Why Attending A Writer’s Conference Can Propel Your writing

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.“ – Ray Bradbury, Zen In The Art Of Writing.

So last week I took up Bradbury’s challenge by being the ‘sublime fool’ and went rambling off to my first writer’s conference.  It was a goal of mine, a New Year’s resolution that took six months to actualize. (AWP has an ongoing list of conferences at http://awpwriter.org)  

Indiana University is less than four hours from my NW Indiana home. Bloomington is also where I spent four fabulous years as an undergrad.  My alma mater seemed the obvious choice for my first writer’s conference. The format of small genre workshops followed by afternoon classwork in voice, character, poetry and writing crime novels seemed a perfect fit. Every evening professors and published authors would share their work in The Reading Series. The final night, students such as myself would read one page of their work. I would be away from family and out of the ordinary daily grind from June 2-6th. I was all in.

The nonfiction workshops I attended each morning from 9-11:30ish comprised of nine students and was moderated by a published memoirist, Kiese Laymon. In workshop I received nine critiques on the first 20 pages of my work-in-progress: How I Met My Mother.  In turn, I did a careful reading and one-page written critiques for each of my classmates. For an assigned partner, I lead an in class discussion of their piece. This was a rigorous schedule and I dove in, finding the work rewarding.

Included in the conference fee was the option to reside in the Wilkie dorms (where I spent my freshman year at IU).  Instead, I splurged on a room in the IU Memorial Union. Being comfortable and familiar with the surroundings would ease the anxiety I felt as a middle-aged adult embarking on a late-in-life second career, I reasoned.  Since the afternoon courses were held here, this turned out to be a wise choice.

A stay at the Union was also like coming home for me.  Thirty plus years ago, this sprawling, magnificent limestone icon was where I worked in the Catering Dept., where I studied away from my house, and where I officed as a student leader. On my way to class I’d cut through IMU on my way to class to pick up a chocolate-no-bake-oatmeal cookie from the Sugar ‘n Spice shop. Most evenings I’d rendezvous here with my twin sister in the first floor lounge to study or just talk. In some ways I think the nostalgia of staying in a ‘fond memory place’ may have helped and detracted from the conference experience. The familiarity of the locale helped at the outset of the week to quell nerves, but it also served to intensify the vulnerability of being workshopped. I have mixed emotions.

What I didn’t expect was that I’d have so few leisure hours to roam the Union or the campus. I had wanted to remember, reminisce, and reconnect with my twenties self, but that only happened in the long car ride home. The riveting lunch panels, the poetry sessions (a genre, I’m curious about), fitting in cardio workouts, and re-reading and writing critiques squeezed valuable down time. The short walks from IMU to downtown B’ton, involved meeting my group for dinner at The Runcible Spoon, Nick’s and the Roost, before heading out to Bloomington Players Theatre for the evening Reading Series. Less sleep was a small price to pay for getting everything out of the experience. No regrets there.

Four and a half days after pulling into the IMU parking lot, I packed up my car feeling like I had been gone just a few hours but lived a lifetime in between.  I had workshopped my piece and received valuable insights for revision as well as kudos for the strength of the writing. I’d developed a deep rapport with three of my classmates, people who will be great readers for further revisions and new work. My workshop co-writers exposed me to facets of nonfiction that expanded my writing world exponentially.  Their pieces fostered intellectual, political and social curiosities that I intend to foster.

The country music station was dialed down as my drive home took me north, away from my writer’s retreat. The hours wafted as much mental sorting and sifting put my writing, my process, and the conference experience into perspective.  I felt energized. I felt propelled forward to revise current work, to branch out into new genres like poetry and crime fiction. In short, I felt more energy about being alive than I had in a very long while.

Bradbury’s words reverberate. I can’t imagine not writing everyday.  I won’t consider limiting myself to writing in just one genre, and I adore reading my fellow writer’s efforts, discussing it positively, and offering critique. The lessons from the week were invaluable: read out loud, find quality readers, rewrite, revise and explore other genres.  The food I garnered for my writing has propelled me beyond my expectations. I have my eye on another conference already, and I’m hoping some of my new writer friends will join me.