Day 4 of the Muse Online Writers Conference

The fourth day of the Muse Online Writers Conference was possibly the best day yet — but that's because I won something.

While in the first of my two chats for the day, there was a couple of door prizes. At the time of the first door prize there was some discussion about whether we are supposed to guess one number and stop, or keep guessing numbers until someone gets it. Unfortunately, the moderators have not been stating the rules for the door prizes, and in two of my previous chats someone had said something to indicate you should only guess once.

We cleared that up with Lea, however, and so for the second door prize I was prepared: I started rattling off numbers until the chat threatened to kick me out. (Apparently if you post too much you can get kicked out.) My second guess won the prize: the presenter's book!

The funny thing about this was that I was pretty annoyed, on the forum and in the chat, at how often the presenter was plugging her book. I understand that many of the presenters see this conference as a chance to get the word out about their books, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't do their jobs in presenting. My most hated response to a question, either on the forum or in a chat, is, "The answer to that is in my book," or something similar. To me, that just seems so cheap — after all, they are there to answer questions on their subject!

The presenter from whom I won the book was doing that to a certain extent. In fact, the"handout" was a sample chapter — an introductory chapter, with no information — from the presenter's book. I'm genuinely happy to have won a door prize, especially one that is so useful, but I can't help but admit I find it somewhat satisfying to get it for free after the presenter spent so much effort plugging it to all of us.

I'm staying more or less up-to-date now on the forums, although I still haven't been participating in that Dialogue Workshop — the one fiction workshop or chat I signed up for, I'm afraid. In one of the forums, I submitted an old bio for review, but sadly, the presenter didn't think much of it. As Kathy Kehlri noted, however, at least this will get me to update it!

You can read about my experiences during the first few days of the Muse Online Writers Conference here:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday