Next Friday and Saturday I am attending my first writers conference. This is exciting. This is scary.
It's local for me and not a huge chunk of money, plus I was able to tweak my schedule to get two days in a row off of work, so I figured, why not? All giddy with hope and possibility, I registered. And then immediately some sort of gut-rooted terror set in.
As I tried to explain my anticipation to my husband his response was "Why? Because you will finally have to identify yourself as a writer?" I think that may be just it.
Being a wife and a waitress who happens to write in her spare time feels safer than being A WRITER. Somehow making that part of my self-definition feels dangerous. I will have to introduce myself to other writers. To people who will want to know what I write. What I have written. What I will write. This scares me, apparently.
I am not entirely sure what I will get out of this conference (two days of seminars, networking and resources!), but I am hoping to come out more a writer than when I went in. However,
that all falls on me. No amount of seminars and books can make me a writer. It is entirely up to me to take words out of my own head and put them out somewhere for the public to see.
Here's to hoping some divine inspiration and self-motivation meet me there next weekend, and that I will want to write like never before. And here's to putting the knowledge that I am going out there for you so you will hopefully hold me to it with some expectancy of literary marvels to follow...
