Under Construction

Firstly, HAPPY OCTOBER!! It was freezing outside this morning, which means winter's coming! I'm excited because now I won't look like such a weirdo wearing turtleneck sweaters to work. I swear they keep the office at a nice toasty 50 degrees F year round. People look at you funny when you wear a turtleneck in July around here. Anyway, I digress (yes, already).

So in Utah, we have 2 seasons—Winter and Construction. So honestly, when the road isn't covered in snow, it looks sort of like this:

So I trudged through traffic and construction cones to attend a writers' conference last week. And when I got to the conference, one of our keynote speakers (Brandon Sanderson) said something that was so obvious, I didn’t even think about it. He said something along the lines of "try something new."

Well, as soon as I heard that, I thought to myself this is something new for me. A year ago, I probably wouldn't have known anything about the writers' conference, much less make the effort to register, try to coordinate with the only other person I knew who would be there (though we ended up running into each other by chance), and drive nearly an hour to get there.

Without even planning on it, I realized I’ve been trying a lot of new things recently, so as I work through my wips, I discovered, I am also a wip—a writer, still under construction.

Here are a few of my “new” things. I joined with a couple other fantabulous writers to form an online crit group. I’ve stepped up and forced myself “out there” to meet more people, both online and in-person, to expand my network. I’m trying to branch out in my writing techniques—a pantser trying to outline (if you have any tips, PLEASE let me know!). And I’ve been working on being more Zen about the whole querying process.

What sort of “new” things are you trying out? Are they working? Any tips to share?