Day Two At the Newbie’s First Writer’s Conference

Day Two was shorter than Day One (for me) due to god-awful cramps that woke me at 2:45 am, and the fact that there was only one morning session that I wanted to attend and I was lukewarm about that one.  So I attended three sessions today, and they were fantastic, empowering, informative.

I experimented with wandering the Book Fair again, but discovered that I had an identity crisis.  When I’d approach a table, the person behind it would invariably ask me, “What do you write?”   Well, I had no idea what to answer.  Blogs?  Essays?  Poetry?  Stuff?  Clearly, the questioner was looking for a genre (I have heard that word countless times in the last 36 hours) to see if I was someone with whom they might be interested in speaking.  The good news there is that small publishers are actually interested in new writers.  The bad news is that I found myself in over my head.

I’ve had a lot of ideas about new things to write and that’s good, but as I wrote yesterday, it’s nothing until I actually do it.  And once I do that, I will be able to have a better sense of my identity and some confidence the next time I’m at one of these events.  I know that my uncertainty in my own self was obvious, and I didn’t like that.

As it is, I feel as if I’ve been born prematurely.  I need a little intensive care and further incubation before I can truly proclaim myself as a writer.