It has been such a long time since I have been in person at any event, let alone a conference, that I felt quite giddy at the thought of attending this in person event. 

The 2022 Writing Heights Conference was hosted and organized by Northern Colorado Writers and held in my home city - Fort Collins. It was as if the universe was telling me something - this was an event I had no excuse to miss. 

I took leave, advised my colleagues that I was following my joy and attended my very first writers conference. 

For me, the conference started with a masterclass on Thursday, April 28th, 2022, a four-hour class on what it takes to successfully self-publish conducted by Kerrie Flanagan. The conference programming started at 9am on Friday April 29th and ended the afternoon of Saturday April 30th. 

Each night I came home with my brain humming, overheating with all the new, actionable information I had learned.

I love learning new things. 

It is going to take several weeks to digest everything that I learned. But in this moment, now, as I write this here are some of my key takeaways: -

1. Author Website. I've been blogging since 2003, and my website looked quite frankly like an ancient relic. I don't have the budget to spend on author website design, so I decided to look at what other templates were available and try them out. I think I will continue to tweak until I am happy with this. 
2. That it is ok not to write every day. 
3. Every author whether they are self-published or with a traditional publisher is expected to do some marketing. That was an eye opener. I always thought that if one is traditionally published that the publisher handles all the marketing. Not true. 
4. Marketing - you can't do everything, so try out different things, and find the things that you are most comfortable doing. 
5. The importance of a critique group. I have been feeling very anxious about this. But I attended a wonderful session given by Kendra Griffin who explained the value of critique groups, and how to give and receive good critiques. I made a connection or two. So fingers crossed I can get started in a critique group. 
6. Know, study and read your genre.