Young Authors Conference

Today I am grateful for a fun baseball game to watch last night and the pride in my son and the other players' faces after making good plays and showing teamwork. I am also grateful that writing is part of who I am.

I had the opportunity to attend a Young Authors Conference with my son and others from his school yesterday. There were over 900 elementary and middle school students there with lots of energy, along with adult presenters who were inspiring and informative. They ranged from authors, to screenwriters, to journalists. I appreciate that the adult writers let the young ones know that writing, and achieving your goals, doesn't just happen, it takes work. As the keynote speaker said; it takes patience, endurance, commitment, and passion. I needed to hear that too.

I am glad that my son attended and participated and found it to be a good experience.

Would I have gone to such an event as a 4th grader, like my son did yesterday? I don't know. I was pretty shy and introverted. But it was around this age that I started writing . . . poetry and journaling. Thank God! What a difference writing has made in my life.

Blogging is just the latest writing outlet for me. Writing has been my outlet for 35 years. Without it, I very well might have drank myself to death. At times, it was the only healthy outlet I had for the painful emotions I struggled with. It continues to be an outlet for painful emotions when I have them, but it has really become a channel for sharing positive emotions like gratitude, joy, satisfaction. Writing defines me and that is a good thing!

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