I wanted to talk with you today about beating the Post-Conference Blues. I know a lot of you are just coming back from Comic-Con and RWA National within the past week, so let's discuss the best ways to beat the post-con blues.
5 - Sleep! As we all know, there's very little sleep at these amazing events. We're all so busy schmoozing the contacts, seeing old friends, absorbing the amazing community of like-minded people that we only get to immerse ourselves in once a year, if we're lucky, but most likely once every few years. So after you come out of this amazing bubble, sleep is necessary to recharge and prepare ourselves to face reality.
4 - Work on the book. So after you've slept, spent a bit of time with your family, and slammed back into reality, you have to start putting all those workshops to good use and work on your WIP. Jumping right into the writing of it will help give you focus, allow you to use the excitement and momentum of the conference to hit the ground running while you work on the project.
3 - Keep in Touch. Call your conference buddies, send them messages on Facebook or Twitter, add your new contacts to your friends lists or follow them. Keep the relationship building between you and these people. It will be a bitter-sweet kind of contact because you'll all remember the amazing time, and you'll miss being in your writing conference bubble, but you'll smile and laugh at the good times. Keeping in touch with these people will also help you feel connected to new friends and build a lasting bond, not just one you have while at a conference.
2 - Blog about it, talk about it. One of the best ways to savor the conference, and ease back into reality is to keep a piece of the conference alive and well. Talk about the conference with other writers who couldn't make it, pass along your notes, your stories, your excitement to them. Talk about it with your family and friends who aren't writers, even though you know they just won't totally "get it" unless they're writers too. Follow blogs of those new and old friends who will probably be talking about the conference too. Go over the good times you had, and maybe read some insight for a panel or workshop you couldn't make it to. For the RWA conference I went to a couple years ago, they also gave us a huge file of all the handouts for the conference, which was a great help. You can also get the audio for workshops you couldn't make it to, though I believe you have to pay for those.
1 - Plan for the next conference. The absolutely best thing you can do after you get home from one conference, is plan on going to the next one. Pick out roommates, book a hotel, start putting away money so you can afford the conference in 6 months or 12 months, or in two years. Even if the conference is long off, having a game plan and the "I'm going to be there again in a while" mindset will help you look forward instead of focusing on the hollow feeling in your gut when you leave the conference.
So there you have it folks... some tips and tricks to use to battle the Post-Conference Blues.
What else would you add to the list?
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