Barbara J. Hamby

sign-up for our email list

Writers’ Weekend at the Beach

The same gremlins that brought snow to several miles of the coast range, while I was driving to Ocean Park on the Long Beach Peninsula on Saturday, apparently attacked my desktop computer last night. I wrote a blog entry twice, saved it each time and got a message that it was “locked for editing by another user.” I could, if I chose, pull up a “read only” copy but couldn’t put it up on the web. I thought I had seen all the error messages Word or Windows produce, but that one is new to me.

Anyway, my friendly little notebook computer has a chance now to let me get something on my blog.

The conference I attended has been an annual occurrence for about 15 years now and I’ve been to four or five of them. I missed last year because of a cruise, but did get to this one. In a day and a half, I wasn’t able to take in all the workshops available, but made it to several that had excellent presenters. Having attempted to sleep in dorm rooms a couple of those years, I stayed at a motel this time. I’m not accustomed to sleeping through loud snoring anymore and earplugs hurt my ears. The food at the lodge where the meetings were held was much too delicious and so I overate I learned a lot from the leaders and the other writers and brought home handouts to aid my failing memory.

Sunday morning, before the final brunch, I had the undivided attention of an excellent editor for about an hour. She slashed ruthlessly at my two-page introduction to my memoir stories. She really punched up the effect so that I believe my intro will tempt readers to move on to the stories. At the least, I owe her a mention on here, in case any other writers read this. Jan Bono is a free-lance editor and a coach who lives on the Washington coast. She also writes and has a dynamite sense of humor.

At the table, at one of the meals there, a young writer expressed surprise and delight that I write a blog “at my age.” When I got home yesterday, I read about a woman in Australia who writes a blog at age 107. Sic transit Gloria. (I have to get some use from the three dreary years of Latin in high school.)

Now I have a lot of editing to do, using my new knowledge, and the suggestions of editors at the conference, as well as my local critique group.

0 Comment(s) about this entry.  |  Permalink