AWP Experience

Whew!

Right before I left for the Authors, Writers & Writing Programs I had a dead pc staring me in the face. After a rushed run to the store, a new pc was in my hand and on the plane I flew. A quick drop into Kansas City and the adventure began!

Each night out was a live poetry session, but nothing compared to the first evening. A Rock-n-Roll poetry slam was in full swing and it was amazing! What a fantastic starter to a ton of learning and and connections over the next bunch of days!

The topics I dove in covered, Crime Genre writing, Audio Books, Comics Writing, Small Press, Marketing Speculative Fiction and a slew of others. My brain was full by the last day and it was a quick flight back home.

What were my biggest take-aways, you ask? Oh wow, audio format styles have expanded and I am excited about the options; dual vs. duel vs. group! Comics writing is so different to novel or script writing and I have ideas! Crime Genre writing lead into the way that Spec Fiction is marketed in a way I hadn’t thought of. (ex. Two Title Comparison Written in X Genre Style – It’s Pride & Prejudice meets Dune written in the Horror Genre) Don’t you want to know what that story is? I know I do!

But my biggest take away was simply, “Why do I write?”

The advent of AI writing hit me a lot harder than I initially understood. I really thought I was mostly suffering from burnout after getting my first series done. But I was wrong. Speculations by the publishing industry expected to see an uptic in AI being responsible for completed novels, possibly phasing out the majority of human writers in a decade. (Human writers will still dominate the best seller lists, while AI is expected to fill the low to mid ranges and especially genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, romance, crime, et al).

Change is pretty constant and I’ve been working long enough to see plenty of what I’ve done for a living be replaced by machines. Seeing art being affected by AI was disheartening. So why do I write? Why bother creating anything?

There was a period of time in my life when I forcibly stopped producing art of any kind. It didn’t arrest my desire to make things, in fact my frustration only grew with the lack of release. Those were some of the unhappiest years of my life, but I learned that I need to design things, make art, play music and live within the creative moment. Without it, I am an empty shell and easily broken.

And this train of thought answers the question, “What do I do when the words won’t come?” Do some other art form! Try something that you aren’t good at and live in that creative moment! Enjoy making mistakes with no repercussions! Play in your creativity as a child does and the words will eventually come.

So, I write to create. And I already know that choosing to not create only hurts me (and maybe those around my grumpy self). And I am motivated! I am ready!

But my new pc is missing all my research, outlines, add-ons and ideas. Oh and the parts I’ve already written. Argh…