A Returned Sense of Purpose

Returning to real life after the PNWA Conference is always a bit squiffy for me. (Yes, I am aware that "squiffy" is not a word.  But it should be.)  Four days of concentrated writing, the society of other writers, writing workshops, featured speakers on writing...it's lovely.  Writers are their own kind of weird, and I think that's the thing that helps me the most every year.  It's a companionable weirdness, a solidarity, and it encourages me that I'm not alone in this obsession with words and stories.  Writers may be famously introverted and depressed, but those things considered they are very encouraging people.  I never feel any sense of competition.  Everybody wants everybody else to succeed, because if they succeed it means you can too.  Also, it's one of very few places where you can mention having arguments with your characters or reading the dictionary for fun without being branded a psycho.


So once again I've returned to the real world, but I hope I've carried a piece of that atmosphere back with me, and through contact with writer friends met there I will keep hold of it throughout the year to come.  The biggest thing I came away with this year was a new sense of determination and discipline in my writing.  This is what I've wanted since I was a little girl.  Only I can make it happen.  Also, in going through old manuscripts the other day I realized that I am currently working on my sixth novel.  What matter that the first four I wouldn't dream of showing to anyone?  Those were practice, and I never have to write that terrible "first novel" again.  Hurrah!

So, I recently unearthed a partially completed manuscript, abandoned a number of years ago.  It was the last manuscript I wrote by hand, which would explain why it survived the tragic deaths of two laptops which perished during that time, taking other half-baked ideas with them.  (I really must learn from my mistakes and save back-up copies.)


I know enough now to realize that the story would never survive the publishing world of today.  The protagonist is entirely too contented, the setting too picturesque, and I have a feeling that ragged-yet-cheerful gypsies with hurdy-gurdys and hearts of gold are on their way out as popular characters.  It makes absolutely no sense to finish it, and no doubt that's why I abandoned it at the time... but there's something in it, a freshness and innocence, that I can't help wanting to recapture, and I think the characters are impatient with me for not finishing their stories.  I may have to complete it anyway, if only for its own sake.  And you never know... 


I did recently stumble across a novel at the dollar store, which manages to smash together about five genres somehow, as well as ripping off the plots of at least three popular novels at once, with healthy doses of time-travel, sex, kilts, and rock 'n' roll, not to mention poor writing.  Yes, I might be a little bitter, but somebody published it!  Yes, it was at the dollar store, but first somebody had to read it and think, "This is good stuff.  Let's print it!"


So perhaps it means there is hope for me after all.  Or it means I shall have to resort to writing bodice-rippers to pay the bills.  Or I shall keep my dignity and work at Flowery Trail until I die.