Prose and DFWcons

All right, you guys.  Real talk.  These last few months have been the most stressful, challenging, miserable months since... pretty much ever.  And now that I'm finally out from under it, I can tell you the tale.

See, I was going like gangbusters trying to get my second book written, and teach a night course, and help with DFWcon, and get two classes prepped for the aforesaid con.   Everything came to a head last week: book was due on Monday, programs/schedules had to be finalized by Tuesday, the last conference meeting and bag-stuffing was Wednesday, night course finished on Thursday, and Friday found me crying discreetly at the pre-con mixer because I was supposed to teach a class the next day and wasn't even half ready for it.  At one point, I was up for 36 hours straight.  It was ruinous, absolutely insane, and I never, ever want to be that crunched ever again.

HOWEVER.

Let me tell you what the victory lap looked like.  Let me tell you how completely worth it all that agony was.  Let me tell you what a fantastic time I had, and how many super-awesome people I met, and how many (now former) total strangers came up to me and said, "Oh my God. Your class was amazing.  My mind – you blew it.  I seriously can't even deal with your realness."  

(And if any of y'all from the "Punching Up Your Prose" class are reading this, look at that last paragraph again.  Yeah, it's one of those!)

This was me.  This was what I did.

So let me write this real quick and sloppily, before the glitter wears off and I start second-guessing it.  Are you ready, world?  Here it is:  this what I just did is without question what I was put on this earth to do.  I want to write awesome books, and I want to help other people write awesome books.  That's it.  That is my talent.  That is the goal.

So here's how it's going to happen.

1.  Going to send the two class presentations to all the awesome folks who signed up for them.  That's job #1.

2.  Going to resurrect this blog here, do more fun cool stuff.  I definitely want to do more GrammatiCats (the posts take so much longer to write than you would think, but maybe we can run them once or twice a month).  I also want to start showcasing other authors – because man, I know so many truly first-rate fictioneers, and the world desperately needs to pick up what they're throwing down.

3.  Going to work on doing more classes.  Maybe online, maybe in person, probably both.  (Y'all holler at me if you have any genius ideas or secret leads on this front.)  Not sure yet how that will shake out, but I'll tell you this right now: I am not waiting for DFWcon 2015 to do this again. 

And whether I blew your mind in the last 3 days or have been sporadically ignoring you for the last 3 months: if you're reading this right now, please know that I am so, so grateful to know you and have you in my posse.  I will never know how I got lucky enough to have this life, but I intend to make really damn sure the world is better off because of it.

People are all like, "oh, it's okay, don't cry."  No.  This is DFWcon.  If you're not crying, you're not trying.