In Which I Speak At A Library

"We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too." - Helen Hayes


The round-table writing discussion I was invited to co-lead took place today. There were maybe 15 people there, about half of which knew either me or my co-presenter. She took the self-publishing-and-market-your-book-around route, and I'm in the "still stubbornly going for traditional publishing" boat, so it was pretty interesting.


Except on the library website the event was titled "TEEN WRITERS EXPLAIN IT ALL!"


Man, if I could explain it all, I'd have a 6-figure publishing deal and be on the NY Times Bestseller List. Well actually, I'd have reached enlightenment and have better things to be doing, being a Buddha and all.


We each talked for a bit about how our novels came to be, and I wrote a bunch of links on the board (Alexandra Sokoloff's plotting advice blog, Figment, CreateSpace, NaNoWriMo, and the Writing Excuses podcast), and then people asked us questions. It was fun and it was weird and my co-presenter was really nice. (Apparently we had both looked each other up online this morning, which was funny. And we have multiple mutual friends. Here's the link to her book if you want to read it.)


And then halfway through I started coughing and couldn't stop because I've been sick all week and am not entirely better yet. So I was practically useless after that, but at least the nice librarian ladies had given us water. (Nice librarian ladies are the great heros of this world.)