By Kelley Lindberg
Not every day is a good day to be a writer. There are days I dread looking at my computer screen. Days I contemplate taking up a simpler hobby, like brain surgery. Days I delete everything I’ve written, then delete the backup, just to make sure.
But then there are days like last Saturday, when I attended an SCBWI workshop given by Alane Ferguson, author, speaker, ghost hunter, firecracker.
Alane (accompanied by her dear friend and great author Carol Lynch Williams) managed to wrangle 15 writers into a laughing community of committed writers. Or writers who should be committed. Or something. But we were laughing, and that was the important part.
And even better, each person in the room took away a solid belief that while their stories could all bear improvement (because there’s no such thing as a perfect story), each story had, in its heart, at least one sparkling gem of story-telling. And that meant each writer has, in his or her soul, at least one sparkling gem of talent.
Pretty nifty. It’s not easy showing a bunch of emotionally complex (that sounds better than “wacky,” doesn’t it?) writers that their stories are worth the struggle. Worth the computer storage space. Worth the backups. And that it’s okay to call ourselves writers. Out in public, even. In polite company.
I, for one, came away with some concrete feedback and ideas that I can incorporate immediately as I’m drafting my new novel. That alone energizes me and entices me back to the keyboard.
Yeah, today is a good day to be a writer. Thanks, Alane (and Carol).
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