Lessons Learned From My First Ever Writing Conference

1. Words like prosity, braided essay and anal bleaching are easier to use in a sentence than you would think.
2. Do not expect diversity. Expect cat owners.
3. Creative Non Fiction is actually a code word for deep dark and depressing memoirs, hopefully featuring drug abuse divorce and broken limbs but leaving out cancer because there are way too many cancer submissions right now.
4. If you tweet pictures of your $5 shoes you will meet lots of lovely people many of whom are also wearing fabulous shoes.
5. Writers are so notoriously unhelpful toward each other that we need a panel about being nice, called Literary Citizenship, which featured tips such as when someone does you a favour, bake them cookies.

And the most important thing I learned at the writing conference:

6. Turns out I'm a writer.