WriterMBA and HeartieCon: A Retrospective

A combination travel blog and a dual-conference "review." The things I learned, how my expectations were subverted, and where do we go from here?

In March, I took a trip to New Orleans. It was my first time in the city and I was pretty excited to be there. It’s a musician’s dream vacation location after all, and everyone I told I was going absolutely raved and gushed about the place — sharing recommendation after recommendation for things to see, and especially places to eat. I took note of every single suggestion given, despite not being sure how much of the city I was going to actually be able to see while I was there, however, since the true intention of my trip was as an attendee of a small, relatively niche, writer’s convention (HeartieCon) within a much larger, more general, writing convention (WriterMBA). I was going to be prepared for any situation that came up, thanks to everyone’s help, and I was excited to actually be traveling over my Spring Break. But, even more than that, I was really excited to get to spend time with one of my best friends, Keri, for the first time in nearly a decade.

The trip there was uneventful (which for me, is honestly something short of a miracle). My flight was on time; there were no issues boarding; I didn’t have a screaming child sitting beside — or anywhere close by — me. And, though I tempted fate: both bags I checked showed up in NOLA as they were supposed to. Continuing the good luck and easy travels, within 30 minutes of landing, I was already walking out of the door, suitcases dragging behind me, and getting into my Uber. My driver was a sweet man who didn’t make me feel obligated to speak with him until we were very close to the hotel when he asked what I was in the city for and encouraged me to get out and try some of the off-the-beaten-path restaurants (seriously, what is it about NOLA and people recommending places to eat?) while I was in town. The entrance to the hotel didn’t really look like a hotel, so he even got out of the car and double-checked it was the right location for him to drop me off before he even “let me” get out of the car. I thought surely I had used up all of my good-travel energies and was dooming myself to a terrible trip home in a week, but to kickstart the trip? This was maybe one of the smoothest journeys I had ever been on, and I was incredibly grateful for that!

Getting into the hotel was equally easy, since I didn’t even have to check-in because Keri had arrived the day prior and had taken care of all that for us… Including the “upgrade” to the river-view room — which was absolutely brilliant for the sunrise / sunset moments, as well as the morning that I got to watch a cruise ship coming into port. While that beautiful view was absolutely the high point, the room itself was really nice (outside of the horrible shower), and was located down at the end of a hallway, near a vending / ice machine and pretty close to a set of elevators that we could take down to a mostly-direct path to the convention area, so we really lucked out quite a bit with the room.

Something incredibly convenient about this hotel — The Hilton New Orleans Riverside — was that it was attached to not only a cruise port, but also a full mall, which made eating at not-expensive-hotel-prices incredibly quick and simple, so long as you weren’t afraid of a short walk (which we were not). I dumped my things in the room and looked around / started to unpack a little, then decided that my airplane pretzels — while delicious — were not enough sustenance, and we ventured out into the mall for food (and shopping). I didn’t buy too much this go ‘round in the mall itself, but knew I’d be back later in the week to pick up at least some cute dog stuff for Broccoli in the puppy boutique, however.

After some cute sunglasses were newly in my possession, and I longed after the softest turquoise pajamas that were on-sale and only available in a size small, we decided we would have Raising Canes, since it had a decently short line, neither of us had ever had it before, and literally everyone talks about how amazing it is. And, honestly? Mostly lived up to the hype. It was good enough that I made sure to go back and have it one more time before we left.

On our way back into the hotel, we also scoped out the area where the convention would be taking place the next several days. It was all very conveniently located, right near the entrance to the mall area, but also next to a little “convenience store” within the hotel itself, and a small seating area. It seemed like the pool was also pretty close-by, considering the number of children we saw sprinting around dripping wet and shoeless, but that was a part of the hotel we never ventured into (even despite Keri picking up a swimming suit herself while we were shopping that afternoon, strictly for that purpose). With some of our anxiety dissipated after locating where we needed to be “first thing” the next morning, we headed back into the room to relax and — for me, at least — finish unpacking.

