Another great year at the LDS Storymakers Conference has come and gone. Storymakers is a conference for Mormon writers where we can take all different kinds of classes and lectures on every part of the writing and publishing process.  This was my 3rd year attending and once again I had a great experience.  I feel a renewed commitment to improving my writing on this and my other blogs!

The cool thing about the conference is it is helpful for bloggers and Nanowrimo writers like me but also great for actual published authors.  And it’s not all just religious writing.  Most of it is pretty squeaky clean but all different genres are featured and discussed in the conference.  If I was just a reader I think the conference would be good and well worth the cost.   It is also a fun time to interact with friends and make new friends.  My writing buddy Emilee was there and we had a good time catching up.

The highlight of the conference was the Friday night keynote by Martine Leavitt. I wish you could have all heard it.  The tamber of her voice was very meek and soothing but then this incredible profundity kept coming out.  It was so well written and moving.

She talked about her 2 worlds, a gospel world and writing world and how living both to its fullest have made her the best version of herself she could be.

“I wonder if each writer gets an individualized life curriculum designed to make her the best writer she can be, specialized life learnings that contribute to her development as an artist”

She then spoke about her life and the lessons she’d learned a long the way including self confidence, humility, hope, hard work, children and faith.

“I couldn’t write to a certain word count, or a certain number of pages.  Nothing could be guaranteed.  But I needed to write myself soul-fed and happy.  I discovered that I didn’t need to write a lot to be happy, I just needed to write something good.  I found that even a single, perfect, beautiful sentence…could make me feel nourished”

I also loved this quote

“I think it’s more likely your children will turn out just fine precisely because they have a happy parent who is happy because she writes”. 

I’m not a parent but I think we all can feel guilty on occasion for taking time to develop our talents.  Her point is our children, the world, our loved one’s are going to be better off if we are happy and especially happy writing.  I think that goes for my blogging a well as novel writing.  I am happy when I’m blogging and I hope that makes the world a little bit better.

Finally she said

“The Lord knew I needed one more thing to become the writer I wanted to be, perhaps the most essential ingredient of all, and that was love…Writers who love are curious about others.  They ask questions.  They observe without judgement.  They try to understand.  How can we write about people other than ourselves if we are not constant and ready students of humanity?”

I’ve thought about that many times with my blogging- wondered about the readers out there and what your struggles might be.  Wondered if there is anything I could say that might help you? You guys don’t know how much I love every last one of you who reads this silly blog!

Anyway, it was an excellent speech! There were many other great moments of the conference.  My sleeping has been bad lately so that mad the morning sessions a little bit difficult but I still got a lot out of it.  I really loved a lecture from Anne Perry on characters.  I took classes on romance writing, using food and music, blogging and more. All very helpful.

If I was going to provide some feedback I wish there were more classes on social media like there have been in the past and I didn’t care for the food (who knew I was such a picky eater!).  Convention food is the worst!

But it was a lovely weekend and I left feeling enlightened, overwhelmed and excited.