Still Learning

I attended an RWA chapter meeting in the Carolinas yesterday. I was drawn to it by the speaker, who was going to talk about deep POV, but I had never attended any of their meetings and didn't know anyone. I sat across from a lady and we got to talking. She's pre-published, still working on her first manuscript. She asked me the same question and when I told her how many books I'd written, she asked why I was even there. I explained that I felt I was still learning, too, and if I could walk away from the meeting with one nugget of info, I'd be happy.


So what did I learn? Glad you asked. I learned about enneagrams and that there are nine basic personality types and only three core emotions that drive a person's backstory–fear, shame and anger. I'm going to take the test later to determine what my personality type is, but I gave some thought last night to my characters in the mail-order bride story. Fear drives my heroine, shame drives the hero, so I guess I intrinsically knew this nugget before yesterday. But it was good to have it spelled out.

The icing on the cake was I got to spend time talking about writing with a group of ladies who "got" it. A new tribe? I don't know yet, but a few new friendships, yes. I'm feeling quite "cocky."