I love RWA as a super supportive writer's trade association, but with one main gripe: their definition of romance:
No, in a romance, the lovers are not necessarily "rewarded with justice and unconditional love." Romantic comedy is great, but not all romance is comedy. Just look at that romance of all romances, Romeo and Juliet. And what about The Time Traveler's Wife? Its ending is way more complex than RWA would like, but it's about the most romantic novel I've ever read.

I love me a happy ending, but tragedy or plain old sad is "emotionally satisfying" in its way. Otherwise, the star-crossed lovers would have stayed dead after the first performance. To exclude sadness, bitterness, grief from romance is to stunt romance (and oneself) emotionally.

Defining romance as having happy endings trivializes and limits a genre that already is trivialized and limited in the minds of many people. We're looking for respect, and this doesn't help.

Love the book bag RWA gave out at the con. And the fact that I left with it full of free books.

VP bud Marta and I attended the Romance Writers of America convention in DC. I'd never been to a convention focused solely on writing. Nor a convention where the ratio of male to female was about 2000 to 4 (I'm not exaggerating!). The noise level in the bar was several pitches higher than normal. It was fun. Really a good time and a very supportive culture.

Thanks to Marta's greater wisdom, I ditched my usual earnest lifelong student attitude and picked workshops mainly for who was giving them rather than by subject. The student mouse got plenty of crumbs, though. Overall, the con gave me a good grounding in the romance genre, which overlaps with just about all other genres. SFF is up and coming in romance, and not just paranormal. 

Loved the "focus on" sessions for publishing houses Tor, St. Martin, and Dorchester. A highlight was Donald Maas's presentation The Fire in Fiction. If you have a chance to attend this somewhere, don't miss it!