I was very lucky this year to have the opportunity to go to the Clarksville Writer’s Conference, where local artists and writers gathered to meet, talk to one another, and learn from the several featured speakers (of which Amy Wright, a professor at Austin Peay, was included) that presented on Thursday, June 2 and Friday, June 3 this week.

I had no idea what to expect, but what I was presented with was being the youngest person in a fairly small gathering (I think it was around 100 people, including the wonderful people from the Arts and Heritage Development Council that made this event possible!) where I actually only knew a handful of people. It was incredibly daunting, but through this two-day trek through the world of professional writers, I learned an incredible amount.

The first thing I learned is that no one can tell you how to write, but you should listen anyway. These speakers largely did not try to inspire their crowds. Education was their number one priority. This meant that at least three different times, I was taught about the different kinds of publishing--traditional and the many forms of self-publishing. Considering I had never really thought about the mechanics and economics of publishing, it was so helpful. One even went over the differences between advances and royalties, and told us that authors can usually expect free and discounted copies!

I think I did hear from every single lecturer that we weren’t going to make money off of this career, writing. I personally still don’t know why authors think their audience is under that impression. The older crowd know better, and my generation’s elders have just loved telling us that. No millennial writer thinks they’re going to be a best seller. If this generation’s trademark humorous self-deprecation didn’t prove that, then maybe our struggling economy would. I suppose they think that because we write fantasy we live it too, but we don’t. That was one of my first frustrations, albeit actually a very small one.

I also learned that Trump supporters exist everywhere, and they are just as annoying in the literary community as they are anywhere else. We should have known better, getting into a political debate, but when baby boomers want to challenge millennials, it’s worse than declaring war. I refused to be belittled or humiliated, but at least it told me who to stay away from. It also became my go-to story about the conference, because it was so exciting.

I learned that you will only want to talk about writing for so long before even that gets tiring.

I learned that it is a small world, and you’re bound to meet someone that knows someone you know when you go to a writing conference.

I learned that people can hold a conversation with me without mentioning my green hair or outrageous makeup, and they won’t shun me for either.

I learned that a novel I was writing may actually be a fantasy-mystery genre blend.

I learned that people do actually care about you when they ask you about your life, and they won’t mind if you ramble a little.

But there was something else that stood out to me. As I was driving home on Friday, I was thinking about all I had gone through, and I realized I had learned something else.

Supportive friends are your most useful assets and most powerful allies. My friend went for her own reasons, but she and I stuck together through most of it, and I think the best learning experience was being with her, sharing ideas with her, and motivating each other.

If you have someone who you can share your work with, and they’ll be honest with you and try to make you a better person, they should be kept close to your heart.

Now, I think I’m off to write some fiction!