it’s all too easy to get into the monotony of writing and forget what it is to really WRITE properly

I get Rich’s NL, but my business partner, Jean Lorrah, led me to look at this post of yours.

You are in a totally different business - we are fiction and non-fiction book writers, mostly HC and Mass Market, but e-book too. We teach writing online and at Science Fiction Conventions where we go to promote our work. Jean is a Professor of English and appears at academic conferences.

We’ve found the exhaustion factor from doing these appearances to be about the same as you describe - but with a bit of a difference.

I find I don’t need to “drain” so much as to “breathe” — the physical interaction with people is different for us.

The people we go to SF Conventions to interact with are usually old friends, people who’ve turned up on fan Lists devoted to our novels, people we’ve known for years from one convention to another, or strangers who share our passions and therefore are already friends.

The topic of discussion is usually the depths of fiction themes, the science bedrock behind speculative fiction, the psychology of myths like Vampires, Werewolves, etc.

I always head for the plane afterwards madly scribbling notes for ideas for future works. I don’t get drained. I go to these events drained and return filled up with whole new ideas.

Science Fiction conventions are becoming smaller, though, and the average age of attendees is going up. This is largely ascribed to the way younger people use the internet.

Blogging, Social Networking sites, Lists, form a kind of interaction which does that “filling up” with new ideas.

I blog at http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/ with 6 famous SF/F Romance Writers, and I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads, and YouTube. On the blog, last Tuesday, my post was actually about a list of things to do before starting to write a novel!

Getting input on your latest novel, feedback on older ones, and getting to discuss novels other writers are just now shaping — all that can be done online.

Then going to a few small conventions to meet up with those you’ve been interacting with becomes an opposite experience to the one you’re describing, and thus very much the same kind of experience. It’s more like going home for Thanksgiving when only the family you like will be there.

But as I said, I’m in a totally different field. I can only wish I knew more about marketing! Maybe you’ll Link to me on LinkedIn and I’ll begin to learn more?
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinelichtenberg

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://www.slantedconcept.com/