In June, I was at McDonald's with my
two girls. We’d spent twenty minutes scrounging up enough change to buy them
each an ice cream cone, so I could use McDonald's free Wi-Fi without feeling
guilty. At the end of a long day, the last thing I wanted to do was drive
somewhere to use my email, and I was praying their internet would work well
enough to send off my soccer documents and get on my way. I opened my e-mail
and caught the subject line, “Congratulations Carrie” out of the corner of my
eye. The sender… Midwest Writers. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t
even click to open the e-mail.
I’d entered the scholarship contest back in May, submitting
a letter and the first five pages of my Mudlavia novel. This wasn’t
the usual friendly e-mail that said to try again next year, but to let me know
they had chosen me as one of the scholarship recipients. In my day to day life,
my car won’t always start, I don’t have internet access, I scrounge for nickels
to buy my kids ice cream, and I surely can’t afford to attend a writing
conference. Their e-mail changed my life, filling my summer with a little extra
hope, excitement, and gratefulness.
It’s an honor to be chosen as a recipient,
but an even bigger honor that it had to do with my Mudlavia novel. It’s a
tribute to my grandparents, and it represents the people who have worked hard
to preserve Mudlavia’s history. So many of them have welcomed me into their
homes to share their knowledge and their Mudlavia collections with me. It represents
a rich part of Indiana’s history that would be extinct without their stories,
memories, and assortment of newspaper clippings, postcards, and artifacts. It
represents the hard working and friendly people of Warren County, a place with
Mayberry-like charm that’s never been lost over time. Some people have grossly misrepresented
it on the internet, leaving people with a glum story about a crumbled building filled
with ghosts. The Mudlavia Hotel deserves to be represented with its fascinating history, Titanic-like
extravagance, and healing mud.
I was still in “pinch me” mode until
I walked up to the registration table and they handed me my nametag. The nametag
was my pass to the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie. Lots of writers blog about the
importance of attending writing conferences, and they’re right. The conference
was full of all kinds of writers with all kinds of stories, who were eager to
share, learn, and network. Agents, editors, and best-selling authors attended
the conference to teach us how to perfect our craft, market ourselves, and even
handle taxes. If you have a chance to go to a conference, do it! There’s so
much you can learn from talking to experts in person that you can’t learn from
a book or a blog. If you can’t afford to go, see if they have some sort of
scholarship contest and go for it… you might just get a surprising e-mail in
your inbox!