The first “official” day was HeartieCon, hosted by

Sarra Cannon

, and was the whole reason I’d made this trip. I was definitely a little anxious about who would be at my table — at that point, Keri and I weren’t even sure we’d be seated together, since we write wildly differently genres — and how the day would go, since other than knowing it would be a lot of heavy thinking and making real choices about real decisions and taking real steps about my actual writing career… I wasn’t sure what would actually be going on. But, since I’ve always found value in Sarra’s courses and videos, even if there are things that maybe I already knew or even disagree with, I knew there would be at least something of value that I would take from the day.

And boy, did I ever. The way the day was structured was more of a guided workshop (with a workbook, naturally!) on establishing a brand for your business / work. Some of it was things I had already considered, since I established my LLC quite a while ago — some of it was even things that I had looked at and decided on while making my way through Publish & Thrive for the second time — but even with the things I had already thought about, there was one more step to consider that Sarra mentioned, or another potential link for that piece of the brand puzzle to make or another layer of depth for me to dive into, all of which was insanely helpful.

We spent the entire day working super hard through the majority of our workbook, answering questions and discussing marketing moves with our tablemates (who, by the way, were all freaking great) and — most importantly — making real decisions (and commitments) that would impact our actual writing career. By the end of the day, my brain was a little bit soupy, but when I looked back at my workbook, I felt like my publishing plan was more solidified than it ever had been. In fact, I even changed up the books I was writing for 2025 because I realized that the entry point I was originally considering for my series wouldn’t be the most accessible, so I turned everything on its head and picked up planning on a completely different novel that I wasn’t planning on touching for another 2-3 years; it will now end up being my debut release.

📷 credit to Sarra Cannon

Immediately after HeartieCon wrapped — even though I think we probably still could’ve gone on for another 5 hours without complaint — Keri and I hopped over into the Vendor Hall to mingle with brands and pick up a lot of swag. Thankfully, one of the things they gave us was a bag, so we stuffed everything in there as we talked to so many people. I’m pretty sure we hit every single non-AI booth and had conversations with everyone. I won’t lie, some of it felt a little cart-before-the-horse, since we weren’t in the stage we needed to be to truly take advantage of some of the offerings or to have a truly fulfilling conversation with them. But, that’s not to say it wasn’t still helpful to gather resources and literature and get some ideas for what all is out there and available (and to gauge which companies would be better to work with, based on the interactions and reactions to the people we were talking with from said companies). But there were at least 30 tables in there, maybe more, so there were a lot of people to chat with.

Needless to say, it was a very productive — and exhausting — day… And it wasn’t even over yet.

We grabbed some dinner and spent a little time in our room to repack our bags from the day and get into pajamas for the HeartieCon pajama party! As much as I loved the work-part of the day, this was absolutely a highlight for me, just because of how casual and fun, but still focused and productive (in its own way) this event was. There was some planning and craft chat happening, but also tarot readings and socializing… and also a MASSIVE sticker and washi swap. We literally filled and entire table with stickers and washi for people to dig through and pick up whatever they wanted. It was just a really wholesome night, and it was really nice to see people being open and generous with everything. Just before we left to go to bed, the WriterMBA group came in, all in matching pink Hello Kitty robes and gave one to Sarra as well, which was a very fun moment. The pajama party itself went to 11pm, and neither Keri nor I planned to stay that late, or even as long as we did, really, but we left sometime between 10-10:30p and pretty much immediately fell into bed because the full WriterMBA conference started (bright and early, with a coffee social with the Hearties at 7am)!

