“Being part of an artistic community can be one of the greatest joys of life.”

Rick Rubin from THE CREATIVE ACT: A WAY OF BEING

Sure, we don’t want to stink. We don’t want to be ridiculed. For some reason, though, at first some of us don’t appreciate that writing is a craft. That it’s something to be learned and nurtured.

There’s nothing more important than finding or rejoining your tribe at a writers’ conference. But there is also some business to be done.

Like many writers, I approached my first conference with my perfectly practiced pitch and my carefully crafted manuscript just knowing that soon I'd be signing with the agent who would make all my dreams come true. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.