I thought a lot about joining GrubStreet and registering for The Muse and the Marketplace for about a year after I met Eve Bridburg and Chris Castellani at Chlotrudis Awards, the Indie Film org that is near and dear to my heart. I believed them: I was going to love it. As a writer it was the place I belonged. I just needed time to gather up my courage to be part of an author's organization. To convince myself I was a real writer ~ not yet daring to think of myself as an author. Didn't you have to be published already to be an author?
I joined GrubStreet about a year later, and took a class with Steve Almond (of Candy Freak fame), but it took me at least two Muse cycles to gather my courage to register and go. The first time I attended I walked into the Boston Park Plaza Hotel that Friday morning with trepidation (oh yes, I can and do use a thesaurus) and instantly felt the excitement of like-minded writers, and that I was a part of an amazing writing world. So many authors, agents, editors, and people who believed in writing as an art and a career. Three days later and totally exhausted, I headed home with pages of notes on topics from how to write a query letter to marketing and media. Mostly I headed home understanding that writing a complete 89,000 manuscript (in Times New Roman double spaced) is the very beginning. With inspiration from The Muse and the many publishing industry professionals who were so encouraging, I jumped into the hard work of writing a query letter, a one page synopsis, and a one sentence blurb. And this year I will attend The Muse for a third time... eager yet still a bit trepidatious.