April Writing Madness

I have a little something to share with you all, and for once, it's not a recipe!  I'm coming out ... of the writer's closet that is.  I've been a closet, mostly non-practicing aspiring writer for almost my entire life - well, since kindergarten when my teacher taught us how to bind our own books with pretty wrapping paper and cereal box cardboard and we wrote short stories in them.  

One of my first stories was about a romance between two cats of different colours from different planets who found a way to make it work in the end and lived happily ever after... 

During high school I wrote a ton of creative fiction (teen angst and all that) and won a few awards and a scholarship.  In my early years of college I also took a lot of creative writing.  However, I eventually decided that I needed to do something more "practical"... so I became an English major!  (Haha, it's a joke, get it?  Because everyone and their dog has a BA in English lit, so it's not really "practical") and then I went on to get an MA... in history!  Please don't ask what you can do with a history degree, please, just don't.  I've been trying to justify this to my mother since I started the degree...

But I digress!  I just wanted to drop a quick note in here to share that I've jumped back into writing feet first.  I've been working through the April challenge on Robert Lee Brewer's site, My Name is Not Bob.  This is to encourage and help writers build a platform, but has the added bonus of connecting with other writers, as well as inspiring one to write more!

I'll also be spending most of Friday and this weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writer's Institute.  I'm very excited for three whole days of presentations, panels and discussions, and there will be food bloggers and writers and agents, oh my!  I've been reading up on prep'ing for conferences, and have found these 25 Ways to Rock a Writers Conference to be helpful so far. 

I have to confess, it's a little scary.  It's been about 15 or 16 years since I was last at a writers conference - I was very, very young then.  Seriously.  Like 5... ok, maybe a little older, but not much...

I'll be posting an update at the end of this weekend and hopefully will be able to impart some sort of wisdom to you all. 

In the meantime, are there any of you out there who have been to writers conferences?  How do you prepare, and manage your time while there?  What criteria do you use to choose a talk to go to, and how do you make the most out of it?  What advice would you give a rather nervous person who feels like they are in way over their heads??