Some big news! This past month I applied for and got accepted into a weekend intensive writing program at The Writing Barn, in Austin, Texas! Woooo! The Rainbow Weekend Intensive, to be specific. A whole weekend full of writing, workshops, lectures, and I think at one point I get to paint a rock? I’m deliriously excited. I’m also anxious. Not about the rock, though. I am confident I can paint a rock. But a writing workshop?? For me?? Very suspicious.
I found out about the program somewhere on Twitter – I think Jim McCarthy tweeted about it? I almost didn’t apply. You see, I consider myself a real writer, and I’ve coached myself into introducing myself as such when I meet knew people who I don’t think will ask too many questions….but applying for a writing program? And traveling across the country? On what basis? This all feels recklessly fraudulent.
I imagine myself checking in for my flight, and the TSA people looking at my ticket with skepticism: “Hmmm. Looks like you’re bound for…a writing workshop? Wonderful. Can I see a copy of your deal announcement?” I wince, and splay my hands helplessly. “I’m on sub.” They grimace. Peering at my license, they go, “I don’t see an MFA, and….it looks like you only took one short story elective in undergrad? Shame.” They look at my passport, flipping for stamps. “Oh, and not a single Newbury award. I’m sorry, you cannot board this flight.”
Let’s say I get through security, and I even get on the flight. I then imagine who I’ll be seated next to. It’s going to be Angie Thomas or Margaret Atwood, and they’re going to somehow know that I’m a writer, but they’re going to politely pretend to be unconscious the entire flight to avoid saying something insightful, and accidentally hurtful. It will be tense, this flight. I’m going to try waking them up when the beverage cart come around and, startled, they’re going to blurt, “I’m on hiatus!!! Begone, scourge!!”
That probably won’t happen, because I am definitely not able to afford seats that would put me next to such illustrious company. Instead I will likely be secured into the netting in the plane’s cargo hold, where the luggage rocks about. My hands will be bound in plastic wrap so that I cannot write any more horrible words until I get to the workshop and they deal with me.
I actually expect the workshop to be a great experience. I haven’t taken many writing classes. Just one, actually, by accident in college. But it was a great experience and I’ve wanted to be in a workshop ever since. When I saw this workshop, which specifically focuses on navigating the industry of queer lit, I could find no longer find a reason not to at least apply.
And then I got in! And then, because for some reason the fates want me in Texas, I was afforded scholarship enough to make this happen. A HUGE thank you to the We Need Diverse Books crew for coming through. Without that generosity, I’d be assembling my own makeshift Writers Barn out of card stock, craft paint and hot glue, right here in my living room. No glamorous, insightful workshopping insight. Certainly no rock painting.
But I’m lucky, and I’m going to Texas! Rocks, beware.