I think I’ve said this before and excuse me for being redundant, but writing can be a lonely business. True, there are writers’ events where you can all write together at a coffee shop or a winery or at the shore, but at the end of the day it’s just you, your keyboard, and the little imaginary friends in your head. So it helps now and then to get among your fellow writers to commiserate, focus on craft and publishing, and realize you’re not the only writer in the world that has issues with head-hopping, comma splices. or rejection letters.

That’s why writers conferences are so important, like Thrillerfest last week, Romance Writers of America’s going on now, or Writers Digest’s huge conference next month. For me, it’s not only the craft sessions, and workshops, the readings and the pitch sessions, it’s the realization that writing isn’t just an occupation or creative endeavor or even a business. It’s a way of life, a big, beautiful, noisy, extravagant, vibrant, lush, existence, that’s exciting and inspiring and humbling all at the same time. It can be as exhilarating as it is devastating, it can be cruel, it can be disappointing. But just like the perfect word that makes your prose sprint across the page, a writers conference can be like a B-12 shot to your flagging writers ego. It can recharge your creativity just being around other people that get you. I mean really, wouldn’t it be so refreshing not to have to explain why you’ve been locking yourself in that room for eight hours at a stretch?

So here’s another writers conference for you. The Authorpreneur Workshop in Red Bank, NJ, coming this September 27-28. Writing and Craft and Publishing Professionals by the beautiful Navesink River. Time to get out of your head and get a glimpse of what the writing life can be. And if you’re already there, come and share your expertise with the rest of us. If I’m going, then you know it must be worth it!