You write.
Here’s a breakdown of what goes down at a writers’ conference:
The night before:
You enter the reception in the hotel and wonder WHAT you were thinking. WHY would you do this to yourself? There are people everywhere, the hotel is big and intimidating, the other women all seem to know each other. You are adrift at sea.
You try to work your way into the crowd. But it’s a ROAR. After you scream at 4 women, you make your exit. You are tired from the drive down, and you are deafer than you realized.
Up in your room, you delight in the white robe, the clean room, the lack of any laundry in sight. You flop on the bed, turn on The Office and try to fend off the tiny bit of angst seeping into your soul. You could be home with your hubby and kids on the couch right now. You could be writing your bestseller. You could be networking. Instead, you are on the bed doing nothing but watch Michael Scott run a 5k, again.
You decide you’ll remedy things in the morning. You have 2 full days ahead of you.
Day 1: You meet several new women. You are so focused on remembering their names, you forget to listen to what they are. One of them you confuse for a long-ago friend named Mary, that you haven’t seen in 10 years. When the REAL Mary arrives, you realize that you might have that “face blindness” disorder you read about once. They look nothing alike.
The sessions vary from spot on to not what you expected. What can you do? You are stuck with your choice for an hour. You can’t walk out! But there’s another workshop just down the hall that sounds like a better fit. You paid for this experience, you remind yourself, so you cringe and scamper out.
But once out, you don’t have the nerve to walk into the other presentation anyway. So you go to your room, turn on The Office again, and wonder WHAT you are doing here.
Day 2: You awake with renewed vigor. You will milk every opportunity out of this! You decide to show up at an impromptu “Michigan Writers” breakfast group at 8 a.m. that someone posts in the workshop app. You find yourself actually delighted. They are kind and talented and all appear fairly normal. Jackpot!
Next, your first morning session is awesome. The info all but convinces you to tear apart your book and add a new story thread. It will be better! Stronger! Thicker! You feel amazing. You know just what your book needs! You are on fire this morning!
At the second session, though, reality lands. Maybe your book is just fine. How many times are you going to revise this little wench? It’s time to move on, send it out and carry on! But, a few revisions would be smart, maybe? Should it be fiction? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Anything sounds better than what you’ve decided to do! Instead of listening to the presentation, you have an argument with yourself in your notebook. You pretend you’re writing notes from the talk, but it’s actually the pros and cons of “fixing” your book again. You make zero decisions and miss the second session altogether.
Finally, it’s time for the 2-hour lunch break. You head to your room, find Y&R on the TV, and you wonder what you’re doing spending money on this. You’ve spent the morning going nowhere and haven’t written a thing.
However.
The sun is out. You whip open the curtains to your room and gaze down on one of the most famous cities in the world. You text Mary (the real Mary) and invite her for a walk around Millennium Park and a sandwich from Halsted Street Deli. She beats you to the lobby.
As you wander about the park, chatting about plot, you feel like a couple of writers, real ones! You haven’t seen each other since a conference in Lansing many years ago, but you pick up where you left off, having kept in touch a bit on FB since then. She says she remembers what you were writing 10 years ago, that you were writing a book about an angel, and that she thought the pages were funny.
You can’t believe it. There’s something about her remembering that affects you. It’s a passing comment, but it lands. Your story, she remembers. After all these years.
Then, you remember.
How you had written your mom in as the angel’s mom - on earth. Your mom had hung Christmas ornaments and made meatloaf in that story. There, just as she had in real life.
Suddenly you’re connected – to your mom, to your new-again friend, to your memories. Your heart scampers a little, too. With joy.
That night, back in your room (again), you think about that moment with Mary. You realize that even if you never write a bestseller, never figure out the plot, or never figure out your genre, that your stories still have their place.
That they are yours to share, in whatever form they take. That your stories might matter to even one reader - but that they will always matter - to you.
You pick up your pen.
You write.