2011 Puerto Vallarta Writers Conference

This past weekend I made the commitment and time to attend the 6th Annual Puerto Vallarta Writers Conference sponsored by Biblioteca Los Mangos and the Puerto Vallarta Writers Group.  I had been a faithful attendee at the group's weekly Saturday meetings, but in the last few months I found myself no longer attending. Why?  I do not know except the usual Saturday chores and activities started to get in the way and I allowed that!
I need to get reinspired and back to writing, so I decided to attend the conference at the last minute.   Since I was a late registrant the fee was 1300 pesos vs. the 1000 peso normal charge if I had booked and paid by the end of January. Friday evening begins with a general welcome and the guest speaker Rick Najera http://ricknajera.com/ with his "Becoming a Writer-Seriously & Pain of the Macho" speech.  Rick is a very funny guy as he is a comedian, writer, poet, screenplay writer, play writer and provided us with some funny stories with his wit and humor.   This was followed by a wine and cheese event to get to know each other.
Saturday morning started early with workshops by Susie Albin-Najera and Rick Najera ranging in topics from travel writing, blog writing, freelance writing, humor writing, etc.  Susie is the owner of the blog http://www.http//themexicoreport.blogspot.com/ and her blog is atypical as most of the news from Mexico by reporting only the positives about this great country.
After lunch, the 1st Panel Discussion was held by Sarah Cortezb http://poetacortez.com/  and Michael Bracken http://www.crimefictionwriter.com/ on the topic of "What does an Editor Really Want"
The afternoon workshop was conducted by Lisa Brackman http://www.lisabrackmann.com/
who recently published her first novel and it was in the top 100 Books on Amazon.com with her topic of "Writing the High Impact Novel".  The other workshop was conducted by Sunny Frazier http://www.sunnyfrazier.com/ "Finding a Publiser. What are they Looking for?
An afternoon break and then the 2nd Panel Discussion was held with Sunny Frazier, Michael Bracken, and Doug Danielson, "The Money's in Your Shorts: Writing and Selling Short Fiction"
The evening mixer concluded the day.
On Sunday we are up again early with morning workshops by Sarah Cortez "No Time to Forget: The Fundamentals of Writing of Memoir" which was of special interest to me as I am working on a novel about my Father's life as an escapee from Poland at the end of WWII.  Michel Bracken also conducted a seminar "Sin, Suffer, Cash the Checks: A Hands on Intro to Writing & Selling Confessions" which was writing short story essays in romance magazines.
For our final send off, Lisa Brackmann came back and did a closing speech "Becoming a Writer-Seriously & Rock Paper Tiger".  She was quite an inspiration as a newly accomplished writer.
That afternoon was the "BookFest" which was an opportunity to buy and meet not only the authors/speakers at the conference, but many other accomplished Puerto Vallarta published authors as well.  This was my first writers conference and I thouroughly enjoyed my experience and I think I got reinspired to write.  That is why my blog has been updated finally........after a year of no posts!
Let us now hope I can make the transition to novel writing and get to working on my book about my Father's life!!