{"id":3616,"date":"2020-01-10T21:43:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-11T02:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/?p=3616"},"modified":"2020-01-14T20:18:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T01:18:33","slug":"rwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/rwa\/","title":{"rendered":"RWA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/heartbreak-Depositphotos_41579167_xl-2015.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I&#8217;d told my husband that I wouldn&#8217;t be blogging about this &#8211; but &#8211; it&#8217;s a woman&#8217;s prerogative to change her mind. So, I&#8217;m changing my mind. This issue has literally taken up most of my free time over the past week. Reading news articles, blogs, Facebook and Twitter posts, etc. That&#8217;s a huge deal &#8211; if I&#8217;m going to spend so much free time reading about something! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The recent happenings made national news &#8211; articles are in the New York Times as well as The Washington Post, as well as a lot of other newspapers and websites. It would take me TOO LONG to write about everything that&#8217;s happened &#8211; took me a long time to digest all of the facts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For a complete (or mostly complete) list of the happenings in RWA, which started right after Christmas, kindly go to this <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RomancingNope\/status\/1211025913128902657\">Twitt<\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RomancingNope\/status\/1211025913128902657\">er Link<\/a> (apologies in advance for all the profanity on the Twitter link! This was the most concise, complete list of events that I could find at the time!<\/strong>). It&#8217;s A LOT of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s just so sad that RWA has come to this. Hopefully, this will not be the end to this organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I received my first book contract via an RWA conference. I met Tracie Peterson at an RWA conference during a Faith, Hope and Love (RWA&#8217;s inspirational chapter) meeting. It was through her recommendation that I received a contract from Crossings Book Club (part of the Doubleday Book Club empire) for my first novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I received a second book contract from Harlequin (Steeple Hill imprint) via a local RWA chapter retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve learned so much through this organization. I will admit that I&#8217;m not as active as I used to be, but, I&#8217;ve remained a member for over twenty years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, I&#8217;m busy and have lots to do outside of writing, but, RWA has been my first choice when it comes to writers organizations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sad and depressing that they&#8217;ve had a some serious allegations regarding racism and diversity. I&#8217;m glad these allegations have come to light, but, it&#8217;s depressing to hear about them. I haven&#8217;t been to a conference since 2009, and I&#8217;ve only attended a handful of chapter meetings since I got married and had a son (who is now 14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I feel so strongly about what&#8217;s happened, and I&#8217;ve spent so much time and energy reading and thinking about it, that I feel the need to see some RWA members to talk about what happened. I&#8217;m actually going to attend the all-day local chapter meeting being held tomorrow in my area. They&#8217;ve changed the agenda to focus on the recent events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a big deal for me to take my precious free time to attend a local RWA chapter meeting, but, I feel the need to go&#8230;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sad, sad, sad&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Cecelia-Dowdy.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I&#8217;d told my husband that I wouldn&#8217;t be blogging about this &#8211; but &#8211; it&#8217;s a woman&#8217;s prerogative to change her mind. So, I&#8217;m changing my mind. This issue has literally taken up most of my free time over the past week. Reading news articles, blogs, Facebook and Twitter posts, etc. That&#8217;s a huge [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saovYP-rwa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3616"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3619,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions\/3619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}