I honestly wasn’t completely certain how much of the actual conference I would bother attending for multiple reasons. The first was the way it was marketed as being more focused on “socializing in the hallways and not the panels / talks themselves.” Which, for some people, I’m sure that was a huge selling point; I am just not that person. From the onset, that — to me — meant there would be a lot of downtime in between the informational pieces where I would just be waiting around the twiddling my thumbs, bored, but also that there wouldn’t be nearly enough focus put on the actual sessions to make them truly worthwhile. But then, even beyond that, I attended the initial Q&A session with Sarra, Russell, and Monica about the conference to let everyone know what they could expect from the event. And the impression I got from that stream was that no one really knew and that everything was going to be really “fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants” and come hang out with cool people!!! rather than professional conference, which is far more my vibe, personally. But I walked away from that livestream thinking that I needed to figure out alternative things to do in NOLA for a few days if the conference ended up just not being my thing.

All of that being said, despite my reservations, I was willing to give the conference a shot with an open mind. Keri and I got up the next morning, grabbed a quick breakfast in the little convenience store, and then went to hang with the Hearties, just socializing and waking up, before heading into the opening keynote.

And, color me surprised, the opening keynote wasn’t terrible! There was a little of the slightly disorganized, don’t really know what to say sort of feel going on throughout it, but the message of the keynote was actually very strong and helpful! Russell talked about how everyone in the room was walking around with locks preventing them from moving forward in their career or taking the necessary steps to improve / learn the information they needed. In order to progress and grow, you needed to do something simple: unlock the lock! Basic, right? So, then, you find a key, and put it in your lock… But nothing happens. Because your key is not the key for your lock — if it was, you wouldn’t have the lock in the first place! The key then (haha), was to find someone else who had the matching key that fit your lock.

Practically, what that might look like is maybe you have a really solid book — amazingly written, perfectly edited and formatted, and absolutely ready to go, but your cover art? Is bad. And your graphic design skills? Even worse than the placeholder cover you have mocked up. That cover is your lock. There are a few ways to progress and unlock your lock. You could learn graphic design and do it yourself. Which will not only take a lot of money, but also a TON of time. And who has time these days, am I right? Or, you could network and find someone who is good at graphic design and hire them to do your cover. Their skill = the key to your lock. Even better, would be if you were an editor (hi. that’s me!) and could offer a skill swap — hey, I’ll proofread your manuscript in exchange for a cover design! Bam. Both locks now unlocked with someone else’s key.

So the lesson was to be vulnerable about what your locks realistically are, and to chat with people in order to find the keys to open not just your locks, but which locks you could unlock for others.

I was impressed enough by that to continue through the day and sat in on a few talks… and throughout all of them, I found the same thing to be true — there wasn’t enough time to actually dig in and engage with the material being covered, but just barely enough to scratch the surface of topics and pique my interest before rushing off to the (very extended) breaks between sessions to “talk about the session and what we learned,” as the conference advertised. My problem was, with how short the sessions were, I didn’t find that I really had much to mull over or discuss. I know a lot of people used that time to go pitch themselves / their ideas to others and really sell themselves, but without a book published, I didn’t have much to push. I suppose I could’ve walked around and been like, “hey, you need an editor right? I’m an established freelance editor! Here’s my card — if you mention we met here, I’ll give you a 15% discount!!” but that didn’t feel genuine to who I am whatsoever.

The sessions, to me, seemed a lot like the vendor hall had the day before: here’s an overview of a product and what it could maybe do for you in the future. Follow this QR code to buy my resource to learn more! Which is fine. It just wasn’t necessarily a style of information delivery that worked well for me.

That being said, I did walk away from the day with several links and things to look into once I was back home, like signing up for TropeCon and picking up Russell / Claire’s (

Creatively Conscious by Claire Venus

) Substack Book (which is what truly got me started here on this platform eventually). The second day, it was fun to see AutoCrit in action and to see how passionate Bekah was about the platform, as well as getting to see the marketing things they were getting ready to launch in action before they went live. Sarra also did a talk (I think this might have actually been on Day 3?), which was fun. But, similar to AutoCrit, it was something I was already familiar with and was just a fun little demonstration of things I already loved. So were those sessions great? Absolutely. Were they something that I “needed” to attend? Not so much.

