I’ve been trying to write my latest newsletter all week with multiple starts and stops and I’ve been kind of beating myself up over being unable to do so. I mean, how hard is it to write a summary of what happened over the three days of LibertyCon 2024? That is what everyone else has been doing. A quick recap of what they did, who they met, and what impressions they took away from it. Not that hard, right? So, why, every time I put my fingers on the keyboard, did the words not flow?
Here I was, a week later, and I still had not written the newsletter.
Well, there is a reason I call this a writer’s journey, and by now I should, and do, know that in this—my—journey things come when they are supposed to. That is another lesson I keep coming across and how my progression on this journey has taken place.
I had given myself this week as a break and promised myself that I would not beat myself up over not writing. I knew the week after LibertyCon was going to be rough because of my chronic fatigue, so I promised myself to take the week off and there’s been no thought or self-imposed pressure about having to write.
However, the newsletter and social media are different, right? They're not writing...
Throughout the week, I sat down multiple times trying to write the newsletter. But, every time I did, nothing came to mind. And as the week progressed and I saw the AAR posts of other authors, I did start beating myself up over it. At least a little bit, because a lot of things happened that weekend and it took me two days to tell CBiT all about it and that information came out like a stream-of-consciousness waterfall, so why couldn’t I type all of that now?—I guess I should have recorded those conversations.
Then yesterday, I got a text out of the blue, and this morning, as Nova and I took our morning walk, things fell into place. I’m not the typical author who always wanted to write, whose mind is bursting with stories, who gets a new idea wherever I look. No, I became a writer because I had one story I wanted to get out of my head, and for the longest time that was the only story I had any interest in writing. Not because my story was all consuming—which it was, at least for a while—but because I had no interest in commercial writing, or any kind of writing, for that matter. So, writing to write, or because I should, or because a newsletter, blog post, or social media post is due, is not something I do, or can do. At least not easily. If you want to know who was at LibertyCon and what was going on, look up the AARs of the other authors who attended. Or better yet, plan to attend it yourself next year. You’ll have a ball and get to experience all the shenanigans firsthand.
But I digress. My writing is a journey with lessons along the way, and those lessons are what I write about best. Kind of like my stories. If you want constant action and battles, you’re better served with a book from one of the plethora of great sci-fi authors out there. What I write is more distilled, more personal. The focus of my stories is the characters, their personal experience, their inner turmoil, their struggles, and their relationships while they go through all that action and those battles.
Anyway, the text I received yesterday got my brain’s wheels turning on this latest of lessons and impressions on this writer’s journey of mine. And this lesson is this: Everyone needs a little reminder sometimes that they are good for who they are, that they are worthy of who they are, and that they should not compare themselves to anyone but themselves. However hard that might be.
So, even though LibertyCon was outstanding and telling you about all the great things that happened, all the great people I met and hung out with, and all the great conversations I had, could probably fill a whole book, that is not what this is about. I probably couldn’t remember all of those details, anyway. The human brain doesn’t work like that, at least mine doesn’t. I do know that the list of people I hung out with and had great conversations with reads like a who’s who of indie publishing. I mean, Marisa Wolf, Kacey Ezell, MD Cooper, Todd McCaffrey, Fred Hughes, April Kelley Jones, Trisha Wooldridge, Casey Moores, Jamie Ibson, JP Candler, Charlie Cox, Dave Appleby, HY Gregor, David Shadoin, William Alan Webb, Kevin Steverson, Nick Steverson, Melissa Olthoff, Chuck Gannon…and lots more. Those are some high-caliber authors, every last one of them.
However, interacting with them was not the highlight of this con for me. No, the most profound takeaway I got from this con was the realization that sometimes it’s the smallest gestures that have the biggest impacts.
An honest compliment, a sharing of knowledge, and an indirect pat on the back were what gave me the biggest impact and takeaway.
During lunch with a group of authors, I gave one of them a compliment. I don’t want to put them on the spot, so I’m not going into the details, but what I said was borne out of the natural flow of the conversation and just my honest opinion. I didn’t even think twice about it before or after I said it. At least not until I received that text yesterday where he told me how much he needed to hear that at that moment.
The sharing of knowledge was also a spur-of-the-moment, flow-of-the-conversation thing. Nothing big, right? Well, it isn’t until you’re on the receiving end of some freely given expertise that will help make your life or plans a whole lot easier or less stressful.
The indirect pat on the back was something I was on the receiving end of. It happened when another author who sat in on my reading on Friday, told a friend about it later. Listening to him laugh as he retold what happened in one of the scenes I read was one of the best compliments I have ever received about my stories.
That is what life is about and what my journey and all our journeys are about. Those little moments that bring others up without orchestration, or planned intent, or sometimes even without realizing that is what you’re doing because you were just being yourself.
Going the extra step and helping someone when it wasn’t asked for, and showing appreciation for someone else’s hard work can make a person’s whole day. And sometimes even more.
We need more of that in this world.
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