I am currently attending an indie writers’ conference in Las Vegas, and it is making me thinking about the real utility of these sorts of things. As I sit through the lectures and classes, I keep thinking “I’ve heard this before,” whether in podcasts or articles. But the real utility of the thing seems to be the people you meet. And not just in the sense of networking allowing you new opportunities, just in reinforcing the idea that “Hey, there are a lot of others out there going through the same trials and tribulations as I am,” which is a more important thing than you might think.
I don’t know how many people read this blog, and of those I don’t know how many care about the experience of being a writer in general or an indie writer in particular, but if you’re at all interested, it can be a rather lonely path. You plot alone, inside your head. You write alone. You sit there in the dark, by yourself, and you hit that “publish” button and hope for the best. If you hear from a reader, it’s like a bright light in the tunnel, some indication not just that people are reading, but that someone cares about what you’re doing.
In that sort of isolation, when most of us don’t know any other writers in our town and don’t have anyone in our day-to-day life to commiserate with on the subject, it can be a priceless thing to meet up face-to-face with people who go through the same thing.
So was it worth the crappy Frontier flight and getting in to Vegas with my body feeling like it was 4AM and getting 3 hours sleep, and getting stuck in a smoking room the first night, and skipping lunch and not working out or running for four days and being away from my family?
Yeah, I think maybe it was.
It’s nice not being alone in this job.