Friday Wrap-Up: PPWC Success!

A few weeks ago (April 24-27), I was lucky to attend the Pikes Peak Writers Conference (PPWC).

When I began looking for writing conferences around the holidays last year, PPWC kept sticking out for me. It was nearbyish in Colorado Springs, they had Chuck Wendig as a keynote speaker (duh, I was there), and they promised to host the friendliest writers conference for beginning writers.

The day before I went, I totally had those palm sweaty, shaky, “what the hell am I doing here?” moments. I watched Cosmos. I ordered a pizza from room service and bought a six-pack of beer (don’t worry, I only drank two). These were tricks, yes, but they kept me from obsessively thinking about that big, awful, scary, and oh-so-professional writers conference that for some reason I thought I would be allowed to go to the next day.

I’m sure you’re already way ahead of me here, but it wasn’t scary.

It wasn’t awful.

It was kind of big, which was cool.

Oh and those oh-so-professional writers? They were definitely there. But we talked about the books we loved and made Speedracer references and gushed over wine together. And once the bar opened up and the sessions were over, they turned out to be regular people. Shocker, huh?

It turned out that PPWC was the friendliest writer’s conference.

(For me, at least. I mean, maybe there were people who hated it and cried in their room the whole time, IDK.)

I could gush about the whole weekend for ages–about how I got to hang out with Chuck Wendig, or was introduced to Gail Carriger, or talked sci-fi with Carol Berg, or made up fake eroticas with agents. (Oops, the gushing came out just a bit.)

Overall, though, my weekend was made by the amazing other newbie writers I found. Because there’s something about finding a group of people who understand just how damned frustrating that third draft can be. I think some people call it a tribe. I prefer to call them my people now. Even though they are kind of spread out all over this wide country.

To keep this shortish, I have some posts that other people wrote up after the conference linked below so you can get a better sense of the whole thing. But, from me? If you’re a writer and you’re intrigued, go. Just go.

speedracer