Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the annual Romance Writers of Australia conference. It was held in Melbourne, my home town, this year so I thought I really should go.

The conference consisted of three days of writing and business workshops and seminars.

The first day was a full day workshop on plotting with Natasha Lester. I learned a lot and will need to go back through my work in progress with my new story structure knowledge.

The second and third day were a selection of short sessions, there were quite a few competing sessions I would have liked to see. I went to a panel of people in uniform; fire fighter, paramedic, police officer and nurse/midwife, a session on historical herbal remedies, a session on narrative through description, and many more.

By the end of the third day I was exhausted and I wasn’t really taking much in, but I was raring to get back to my manuscript and start implementing my new knowledge.

This is the collection of book swag I got from the conference.

I also took along some of my own books to sell at the indie book stall run by Ebony McKenna.

I made one sale which was pretty good when the audience was entirely other writers.

I also had two sessions with book agents to pitch my work. Both have asked for me to submit to them by the end of the month which is promising. I won’t get my hopes up too far, I have a plan to publish another book early next year regardless of how the pitches go.

Anyone else doing professional development that’s both challenging and exciting?