I drove home in silence with my brain full of learning, learning how to avoid adverbs, how to create distance or focus, how to re-arrange, tighten, pull back, learning ways to get the reader to willingly crawl inside the skin of a character and feel. The workshop introduced me to people I would otherwise never meet, worlds I will undoubtedly never physically see, and witness ways that authors can make the mundane, inspirational and the unreachable, the larger than life moments that only a chosen few are brave enough, lucky enough or unfortunate enough to be immersed in, seem so small, so human, so approachable, so unintimidating and so like me.

I am grateful for the folks who put events like this together. Not just for the technical knowledge we learn, not just for the comfort we get from those who struggle with the written word, not just for the friendships that develop but because what I see in the classrooms, the boardrooms, the lecture halls is a small fire. And for some of us it is so hard to keep that fire going, that dream alive. But days like this someone comes along and offers some kindling, some tools, some feedback, some hope and I begin to feel, once again, like I have something to contribute, that maybe the dream isn’t frivolous, that the “what if” is out there and maybe, just maybe, it is out there waiting for me.