2022 Novelists Inc Conference - Work Smarter, Not Harder

The gathering of the tribe - my people. Novelists. It’s so good to see all these wonderful writers together at last!

I’ve missed the last two years because of COVID, but I got the newest booster and was not missing the NINC conference. NINC is Novelists, Inc. - The Professional Network for Career Novelists.

All of these folks are multi-talented, multi-published professional writers who gather in St. Petersburg, Florida every September (during hurricane season) to learn and share and network.

Perhaps I’m lucky to have so much beach time here in Florida and so as not be tempted away by lure of the tiki bar and beach cabanas at the Tradewinds!

For three days, I went to every workshop and night owl roundtable that would fit in the hours of the day. Our many professional sponsors provided breakfast, coffee, a charging station, and most lunches and dinners.

The attire is very casual, but the topics are not. This year I sat in on marketing workshops, visited with the retailers from Apple, Barnes and Noble and Kobo and had lunch with the software developer for Plottr, a visual book plotting software. Not surprisingly, he developed the software for his own writing and, naturally, he writes Sci-Fi/Fantasy.

The conference schedule starts at 9:30 AM and ends at 10 PM. It’s a long day, and I didn’t make it to everything. Much as I tried, I never made the last night owl roundtable. I was just too mentally tuckered! There are so many wonderful workshops that are taking place simultaneously, that it is very hard to pick which ones to attend.

On Monday, I hurried home, my head spinning with new ideas as Hurricane Ian spun in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm has kept me from doing any of my mighty list of ideas for several days, but I’m back at my desk now and eager to try out some of what I’ve learned.