I have been dabbling in writing my entire life. Just over four years ago I created a writing group here in SoCal to fill a need for myself that I wasn’t finding in the writing community. From that group, from those collaborative experiences the first couple years came a story that was near and dear to my heart and gave me the courage to share my writing outside my encouraging and supportive circle.
I submitted it to the Writer’s Digest Annual Short Short Story Competition and a few weeks later I received the obligatory email letting me know the winners had been notified. Thus I wasn’t one. But that story stuck with me so I stuck by it, went through a few more rounds of revisions with the help of some amazing proofreaders, and tried again.
My story, Flicker, made it into the top 25 and was published in the Annual Short Short Story Collection the following year. Feeling a bit more like a writer than a dabbler, I reached for what felt like the next step on my journey as a writer and signed up for the Writer’s Digest Novel Writer’s Conference in Pasadena, set to take place in late October 2017.
As the conference commenced however, I was 3,000 miles away, sitting next to my father in a hospital room and doing my best to make him laugh in between taking care of him whether he liked it or not. The wonderful people at Writer’s Digest were kind enough to allow me credit to be used for the next conference of my choice.
Now here I am a year later, my father is in excellent health and I am further into an actual draft of my first novel than I could have dreamed last year. It feels like this is the time I was supposed to attend the conference!
I am more ready to learn what I need to know now and to keep moving forward in my writing journey. I am looking forward to it and can’t wait to attend my very first writing conference.
Wish me luck!
Leave A Comment