This past weekend I attended the American Night Writers Association (ANWA) 2025 conference: The Book Was Better (isn’t it, though?). I’d submitted the opening pages of my book, Deceivers of Adolair, to their “Beginning of Book” (BOB) contest—mostly to get feedback and the experience of submitting to contests. Before ANWA, I’d only submitted once—SNHU’s Fall Fiction contest—with a short story. I was proud of that piece, titled “There’s No Such Thing as Dragons,” because it was innovative: written entirely in dialogue (inspired by an idea from Brandon Sanderson), yet still carrying scene work, description, and a clear arc for the protagonist. I didn’t win. What disappointed me, though, was the lack of feedback. You send it into the void and nothing comes back. Oh well—that’s life. This time, however, I’d heard the judges would offer notes, and I thought, this is a skill I need to practice. It also aligns with my MFA requirement to submit work throughout the program—though I’m still learning the details, since I only started a few weeks ago.

When they announced the BOB awards, I’d already told myself that with so many great writers present, it wouldn’t mean anything not to win. I did my best not to attach to any particular outcome. When a colleague asked if I was nervous, I said, “A little—but I don’t expect to win with so many great writers here.” So when they announced I’d placed second in Adult Speculative Fiction, I was genuinely surprised.

Maybe it’s the mantras I’ve been practicing: everything I need to reach my goals is flowing to me now. Our outer life reflects our inner life; change the inner, and the outer follows. I’ve been leaning into manifestation—the paradox of releasing attachment to outcomes while still realizing them. I imagine a Swiss bank account with millions of euros I haven’t discovered yet—potential as unrecognized wealth. This is a pilgrimage. The achievement is the journey, not the destination.

Back to the conference. It’s the first time I’ve won something for my writing, so it felt historic, and at the same time, I’m convinced that not being attached to the outcome is perhaps why I achieved the outcome. I’m grateful for the experience, but it’s just a moment. I am happy to be writing. Happy to be in the writing community. Happy (very happy) to be nearing completion of my first novel. I should be working on that instead of this blog post. Sigh.

The Power of Like-Minded People

The conference was packed with writers at every stage, from the quietly determined to the wildly prolific. The keynote was Gail Carson Levine—the author of Ella Enchanted, the book that became the Anne Hathaway movie and has sold millions of copies. She was funny, sharp, and disarmingly open about the early days when she was told her writing was “pedestrian.” She even read a brutally candid rejection she’d received—a badge of honor now, it seemed. It was so brutally worded that it felt as though the author of the rejection letter had gone out of their way to deliver a knockout punch. I couldn’t believe that anyone had taken the time to deliver such a piece of poison.

How did Gail respond (she’s allowed me to call her Gail since I met her at the conference, by the way)? Well, she didn’t quit. She wrote for ten years before she was published. What she did do was educate herself—she even took a class in writing and illustrating for kids. When her book was being turned into a movie, she shared that over lunch the director told her plainly, “There are going to be things I’m going to do that you won’t like,” and she had to keep her peace and let the process happen. And yet, she said, it was an incredibly rewarding experience. She also laughed about the film adding a talking snake—why did they need to do that? In that way, for sure, the book was better. That perspective alone was worth the price of admission. The message under all her humor and craft talk was simple: keep going. If your work is “too basic” today, that doesn’t have to define you—educate yourself, persevere, you can do this. Do the work today, and tomorrow will come.

My Perspective

What if I never get published? Ten years is a long time. What if no one likes what I’m writing? Will I be okay? Yes. I get joy from the process and am not attached to outcomes. Come what may, I am a writer, and I’ll be fine. I’m educating myself. I’m taking classes. I’m open to feedback—and to whatever the present moment wants to show me.

The Class That Stuck: Conflict Through Connections

One of my favorite sessions at the conference was T.M. Holladay’s ( https://tmholladay.com/) workshop on building better conflict through character relationships. It was clever in its simplicity. On a slide she’d put two names—say, Harry Potter and Professor Snape, or Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Then, click by click, she drew lines to the people orbiting them:

• family members and guardians (Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, sisters, mentors),
• friends and rivals (Mr. Bingley, George Wickham),
• institutions and loyalties,
• misunderstandings and secrets,
• obligations, promises, debts.

With each click, the web thickened. The insight wasn’t “make it complicated for complication’s sake.” It was show, don’t tell why the conflict matters by making sure the board has enough lines and dots and triangles and squares. As she talked, she offered great gut-check questions:

• Do you have enough lines—triangles, squares, overlapping ties—to generate friction naturally?
• Are there positive, non-romantic gender-to-gender relationships, not just catty females and competitive males?
• Does your protagonist face human sources of pain and manipulation—not only abstract or magical ones—so we feel the cost?
• Are there impactful connections between the “good side” and the “bad side” that muddy loyalties?
• Are the links between protagonist and antagonist complicated enough to make the final confrontation truly fraught?
• And when it all comes down to a choice, is the connection that tips the scales actually the strongest one on the board?

Watching those diagrams evolve was oddly thrilling. It made visible how stories get their torque. Later, walking out into the hallway hum, I found myself thinking about my own novel: Do I have enough lines? Enough cross-currents? Where are the triangles I’m missing?

The Workshop

One of my key experiences was a peer-review workshop where we all submitted the first ten pages of something we were working on for three others to review, plus the group moderator. We’re all sitting there, vulnerable, staring at each other’s pages. It’s always easier to spot problems in someone else’s work, but you try to be constructive. You’re all there for the same reason.

When it was my turn to be critiqued, I felt I’d upset the woman across from me. Perhaps the notes I’d scribbled on her pages had stung—I can’t be sure—but she came at me straight away without the grace of a compliment. “Do you even have a large dog?” The implication was clear: I hadn’t written Jax as a believable element. Unprepared for the hit, I nodded. Yes, I have dogs—one of them is large. “Well, then, you’d know …” this and that about how dogs behave and (without saying it explicitly) that I’d done everything wrong vis-à-vis the dog. I wanted to get defensive—who wouldn’t?—but I just smiled, said thank you, duly noted. When the session ended, my faith was renewed when the colleague next to me said he enjoyed my work the most of everyone’s. And that’s it: crushed to soaring to in between in a few minutes. That’s writing. Getting crushed, getting inspired, getting excited—the path is a windy, twisty, upside-down, topsy-turvy emotional rollercoaster. For all my talk of detachment from outcomes, I felt fairly attached when it seemed I was being dog-genre-assaulted. Of course, her recollection may be different. The takeaway: I went home, reworked the opening, and took the comments to heart to make it better.

Manuscript Consult

I also had a manuscript consult with an editor from Shadow Mountain Publishing. She didn’t share the same takeaways as my peer group, but her feedback was invaluable. The lesson: there are always ways your manuscript can be improved, and someone somewhere will read what you’ve written and not understand some element or have a question. Between first draft and finished book, the story will transform—and it should. That’s why they’re called drafts. I’m happy with the edits I’ve made, and you can see them in the latest Chapter 1 here on the site.

What’s Next

That’s it for Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll share a few specific takeaways from other classes at the conference. For now, I’m heading back to the draft—with a grin, a scribbled flowchart of names and lines, and a little ribbon tucked in my notebook as a reminder to keep going.