League of Utah Writers

I have been working on getting a list of potential speakers together for the League of Utah Writers – Fall Conference. The conference isn’t until next year, but I like to panic, early and often. I was trying to decide if it was a good thing that I am doing this early. I wanted to make sure that the people that I asked wouldn’t have anything else planned, but now I am worried that people are reading the date wrong. I had someone tell me that they were already booked for September. Either I needed to ask earlier or there was a failure to communicate.

As I have been thinking through the possible speakers I always have a nagging voice in the back of my head that I am going to let some people down. I am primarily a science fiction and fantasy reader and writer. The majority of the authors that come to mind write these genres. I keep going through my list of authors and changing it back and forth while trying to get a good balance of writers and poets.

I have learned that the hardest part is coming up with some keynote speakers. I need at least two, if not a few more. My mentor told me that the best place to decide who is good is to look up them up on YouTube. Only truthfully, I don’t like YouTube. I guess that I should just bite the bullet and do it. I mean there have been previous keynote speakers that have been less than desirable, only it wasn’t that their speaking topic wasn’t interesting. They just went three times longer than they were supposed to. I need to come up with a way to make sure that the speakers don’t go over. My idea includes tennis balls, or perhaps a foghorn.

I guess I should put panicking about the Fall Conference on hold. I mean I still have to get through the Spring Workshop in April. I had a nightmare about it a week or so ago. Everything was perfect, except I had forgotten to order the food. I was running around trying to find enough food for everyone. Ever since that nightmare I have been wanting to order the food, but I keep reminding myself that I can’t until I have a better idea of how many people will actually be there.

Let the panicking begin.