Storymakers Conference 2022

Once upon a time...two BFFs went to a writing conference together! And it was so much fun! Amanda and I have been friends since we met at BYU seventeen years ago, but we have been writing buddies for just under two years. I've been writing for ten-ish years, I think. But Amanda joined in and has been inspiring me and helping me get more writing done. Last year she had the idea of writing a short story a week. So we gathered a couple other friends and did it. I learned a lot about myself as a writer from doing that, and it was a really exciting and fulfilling project. This conference was also her idea. She told me about it last year, and I attended virtually. And this year all the dreams came true when we attended, in person, together.    

 It was a trip down memory lane to be in Provo together. We had three years together as roommates. Then a couple of years together as married people with babies. We would walk and talk for hours all around, pushing our kiddos in strollers. Good times. And being at a conference like this with lots of people, I remembered how it felt socializing as roommates: Amanda has always liked people more than I do:) but she also reminds me that I actually do like people, too. We fell into an old pattern where she leads out in friendliness, and I follow along as wing man. It was an interesting vibe to be made aware of again. I think it works for both of us! 

It was an amazing conference! Lois Lowry was the keynote speaker. She got up there and told stories about her life and related it to writing. It was so good and so real and so funny. This was the first time she's been out and about since Covid. And she has a new book coming out soon. 

Some of her rejection letters. Always fun to see. A badge of honor (and pain) among writers. "This is engaging, but we think a bit too self-conscious." 

We got a picture with our one man, Charlie N. Holmberg. I loved her books Spellbreaker and Spellmaker. And she's fun to follow on social media. And she has the best title for a podcast ever: "Your Mom Writes Books." There was this other person at the conference who had the same haircut and was Charlie's doppleganger. So the Charlie spottings were fraught with existential wondering, was that really her??  

Amanda was an expert at running into famous people in the bathroom and being totally cool about it. She just kept washing her hands and then would run and tell me she'd seen a famous person in the bathroom. Our favorite celebrity encounter was with Julianne Donaldson. She attended one of the classes we attended, and at the end Amanda was brave enough to go and talk to her and, as usual, I tagged along. We told her we thought Edenbrooke was perfection, and we were grateful to her for putting it into the world. 

I saw famous people, too. Here I am stalking Sarah M. Eden. She wrote Seeking Persephone and Friends and Foes--two more of my Regency favorites. And she's a really good teacher. Her classes are excellent.

We didn't have a car while we were there, and we didn't need one because we were able to stay in Aunt Kathleen's wonderful guest room. It was the perfect location for us within walking distance of the convention center. And it was lovely to see her. I should have taken a picture! But I'm not surprised I forgot to because my brain had usually turned to mush by the end of the day when we got to her house. 

Some of our other awesome roommates drove down to meet us for dinner. We had delicious food at the Bombay House, a restaurant I had never been to before because I could tell it was too fancy for a poor college student. It was so fun to catch up and be with these amazing women again. I hit the jackpot when it came to roommates. 

 This was a weekend never to be forgotten. Best time ever. I do want to remember, though, that my back was killing me on the first day--maybe from sitting on the plane, and then the convention center's chairs felt like torture devices. I went outside to the balcony at lunchtime and laid flat on my back on some benches, and instantly felt better. It was such a relief.

Also, I wanted to remember that Amanda and I have twinner hairbrushes. 

Okay, wait, there's more I want to remember! On Saturday night, we went to a restaurant, bought our food, then decided to eat outside. Amanda was still wearing her conference tag, and some ladies at a table said, "Hey, you are from Storymakers! So are we!" And where I would have been like, "Hi, cool! See ya!" Amanda was like, "Can we sit with you?" And so we did and made some new writer friends. It turned out that one of the women there was from Buda, TX! And she had been on our flight to Utah and was going to be on our flight home. So we (Felicia) gave her a ride to the airport. We remembered her from our flight to Utah because she was the lady a few rows ahead of us who had asked a buff guy to lift her suitcase down from the overhead bin because it was full of books. 

Also, I can't forget that Felicia and Nick fed me this. Yum! And I went to see Abbie and James and their new house but failed to take any pictures. So good to connect with them! Thanks to Felicia for schlepping me around. 

What did I get out of this conference other than a ridiculously good time? I was re-convinced of the importance of the free write. I'm was reminded to let writing be more playful and less serious. I really like writing. It's hard but satisfying. I really want to finish another novel. I am lucky to have Amanda as my writing/accountability partner. 

I also learned the genre of my current work in progress. That may seem like a small thing, but it was actually kind of a big deal. At the conference, the most common ice breaker question was "What do you write?" And my initial response was, "Uh...books" at least in my head. But I learned over the course of the conference that I am writing women's fiction. I learned this because people talked about the difference between romance and women's fiction--sometimes a fine line--and I am not writing romance. This helped me a lot because I think I've been trying to make it both at various times throughout my writing process and that has been confusing me. 

Also, fyi, romance is not necessarily steamy. It just means that the question of "Will they get together?" is the driving question of the plot. Also, romance must end happily. Did you know that? If not, your book is not a romance. And if you've tried to pretend it is a romance, the romance readers will hunt you down. My book is going to end happily and have a romance subplot, but the driving question is not, "will they get together?" Therefore it's women's fiction not romance. I have problems with the term "women's fiction," but that's a rant for another time.