The Words of a Waiting Writer

Last week, I attended a writer’s workshop in Olathe, Kansas, held by Daniel Schwabauer under the title “One Year Adventure Novel Summer Workshop”. As I write this, it’s Monday morning and I’m not sure what I’m doing with my life.

Except that maybe I do.

I’m waiting.

The Words

This is the first time I’ve written something for almost ten days, which is weird to think about when you consider what I was doing for the last week. Nonetheless, I’m here writing for the first time in quite a while, and it feels good. It feels good to write.

That’s something I haven’t felt in a while.

Sometimes, writing is hard.

 Very hard.

This is the third time I’ve gone to this workshop, and then third time that it’s changed me deeply as a person. At this workshop, it’s more than just networking and listening to lectures on the writing craft.

Sure, it is for those things, but it’s also for a lot more of that. Many of my best friends attend this workshop, friends who I only see a few times a year because they live in different states or different countries.

Each year, I’m changed by the conversations I have and the things I hear. The words of others change me, shape me, mold me. That’s a powerful thing. Words have the strongest affect here, when the people speaking them deal in them for a living. This workshop is full of people who understand the power of words and who attempt to use them to their full power.

The Waiting

For the last month or so, I’ve been waiting on a lot of things. Waiting on information from my college about next year (classes, financial aid, the rooming situation, etc.), waiting on potential employers to call me back about jobs, waiting on my writing to take off, waiting for productivity to slap me in the face.

I go to this writer’s workshop. I didn’t expect a writer’s workshop to encourage me in waiting for things that were not writing, but guess what Tuesday’s keynote speech was on?

Waiting.

Yup.

You got me there, Mr. Speaker.

Going to this workshop reminded me of what I was waiting for, why I was waiting, and it gently slapped me in the face with the correct way of waiting. Waiting isn’t passive, it’s active. It’s not impatient and it’s not passive.

I dislike waiting. I’d prefer to just not wait, if that’s fine with everyone else in the universe. What if I didn’t have to wait?

Well, I do.

Thanks to this workshop, I’m remembering how.

The Writer

I always come back from this workshop with a sense of what I want to be as a writer. This year is no different from the last two. I learned a lot, and I took pages and pages of notes. The speakers reaffirmed things I already knew and they expounded on knowledge I thought was the furthest reaches on the subject.

In the last ten days, I’ve grown as a writer.

That’s a weird feeling. It’s weird to feel growth in such a short period of time.

But it is good.

And now… now I’m going to write.