My Freshman Year

As the Emerald City Writers' Conference approaches, I've gotten to thinking about the last conference I attended. My first conference. Last year's Moonlight & Magnolias Conference. (Which I won't be attending this year due to financial constraints and the fact that I now live two thousand miles farther away from Atlanta.) It was a great conference for me, but even more than that, it felt like a beginning of sorts. The beginning of my freshman year as an author, if you will.

This is not to say that I began writing thirteen months ago. Far from it. I scrawled my first attempt in a spiral bound notebook on my best friend's couch when I was thirteen years old. I completed my first book-length manuscript, proving to myself that I could do it, when I was a sophomore in college. The first thing I ever wrote that I deemed worthy of submission went out the door over five years ago. But as important as these accomplishments may have been in my development as a writer, they are only elementary school moments leading up to my career as an author.

I think my freshman year began when I found out I was a finalist in the Maggie contest, my first real writing credit. I finally had something to put in query letters to prove that I was serious about this writing biz! I was in. Ready to matriculate. The Moonlight & Magnolia conference was like the first day of high school.

Do you remember that feeling? Getting lost in the halls. Forgetting your locker combination. Overwhelmed by the enormity of it all and seemingly surrounded on all sides by people who seemed to know exactly what they were doing and where they were going. Those intimidating upperclassmen. That's how I felt at the M&M conference, like a nervous newbie wreck who didn't know anything.

I was a moron. I made mistakes and, being me, I still agonize over them today. Little things. Silly things. (A fellow author complimented me on my dress at the Awards Night and I did not return the favor. I am now neurotically paranoid that this extremely nice and helpful established author remembers me as a complete bitch who hated her dress, which of course I didn't. I was just too tongue-tied to make polite conversation. And now I obsess over my imagined rudeness. I kid you not. This is my brand of neurosis.) (I'm sorry, Alyssa Day! You looked tres hot!)

But my point was not to dwell on how ridiculous and scared I was, but rather to say I am glad I was. How awful if I had just jumped right from junior high to college! Too much success too early is bad for the soul. I needed that nervous freshman year, struggling to find my way. Imagine my dreadful ego if I had been given too much too soon! Such a boost can be so difficult to recover from. I hope the memory of that freshman fear will keep me humble as I become an upperclassman.

I'm not there yet. I'm approaching my sophomore year, but without a book in print and some promo experience under my belt, I don't feel I can legitimately call myself a sophomore yet. I'm certainly not to senior year yet (multi-published! bestsellerdom!) by any stretch, but I'm on my way.

I look forward to my upperclassman days. The cocky, not-entirely-deserved arrogance. Knowing my way around, which teachers I want or don't want, the fastest way to get across the school during passing period... The little things that you almost don't remember learning, but make you feel so much more confident and at ease.

It's been a busy freshman year. I look back on the last thirteen months and my mind boggles at all I've learned. All that has happened. My God, the firsts! First conference. First pitch. First contest final. First "good" rejection. First acceptance (eep!). Signed that first contract. Established my first web presence (and have now referred to said web presence on said web presence in a very time-space-continuum-vortex kind of way). Submitted my first follow-up. Written (and kept to!) my first business plan. Judged my first contest. Cripes, has it ever been a year! And in the middle of all that I wrote two novels & two novellas. Not too shabby for a girl with a full time job, if I do say so myself.

But there will be no resting on laurels! My over-achiever gene has kicked in. I will scale this publishing mountain! Just you watch me. Next year will be bigger, better, and I will push even harder. Starting with my first second conference. (T-minus 11 days and counting!)

I’m truly grateful I was a neurotic nervous wreck of a newbie. I've made mistakes and I’ve learned, and hopefully I’ll never forget where I’ve been. And when I’ve made it to my senior year, when I actually know what the heck I’m talking about, I promise to be nice to the incoming freshman. Wildly famous though I may be (ha ha) and wallowing in my own high opinion of myself, I will read this post and remember what an ignorant fool I once was, and that there is always more to learn.