Next week I’m going to a writing conference and I’m soooo excited. I went to a couple writing conferences in 2014 and life has been, well, life, so this is the first real opportunity I’ve had since then to go. I decided I was gonna go all out for this conference. I could sign up for a pitch session, a query critique, or a manuscript critique. When I registered, I was nowhere near finished with my WIP (I’m a slow first drafter), so I went with the manuscript critique.

In an ideal world, I’m hoping the editor will love my story and ask me to send it to her when it’s ready. But that’s an ideal world. What I’m most (realistically) hoping for is validation. This is the first time I’ve tried writing this genre and I’ve been having so much fun writing it, but there are so many aspects of this particular story that I’m super insecure about. I know it’s not perfect.  This is only the first draft (plus a many-times rewritten first chapter).

Throughout the summer as the start of the conference got closer and closer and as I got further into this draft, I decided I wanted to complete the entire draft before I go to the conference. Keep in mind, I’d written about 40,000 words in about 9 months and I was looking at 30-40,000 more in like… 2 months and I still have a couple of very young children that I’d prefer to keep alive and happy.

Last week I hit the writing HARD to try and reach a writing goal from last year, and I broke several personal writing records.

Now I’m a week away and I’ve got seven chapters left. And I signed up for a query critique in addition to the manuscript critique, so I’ve gotta polish it up. And I have a bunch of critiques I need to do for the workshop I signed up for. It’s gonna be a busy week, but I think I can actually make it all happen.

In addition to all of the learning and writing-boosts, I’m hoping to make a bunch of writing friends at this conference. It’s a smaller one, so the odds of me actually being able to interact with people are significantly higher.

Now I need to go write.