The one session that I think was absolutely perfectly delivered, well-paced, and full of insanely important information that could apply to literally everyone? Tax Myths for Authors with Seth Norris. Of all the sessions during the entire three days of the WriterMBA portion of the conference, that one + HeartieCon completely made me feel like I got value from the purchase of the ticket(s), even if maybe the bulk of the conference left me feeling a little bit lacking.

Now, all of that to say that some of the reason I felt that way was squarely on my own shoulders. Instead of randomly walking up to strangers in the lobby and asking them to come to dinner with us, Keri and I chose to eat alone-together. Instead of going out after the day’s sessions had concluded to bars and adventures and wandering the city until all hours of the night, we went back to our room, and talked craft and plot amongst ourselves, and went to bed at a decent hour to be getting up and being presentable by 7am every day of the convention. Instead of skipping sessions to chat in the hallways, I went to the sessions… And spent the time between them either eating or taking notes about how I could apply what I’d just heard to my own career / looking up the resources that I had learned about. Had I forced my introverted self to embrace the whole “point” of the conference as-advertised to network and force conversations with strangers that were supposed to grow into meaningful connections, would I have had a better experience? No, I don’t think so. I think I would’ve had a different experience, but I don’t believe it would’ve been better.

I do appreciate what

Monica & Russell

were trying to do with WriterMBA — because so much of the work at conferences does come from the conversations had amongst and between the attendees about the material being presented. But I think that maybe diminishing the importance of the content also impacted the relevance of the conversations from my point of view. Moving forward, I’d love to see a writing conference that was a blend of the two: a heavy focus on well-developed sessions that were full of important, varied, information rather than just overviews, with enough time to actually get into things with the depth required to then have those conversations about. Rather than extended breaks between sessions in order to have those conversations, it would be nice if there were spaces that were a little more organized — like an office hours of sorts? — where people could all gather to chat about specific topics or panels that they had attended, set up as a session in and of itself. For example, I attended a session on Substack, what if immediately after the session, there was an additional FULL session Q&A / practical application where you could sit down and jump on the hotel WiFi to physically start setting up and starting your Substack with the help and guidance right then and there of the experts who just led the panel. Maybe make it interactive and have you hook your device up to show the room what you’re doing and walk everyone through some of the trickier parts of getting started, etc. It would foster the conversations that “should be happening” in the breaks between sessions in a specific, targeted, and productive environment where everyone would be able to find the things they needed, instead of just hoping to wander into the right conversation by pure luck and happenstance.

Because, here’s the thing: I did attend some of the little social-type events and have conversations with people. I went to the pajama party on HeartieCon day, and I was among the first people in the HeartieCon coffee social hour every morning. I had lunch most days with a small group of people. All of those times were fun to me, but they were not the focal point of the conference (for me), and I wouldn’t necessarily say I “gained” anything from them outside of some socialization points.

Of course, I say all of this to the ether, as WriterMBA has since been disbanded in the three short months between the conference and my writing of this post. Which is honestly a bit of a bummer to hear because even though maybe this was not my personal ideal conference, I did still enjoy my time, and I did find value in the conference overall. I was planning on attending again the following year, and had already begun to talk about / make plans with some of my HeartieCon tablemates around doing so, especially if they continued their partnership with Sarra and there was a second HeartieCon happening at the same time / place. So now, we all just have our fingers crossed for HeartieCon to continue to exist, and wait until there is news for the next occurrence of that event for a part two.

📷 credit to Russell Nohelty

My trip home was also thankfully very smooth. I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, grabbed some dinner, and worked through some more of the marketing workbook from HeartieCon while it was fresh in my mind. I did a little bit of initial brainstorming and plotting for the series I want to write that will take place in NOLA, and made my way back to Orlando without a hitch, outside of not getting home until nearly 1am on “Sunday night,” and then having to go back to work / teach the following day…

Until next time — tell me about the best conference, event, or even city you’ve been to! What about it stood out to you?