be working on revisions and edits for ALL THAT REMAINS.

Also it will give me some time to try and get ahead on my required reading list. I'm reaching the end of the books I can find at my county library system. Soon I'll need to start asking about interlibrary loans.

June for me is the first month that starts to feel like summer. It's been warm and sunny enough that I've resumed eating my lunches outside while reading whatever I'm reading at the time. At least until the sun makes me too hot and I have to go inside. And unless it's raining, of course.

And June means one of my favorite local conferences: 4TH STREET FANTASY. It's small, it's single panel, and it attracts some big names in the fantasy and sci-fi community. It's also completely affordable (I think I paid $60 for my early registration, and that wasn't even the earliest price).
So I'm definitely looking forward to that next weekend.

Also, I've officially taken over the From the Vault posts at YA Confidential.

Every Monday the bloggers answer a question and anyone who comments on the Vault posts for the month have a chance of winning a free book at the end of the month. I'm not kidding here. Every month we give out a free book (winner's choice), and it could easily be you and all it takes is a comment.

So that's it! What's up with you?

In Which I'm Away

Hey all. I'm at a conference today, so no real blog post.

Have a great weekend!

 

In Which I Hit (Another) Conference

Summer is conference season of course! I just attended a Children's and YA conference a few weekends ago, and this weekend I'll be hitting another one.

This one, 4th Street Fantasy, I've been going to for awhile. Well, it seems like a while, but I think this will only be my fourth year. So kind of a while? I dunno.

It's super fun because it's single panel, which mean you don't ever have to worry about what you're missing at other panels.

The writing workshop is on Friday and the last few years it's been awesome so I'm really excited to hit it up on this year.

And then the rest of the weekend will be the regular conference, and once again I'll come away feeling like I'm so behind on reading. I mean, I put in 50-60 books a year, but somehow people have read books I haven't even HEARD of before.

But that's okay! Because it means I come away with a list of books I need to buy (and since I have a kindle, I'll probably buy a few of them right away).

How about you? Attending any conferences this year? If so, which ones?

In Which I Need To Budget

In the past I'd maybe go to a few local conferences a year and call it even. None were so expensive that they'd break the bank.

But this year is a little different. I planned to take a class (it's going on right now) and I planned on 3 local conferences (Children's and Young Adults Literature Conference, 4th Street Fantasy and the MN SCBWI conference in the fall). So there you go. A couple hundred dollars here and there and I'm set for the year.

But then I really enjoyed my class. And I found an Advanced Children's Writing Workshop.
And I also learned that Donald Maass will be here in the fall for a Story Masters workshop (the people I heard about this from said they attended this conference last year and that it was amazing)

So if I were to throw these two into the mix (and these are way more expensive than the others. The Story Masters conference is like $500) and suddenly I find myself spending more money than I planned...

Which made me realize that I think I've reached a point in my writerly life where I need to budget better. I think this year is a wash. I've applied for the advanced class (though you have to actually supply a writing sample, so I may not get in) and depending on how that goes will make my decision on the Donald Maass conference. But I think, starting next year, I'm going to have to actually sit down, figure out how much I'm willing to spend that year on writing related expenses and budget accordingly.

This will be especially important if I apply to Hamline's MFA program for next year (very likely).

So how about you? Do you budget your writing expenses?