So You Write? A Workshop & Discussion for Writers

Left to right: John Dorsey, Ed Gehlert, Denise Terriah, K.S. Wuertz, Loretta Gorrell, Chigger Matthews.

That's right, yours truly participated in a writer's workshops as one of the professionals that aspiring writers could talk to about our experiences. Look at me, sitting there like I belong and I'm not secretly terrified that the nice folks in the audience will learn that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Okay, I know that's not true. I do know some things about the business of writing. I've been an officially published author since March fourteenth. I mean, I have three solid weeks of experience trying to make a name for myself. Three whole weeks older, three weeks wiser. Three weeks.

Three weeks doesn't seem like a lot. What the heck am I doing sitting in front of people among these other novelists, poets, screenwriters, publishers, and journalists with years and years of experience?

Does it change the narrative a little if I said that my book was officially accepted by the publisher May 1st of last year? The time from May to March was spent doing the editing, revising, finishing, blurbing, cover design, and marketing plan that comes with the birth of a book. Before that I spent three years writing, rewriting, and rewriting again. I'm green enough as a published author that I still have that new-author-smell, (fresh ink with a slight undertone of panic in case you're wondering.) I guess if pressed I do have enough experience to sit among "real" authors. Does it help that I count these professionals as friends? Absolutely.

Did I learn as much from the experience as the audience? It's possible. Three weeks as a published author isn't much but I do know a thing or two about perseverance. I set 'author' as my goal and I'm going for it wholeheartedly. That is the only difference between a writer and an author, and the biggest hurdle. Pushing past the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, and becoming published. Submit, get an agent, find a small publisher, self publish; each is a valid path, and all will take a person from unpublished writer to published author.

Then the real work begins.