#RWA10 Day One, Actually Two
You wake up early and you’re tired. Now you are excited and can’t sleep. Your toothbrush has a new battery and you feel clever because you stayed at a hotel down the road on Reward Points where you will have free parking, free breakfast, and a shuttle to Disney World.
Now that shuttle is a $20 taxi and the parking and breakfast aren’t free. Next you’re driving to Disney where you park again for not free and your cleverosity is deteriorating.
Suddenly you’re at day one the second of Nationals and you’re signing in. The line is not long, because this is not the women’s bathroom.
You’re excited! You’re holding a book by Toni Blake titled “Sugar Creek” and you wonder if her next book will be called “Rum Runner River”.
Now you’re sitting alone, because day one the second is like the day before the conference and you are not a librarian or a leader and you have not made other plans.
You take out your fantastically blue Netbook, which was pink, but now blue and do what it is that writers do. Sing karaoke. And by that, I mean write.
Louisa Edwards walks by on her way to a spectacular lunch and you want to tell her you read her book, and you will later, but you don’t know that now so forget that I told you. You read it on a plane and it made you hungry and you still can’t cook perfectly poached eggs no matter how many times you re-read that scene and you think Frankie looks like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and you want to call everyone ‘bit’.
And you are hungry now. So you turn to what you know best. Pancakes. And by that I mean Twitter.
Suddenly, a woman walks by in a Meg Cabot costume. You think that could be Meg Cabot in the Meg Cabot-like dress and that Meg Cabot-ish hair, but it seems too soon because the conference that started yesterday starts tomorrow, or later that evening.
Now Louisa and Kristen Painter are tweeting about the fabulous lunch they planned and are eating while you realize that not planning lunch was not a good plan at all. So to Twitter, you find another hungry person named Becca, who also wants to tell Louisa she likes her book and is hungry, but then she stabs herself in the eye to not eat lunch with you and you are still hungry so you write some more.
Meg Cabot walks by again and you’re still unsure. In your mind you say “Meg!” because you’re a writer and she’s a writer and you’re at a writing conference and she turns and says “Yes?” and you say “Nope. I got nothing.” and she smiles. Then the Ninjas attack. No, they are Sith Lords and Meg Cabot has a double lightsabre and the chorus sings “Daaaaaahh, OOOOoooo, aaaaaaaahhh”
Now you’re hiding in a corner. Not hiding, reading “Sugar Creek”. Now writing. Now reading.
Suddenly you’re being called a loser for hiding by Nikki, who is a friend of Toni, that you met last night and is running for Region Three against JoMarie and now you have a dilemma.
Lucienne Diver glides by in a beautiful yellow dress.
There is a room full of 500 women with books and Nikki is dancing for a writer you don’t know in ways you find oddly appealing. Then she is telling more people you don’t know that you are a writer and you say you write YA and although not a Romance it has romantic elements because it’s about a boy who likes the wrong girl for the wrong reasons and people die. Now you feel smart.
Next you’re talking to Deidre Knight and thinking wow, my foot tastes fantastic so you put more of your foot in your mouth. The smart feeling has subsided.
And there’s Diana Peterfreund, but you don’t say Hi because the last time that happened, your foot didn’t taste very good.
Louisa Edwards is sitting across from Leigh Duncan and you say Hi, because even if you do taste your foot, it would be fantastically seasoned. But you don’t taste your foot and you succeed in your goal for the day of telling her you enjoyed her book.
Finally your posse arrives and takes you out for meatloaf and you call it a night after briefly considering karaoke, but you woke early and tomorrow the conference that started yesterday starts again. Sadly, no one will hear your rendition of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”.
And tomorrow will be better because you will be wearing real pants and fancy shoes and those can make all the difference in the world.
You walk by Erica Ridley and Diana Peterfreund on the way to your car and think, I will wait until I have better pants.
