When this coronavirus pandemic lurched on to the conference and convention scene, live events all over the world were cancelled. We writers, just like the rest of humanity, had to stop in our tracks, go home, and scrap the schedule. Our calendars began to look pretty empty. But then planners and managers got creative, online opportunities grew like wildfires (sorry, that reference is very painful for some folks these days), and we social butterflies jumped on board. We found new ways to indulge our occasional attacks of extrovertness, see the smiling faces of our friends and acquaintances, and connect. In Colorado, three major writerly conferences were cancelled: Northern Colorado Writers and Pikes Peak Writers in the spring and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold in the fall. Not to be sabotaged by a nasty virus, the brilliant minds at these organizations, with additional support from others such as Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime Colo...

Photo by Cara Lopez Lee Fifteen thousand people at one writing conference are enough to bring out my inner introvert. That’s what I learned at my second springtime leap into the swarms of the annual AWP Conference , this time in Los Angeles. (AWP stands for Association of Writers and Writing Programs, so can anyone tell me why it’s not AWWP?) People often talk about creative writing and introversion as if they’re inseparable, but thanks to writing’s dual requirements of solitude and communication, I believe it attracts a spectrum of introverts and extroverts. I’m an ambivert: exhibiting qualities of extroversion and introversion in almost equal measure. In Myers-Briggs personality tests, I typically score 51% extrovert/49% introvert. I’ll bet if the tests were not designed for bilateral results, I’d test 50-50. Non-writers often seem surprised to meet an extroverted writer. Meanwhile, writers who know me seem surprised to learn I’m half-introvert. “But you’re so social!...