What a World...What a World!

By Nikki Wilson

Yes, those are the famous words of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Since she said them when she was melting away, they seem to have a negative connotation. But today, I mean them with a sense of wonder and awe. Because this is an amazing world we live in. And a really amazing community we belong to.

This past month has been busy for me, but I'm going to try to only focus on the writing part of my life for this post. This month was the ANWA Writer's Conference. It's been my favorite writer's conference for awhile now. But this year, it really out did itself. Leading up to the conference, I had a lot of things to do. I was pitching my romance book to a senior editor from Harlequin for their Heartwarming series. (A new line of clean romance books, because there's a market for that! Haha!)
I didn't want to pitch my book if  at least the first draft wasn't done. So I stayed up till 4:30 am one night finishing it. (I still had to wake up for work at 6:30am that morning!) But it was worth it to know I'd finally finished the story. Then I had to come up with a pitch. Plus I was trying to get the MMW book finished and ready to sell at the conference. I was also in charge of the Professional Development hours for teachers at the conference. So I had to get certificates made up for that.

The conference finally came and all the prep was worth it. I had so much fun and met the editor of Harlequin Heartwarming series and she requested my full manuscript! I got to see so many of my friends and meet lots of new ones. I even got to meet Jeanna Stay! The classes were awesome and the protagonist gala?? Oh my word! It was amazing. What other writer's conference would hire Tahitian Dancers for entertainment? It was off the hook! (I know no one says that anymore, but it always embarrasses my kids when I say stuff like that. It makes it worth it! LOL)

On Saturday, my 14 year old daughter and her friend came to the conference for the day. They are both new writers and it was awesome to watch them experience it for the first time. They introduced themselves to agents, editors, and authors. There was nothing shy about them. It was so fun to watch.

One of the best things about conference this year was that my friend Jenni James was there. She is a force of nature. Anyone who's ever met her will agree with me. Life is never dull with Jenni James. Only with Jenni could I spend the whole conference with the Editor from Harlequin who also happens to be Jenni's friend. Only with Jenni would we find a world champion ballroom dancer in the hotel lobby. Only with Jenni would said ballroom dancer (who also happened to be a cowboy) waltz with Jenni and the editor from Harlequin. Haha! Yes, life is good.

But even with all this awesome, amazing stuff going on, I found myself obsessing over the fact that the MMW book has a major mistake in it!  The Table of Contents is all wrong! None of the page numbers line up with the right stories. I was mortified! I can't believe I let something that big get past me. But even as I write this I realize that I shouldn't have let that one negative overshadow all the wonderful things that happened last weekend. And I tried not to, but sometimes the thought of those books being wrong would creep in. Why do we let one negative thing get in our way of all the positive things sometimes? Well, I'm not going to let it bring me down anymore. I apologize to all of you who may have bought it, and I will work on fixing the problem this weekend, but I'm not going to dwell on the negativeness of it anymore. In fact, any of you that bought the first copies will have the limit edition of Choose to Write! How awesome is that? LOL!

Ok, now that I've rambled on and on, the point I'm trying to make here is...what a world we live in. There are opportunities at every corner and disappointments too. But how exciting it is to experience both and to grow and learn. I thank God everyday for this world and my chance to experience it, and for all of you in the MMW community.