I just got home from the Quills Conference in Salt Lake City. 

I wasn't a speaker or attendee. I was a volunteer and a chapter president, which lands somewhere in the middle of the official-capacity spectrum, and even that felt like more space than I was allowed to take up.

Let me tell you why...

The Reason I Didn't Enter the Contests

I didn't submit any of my work for the awards. I disqualified myself preemptively because I've used AI in my process. Here's what I mean by "used AI." I have never asked a machine to write a sentence I would then put my name on. I do not use generative AI to write. I wrote every word of my twelve books, every lyric of every song TopMediAI produces (the software makes the sound; I write the language), and every word of my journalism. When I run an article past AI, it is to verify accuracy against my interview notes and gathered data, the same way a good copy editor would catch that I misspelled a source's last name in one of my paragraphs.

What I use AI for is what a less anxious, more privileged version of me might use a paid editor for. It catches me when I've changed a character's eye color between chapters. It tells me when a sentence is grammatically weird. It does not invent anything. I do all the inventing in my wild brain.

But the contests do not split that hair. If I'm being honest, part of me isn't sure I have the standing to ask them to. So I disqualify myself because it feels like the honest thing to do. That is a choice I've made about my own worth. It is not the choice I would recommend to every writer.

The Reason I Pushed Through

I have gotten quieter. I've grown into a soft, wary acceptance of myself that I did not have a year ago. I hold a stillness now that used to feel dangerous. I was worried that stepping into a hotel full of small talk and networking and lunches and badges would rip the stillness right out of me.

It tried. Masking for three days was a costly endeavor, and my nervous system has receipts.

But here's the thing I keep forgetting. Writers, as a group, are less scary than most of the humans I meet. I don't fully know why. Maybe it's that we're all a little weird, so nobody is auto-scanning for weirdness. Maybe it's that those who spend their days making up stories about imaginary people have a slightly softer read on the actual people in front of them. Maybe it's just that when you meet a stranger and the first thing you have in common is we both do the impossible, ridiculous thing of putting words on a page and hoping, the small talk skips several layers and lands somewhere useful.

Whatever it is, I met people at Quills whose story ideas gave me legitimate chills. I read pages that were genuinely, full-of-talent good. I sat with volunteers who care about our craft in an honest, non-performative way. And I walked around thinking, these are my people. I don't know most of them. But these are my people.

The Time I Blocked Alexandra Rowland From Their Own Keynote

Despite that camaraderie, I still managed to put my foot in my mouth. Let me tell you a short story.

I had been assigned to check badges at the door for the Saturday luncheon. It is a simple job. Look at the badge. Confirm the lunch purchase. Wave them through with a smile. My autistic brain loves a simple job. I was doing it with that intense level of seriousness I bring to most everything, which is to say, an unreasonable amount, when somebody walked up with no badge visible. I stopped them and said, very politely, "Ummm, do you have your badge with your lunch pass?"

They looked at me with such unending patience and said: "I'm speaking at this event. I'm the luncheon keynote."

It was Alexandra Rowland.

I had, with the full force of my rule-following autistic soul, nearly blocked the keynote speaker from attending their own keynote speech. Alexandra was gracious and was kind, laughing off the whole thing.

I share this story because it is funny... but also because it is exactly the type of thing that used to send me into a shame spiral for weeks. This week, it did not. I felt stupid for about ninety seconds, and then I laughed too and went back to checking badges. Because the badges still needed checking, and Alexandra Rowland had already forgiven me.

That is what I mean when I say I have grown quieter. The old me would have carried that embarrassment home like a suitcase full of bricks. The new me left the shame at the door of the ballroom, where it belongs, and brought only the memory of the laughter.

Why I Keep Giving My Books Away

I was showing one of the volunteers my novels and she picked up a copy of Love, BestieBot. Three hours later, she texted me that she was crying in the lobby. She had finished the book and wanted to tell me it was good.

So I gifted her the book. Of course I did. I know it looks like generosity, and part of it is. But the more honest read is that I still don't fully believe my work is worth money. I believe it is worth something (I know, I know, I know it will mean something to the right reader) but the conversion from "meaningful" to "$18.99 plus sales tax" still trips a wire in me that I have not yet learned to disarm.

I have been thinking hard about this. A person I didn't know sat in a hotel lobby and cried at a story I wrote, and then she found me to tell me. Whatever the "worth" of the book is, in dollars or in awards or in industry validation, that is the actual worth. A spreadsheet cannot capture that feeling of being seen.

The T-Shirt

Somebody at the conference was wearing a shirt that said: "I'm a writer. What's your excuse?"

I am a writer.

I am writing this.

I write my books. I write my songs. I write my journalism. The tool I use to check for continuity and grammar does not get to erase that. The awards I disqualified myself from do not get to erase that. The imposter syndrome that has been rattling around in my head since birth does not get to erase that.

Being a writer is not something a contest quantifies. It is the thing I do every day, whether or not anyone hands me a plaque for it. The people I met at Quills know that, because they do it too.

The Long Game

I am going to keep being a chapter president and volunteering with the League. I am going to keep showing up to the events my nervous system can afford, because the found family I talk about does not build itself. Somebody has to check the badges. Sometimes somebody has to accidentally block the keynote speaker. That's just how the cookie crumbles.

I am going to keep writing. I am going to keep being honest about the tools I use ethically and the ones I refuse to abuse. I am going to keep giving away copies of my books, and I am going to keep working on believing they are worth it.

I am playing the long game now.