Many years ago I attended the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference.  This was shortly after starting to peek out of the closet and admit that I was a writer.  As anyone knows who has attended this conference, it is huge.  So there I was, a timid writer, listening to the crowds around me talking about their novels, their manuscripts, their synopses, the difficulty of making their pitches.  Right next to me was one young woman, very excited, telling a friend she had pitched a magazine article and it had been bought on the spot.

I sat in the back of the panel discussions, as close to the door as I could get, terrified I would be expected to produce something.  I felt like an imposter.  I left devastated.  I created O-Pen writer’s group shortly thereafter, in order to have a place that was safe and non-threatening for writers like me, just toddling out into the world. 

I didn’t attend another conference until a couple of years ago when I went to the Idaho Writer’s Conference that was held in Wallace, Idaho that year.  I went because I was writing a mystery set in Wallace, loved the town, and could add research to the time spent there.  I had tons of fun. 

What made the difference?  For starters, the size.  The Idaho conference was limited to a set number of participants.  The panel discussions felt intimate and safe.  No speakers demanded that you write something and read it out loud, like a few at the Pacific conference did.  The milling about in the lobby consisted of writers  anxious to talk to others about the excitement of writing, not their latest sale.  It felt like a supportive environment.  I’m sure the Pacific conference is like that, too, and my initial reaction was because of my newbie status and lack of self-confidence.  Some day I might attend again, just to see how I respond as the person I am now.  Although it is very expensive.

Stephen King, when talking about conferences in his book, On Writing, asked if we really need to have a name tag on our chest that reads ‘writer’ in order to feel like one.  I loved his comment, and it made me feel like I could be a writer even if I never went back to a conference.  In spite of that, though, these small ones can be beneficial.  Have you attended writer’s conferences, and what reactions did you have?  What benefits did you receive? 

Anyway, today I registered for the Write on the Sound conference, held in Edmonds, WA, in view of the Puget Sound.  Enrollment is limited to 200 people.  I am excited about going, even though it doesn’t happen until the end of September.  But I have learned that these small conferences work for me, that they don’t crush my writer’s self-esteem, and that I can relax and learn.  Not to mention visits with other writers.  Small, intimate, educational, and respectful of all level of writers.  That’s my recipe for being able to attend with confidence, and walk away excited to be part of the writing family.

Thinking about the recent post regarding members of my writer’s group has made me think a little more about the writer’s path. So I wanted to add a postscript to the previous post.

Quite a while ago I read a book on writing that I believe was actually called The Writer’s Path.  To be honest I wasn’t too impressed and felt the whole book would have been stronger as an article.  It seemed like there was a lot of repetition.  But one thing that stuck with me was when the authors compared the writer’s path to musical chairs.  They drew an image of a circle of chairs and writers sinking down onto the chair that was right for them at that moment.  They talked about beginner writers and polished writers, but they said that we revisit that beginner writer chair every time we start a new piece.  Hence the circle of chairs rather than a linear path.

I believe that to be true.  There are two beginner writers in us.  The one when we are first starting out as a writer, and the one we become each time we face a new, unknown, unwritten story.  As we move along in our writer’s life we of course collect tools to improve.  In that way we leave the beginner behind and grow into that intermediate writer.  But when we start that new piece, our tool belt hangs on the back of our chair until we have faced that new beginning.

When I talked about the members in the writer’s group in the previous post, I’m not sure I was clear enough about what I was thinking.  A beginning writer means so much more than simply someone new to the craft itself.   Each word we place in our story is a symbol of both the growth of the writer and the growth of the piece, from beginning, through  middle, to end.

I suppose that means that after ending the story as a confident, polished writer, we must walk away from the story, bury ourselves in the editing process, and then resurrect ourselves in the next, brand new beginning.  Interesting.  I’ve thought of writing as beginning, middle, end, but never as birth, life, rebirth.  Makes the craft of writing sound mighty lofty doesn’t it?

Anyway, just wanted to add a further thought on what it means to be a beginner at writing.  At least for me.

Several years ago a friend and I met to support each other in our beginning writer status.  Those meetings evolved into the O-Pen Writer’s Group.  I realized the people who have attended, their stories and their writing paths, are stories of all writers in a way.  I’m only going to mention a few due to space constraints, but I think you’ll see what I mean.  Each description goes beyond that person’s individuality, to describe the writer in all of us throughout our writing life.

Pat is the soul of the group with a kind word for everyone, the balm on any contention that arises.  She comes from a difficult history, but through it all she has continued to journal and to write poetry.  She feels she is not a writer because she ‘only journals’.  I miss her inner joy when she isn’t there.  I believe over the years she has slowly come to realize that her journals and her poetry are valuable and beautiful, and a true form of writing.  She is the writer in the closet, just realizing that she truly is a writer, like Jenni, a close friend who attends through Facebook, and who is also just budding as a writer.  Both remind me of beginnings.

Lisa has written an amazing novel.  Strong, original, funny, heart wrenching, everything you want in a story.  But for many personal reasons she has not returned to the story.  I wait for the day that she realizes the strength of that book, and picks it up again.  She is the writer in the middle, the one who has passed the beginning, works on her craft, and has created.  Yet sinks under the weight of the inner critic and has yet to realize she is truly gifted as a writer.  She reminds me of the heavy struggles of being in the middle, of knowing where to go but not yet able to see she has the tools to take her forward. Right now we walk together.

Susan came with a draft novel that had problems she wasn’t sure how to fix.  We realized her actual beginning was five chapters into the story.  Ruthlessly she hacked and deleted, outlined and studied, and ended up with a published novel.  She belongs to large groups, has chaired local chapters, attends conferences, studies, works diligently and regularly, and is now publishing her third novel in the series.  She is the experienced writer, striding along with the discipline to work.  She’s the writer who has left the twists and turns of a narrow path in the dark woods, for the clear straight highway, the horizon within reach.  Lisa’s husband Mark is on the same segment of path as Susan.  A writer who is also an engineer, he has perfected the ability to remove the creating hat and put on the marketing one.  His published short stories and anthologies are compelling and entertaining, and he, too, now speeds seemingly effortlessly along the writing highway.

There are other members who also show me those stepping-stones on the writer’s path.  Maybe I’ll have to do a part 2 to this post.  But for now, I thank those who walk beside me along this learning curve.  It’s great to not be alone.