I have always been a writer. Like most of us, I have countless unfinished manuscripts in little pink notebooks and on old desktops that I poured my heart into before I even knew there was a word for it. Storytelling. That is my love. My passion. With words, I can create worlds and dabble in ideas that hold weight in the world around and beyond me. To be a writer isn't just to kick out unique prose with eloquent phrasing and style. It is to watch a world of your own creation break through the captivity of your mind. It is to witness the birth of characters that you will bleed with and love so much that you want to give them life beyond your computer screen. To be a writer is to suffer, pulling out hair and burying your face in your hands. It is a process I have come to walk hand in hand with, but I also walk with the responsibility to be a vessel for the story that has become so much bigger than just me typing at a desk.

And so this is what brought me to Muncie, Indiana, for the Midwest Writer's Workshop of 2015. I signed up in hopes to take my writing career to a new level, and to learn all that I could about the journey that leads to a published novel. What I didn't expect, however, was to be so fully welcomed and supported by the community that made up MWW. You see, before I attended the workshop, a mere handful of people knew that I was, in fact, a writer. I would skate around the topic, sheepishly murmuring hints of the manuscript developing on my screen. I was stuck in a radical misconception that writers were these otherworldly beings, floating through air with their fancy degrees and credentials. Then there's me, a twenty-two-year-old bookseller with an Associate's Degree in Video Production. I though I had no right to call myself a writer. It didn't matter that I believed in my story with all my heart or that I had given everything to those 96,000 words hidden in a Scrivener file. I couldn't be a writer, right?



But I was so happy to be so wrong. The workshop was filled with writers of all different ages and backgrounds and experiences. No one scowled or laughed when I talked about the young adult adventure novel I was pitching. They were all excited to hear about it, wishing me luck and telling me they couldn't wait to see it on the shelves. I made good friends who were in the exact same place that I was in, and we found a new confidence that left us inspired and ready to return home to rework our manuscripts with new eyes. I have never in all my life felt so validated and accepted within a group of people.  It was by far the most valuable thing I could have gotten out of the workshop. I am a writer. Huh. Imagine that.



I am now looking forward to the editing to be done it next few months. I can see my manuscript coming together in a really dynamic way. I am so grateful that I was able to attend MWW15, and am very excited to see my new friends again in Muncie next year.