Bits for Sunday, November 9, 2008

Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.
Psalm 119:89

I opened my Bible this evening to do my stanza study in Psalm 119, and that was the first verse awaiting me. How appropriate that this verse should immediately follow the weekend I just experienced.

People often ask me if I intend to pursue my master’s degree, and my standard response is I haven’t yet recovered from undergrad, and until I do, I will not be seeking any further degree. I’ve watched many of my friends earn a graduate degree and quite frankly – they exhausted me. Watching them try to juggle work and family and “having a life” with homework and class did not look in any way appealing.

While I cannot be persuaded (presently, anyway) to receive more letters behind my name, I was willing to at least pour more learning into this brain of mine. Therefore, Friday and Saturday I treated myself to a getaway at a writer’s conference. These sorts of events stretch me, because I’m not one to rush (alone) into a mass of people I don’t know and spend a concentrated amount of time learning to fit in with them. Perhaps this is why I write. That can be done alone in a corner of the house with a cup of coffee on the desk and the TV running in the background.

Nevertheless, I loaded the car with a pile of my writing, my day planner, and a large sweet tea and braved an hour on the interstate to attend the conference. I texted one of my friends partway through the weekend, saying something like, “We writers are a strange lot.” She responded that it must be the artist in us. Probably true. The young and the old, the laptop junkies and the prefer-pen-and-paper traditionalists, the oft published and those who wanted to see if this whole writing thing was really for them, the suits and the sweatpants, the coffee drinkers and the bottled-water-only health nuts. We converged in hopes of, as they say in writing land, “honing our craft.”

I sat through six workshops, four general sessions, and one panel discussion, all the while taking notes in the day planner and handouts issued. I found myself as excited to hear what I was doing right as a writer as I was to learn new things.

Most exciting to me was the chance to meet with an editor. I told one of my friends that this sort of thing feels like the American Idol of the writing world. Trying to make those connections with someone who might know someone who might know someone…well, it isn’t easy. I had exactly fifteen minutes to sit at a table with a woman whose name I had chosen at random, praying (literally) that she was the best fit for the type of writing I do. As I waited in line for her to finish the appointment before me, I worried about my outfit – since it suddenly occurred to me that this was a job interview of sorts and I felt dreadfully underdressed for the occasion. I scrambled to think of words to say that would leave a positive impression.

Fortunately my moment arrived before I had a chance to fall apart completely. I sat down, listened to her tell about her role in the industry and then shared with her the type of writing I do. A bit hesitantly, I pulled out my binder of sample writing and tried not to look too pained as I watched for her reaction.

She liked it!

If I’d learned nothing the entire weekend, that moment of approval was worth every moment on the interstate and every dollar of the conference fee. I have no idea what will happen from here – but if you’re interested in praying for me about it – I will not turn you away. I have been invited to send her a sample of my work for further review, and that is an incredible opportunity. I’ve been thinking all weekend about which sample I should choose, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what I want to send.

In the final workshop I attended, the facilitator closed with this quote by Lee Roddy:

Write so Heaven will be different.

As the verse in Psalm 119 says, the only Word that stands forever is the Word of the Lord. No matter how much labor I put into the words I write, I know they will one day be gone. But my goal is that the words I write about the Word will fit in with Lee Roddy’s quote.