It has been a long time—more than five years—since I went to a writer’s conference. This last weekend was my first one since COVID. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
There were a lot of signs that this was false. For instance, the fact that my brain wouldn’t fixate on things like “what day is this conference.” Also for instance, I saw an email from the conference organizer in my inbox at one point, had a minor freak out about email in general and didn’t look at my inbox for days, finally declared email bankruptcy and archived all my emails and thought “if it’s important, she’ll email me again” and then she didn’t and I thought it was fine but it turns out that I didn’t archive all those emails; I accidentally sent them all to spam and then I wasn’t getting any emails at all.
Despite these clues that my brain was going into Highly Avoidant Mode, I didn’t clue in to what was actually happening. I just thought, ha ha, it’s very normal to go to a conference and I’m just doing a normal thing (after a long absence), and wow, my executive function really sucks. I thought it was getting better, but I guess not?
About halfway through the conference, sitting and listening to someone else speak, I had a realization.
It was not my first conference since COVID. It was my first conference since the RWA brouhaha. Yes, I know a lot of people were on my side. But also, I am deeply aware that a lot of people were not—that they blamed me, that they continue to blame me, through this very day, in the RWA bankruptcy filings. I run into the fact that some people hate me on a regular basis.
(Even before the RWA brouhaha, things happened at conference because people hated me. There were two separate instances I can think of where someone tried to get me disinvited from a conference, and in one of those instances someone called the conference organizers and asked them to speak to me because she was “afraid” of what I would do, which annoyed me because leaving me alone is always an option, but noooo, we have to lean into the stereotype of the aggressive, scary woman of color.)
Anyway, I guess I was thinking of writer’s conferences, and thinking about RWA, and my brain was freaked out and it was just trying to find loopholes and weird ways to hide and I had no idea this was going on until the first day and a half was so absolutely lovely and people were so wonderful that the freaked out part of my brain finally relaxed and I was able to perceive the burden that I had not realized my brain had imposed on me.
Ah: that was it. I was scared. That was the problem. That was why I found it so hard to organize things and got so many details wrong and accidentally sent all the emails to spam. I was freaked out and I had no idea it was happening, because it was irrational and I didn’t want to examine it any further. I just wanted to get away.
Instead, I was reminded how much I love being in the company of writers, who are often delightful weirdos with big ideas and funny comments and who love making jokes that are creative instead of mean. I laughed really hard and I cried a little bit and I got some vicarious joy when people shared good news. I made some friends.
If you are ever in the market for a (general) writer’s conference,
the Quills Conference is an amazing community where it is incredibly obvious that the organizers have worked really, really hard to create an inclusive environment where people can talk about writing with joy.
It was a good experience for me in a way I hadn’t expected: to be able to examine the fear that I hadn’t known I was carrying, and to be gentle with it (because it was there for a reason) and then to carefully, quietly, let it go and just have fun.
