Everything happening tonight seems to be part of a nefarious conspiracy on the part of the entire universe to make me realize that I am lucky.
I’m en route to the Romance Writers of America Conference in Washington. I’m spending the night at the Springhill Suites on Tower Road so I can catch my early morning flight.
And having an airline ticket in hand is a prime piece of luck in itself. Whenever people complain to me about the airlines, the baggage issues, the waiting, the screaming children, the throwing up, I always want to say to them, But you’re flying. FLYING. Like Peter Pan and Wendy. Like Quidditch. Like birds.”
So after all the flying, I get to go to this amazing conference. Not only that, I get to wear a “1st Sale” ribbon, and I get to meet my editor, my publisher, and my publicist. I share “my publicist” with a bunch of other writers, but holy crap, I have a publicist!

And I get to have lunch with my agent, and I have an amazing agent who is always there for me, who gets me over the tough times and turns lemons into lemonade almost daily.

I guess I’m supposed to be cool about all this. I guess I’m supposed be a dignified auteur, and act like I deserve this, like I earned it. And I did work hard, and I feel like I’ve been preparing all my life for this chance, but still–I will meet dozens of equally deserving writers at this conference, all paddling upstream in the same river, many of them carrying boatloads of stories far better and more significant than mine.

But we’re all lucky. In the all-consuming quest for publication, writers tend to forget the biggest blessing of all: we can write. We can sit down at an ordinary desk, an ordinary computer, and make up whole worlds of people and places and events. We will never be bored. We will never be lonely. We can travel to other worlds whenever we choose.

It’s kind of like flying.