April 9, 2018 by Amy

Finding myself in Dayton

I went to the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Dayton, Ohio, this weekend, which I shall call EBWW because it’s easier to type and because that’s what the organizers call it so it’s all Official-like. I waited years for this. I’m not kidding. I discovered there was an EBWW right after registration closed for the last one, of course, and since it happens every other year I got to wait approximately 913 days to go to this one. In the meantime, I re-read all of Erma’s books and checked that I had the registration date and time entered onto my calendar about a hundred times. I waited. It wasn’t easy. I am not a patient person.

Then last year (which shall henceforth be called The Shit Year, because it was) happened and my whole world tilted off its axis. I felt like I’d never be happy again, never write again. What is this “laughter” you speak of? When registration opened for EBWW on December 5, 2017, I entered my information, doubting if I was even worthy to go but not wanting to wait 21,912 hours for another chance. I might have been depressed, but I wasn’t stupid. And then I sunk back into my personal black hole and kept existing.

Then, this year, things started to change. There was light, and laughter, and a new job. There was a wonderful Christmas, a contract job that allowed me an escape from the old job and the opportunity to wallow in private and lick my wounds while still earning money, and a girls trip to Colorado. I got a new job, one that I desperately wanted and which has turned out to be even better than I could have dreamed, on an incredible team filled with wonderful people. I’m an editor, which means they’re paying me to correct people. Honestly, I can’t think of anything more fun to do as a profession.

So I went into EBWW hopeful but wary. I haven’t written anything personal in months. Oh, I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it almost non-stop. But I was stuck in neutral and still wallowing a bit. Maybe EBWW will get me out of neutral and into drive again, I thought. Maybe I’ll meet some people who will encourage me, I thought.

Hoo, boy. Those thoughts turned out to be wildly inaccurate. EBWW was so incredible, so much better than I ever dreamed, that I’m finding it hard to put into words. The sessions were powerful and the people, oh, the people.

After I arrived and checked in, I carefully unpacked, then stood there and looked around the room and thought. I had two choices: stay there in the calm and quiet and read a book, or force myself to go down, enter the fray, and find someone to talk to. The Shit Year me would have chosen the former. This is a new year, though, and I gotta make things happen, so instead of holing up I hung my “First Timer” nametag around my neck and headed for the elevator. I was hit by a wall of sound when the doors opened on the ground floor, and I stepped out to find a bunch of people all talking with joy and animation. And all in little knots of friendship in the lobby and throughout the bar. Well, shit. I was going to need to insert myself somewhere. I wasn’t exactly feeling up to it, and it started to feel like the first day of 7^th grade after we moved and I went to a new school full of strangers who already knew each other. I could almost smell the greasy pizza and hear St. Elmo’s Fire playing.

I walked through the lobby and entered the bar and looked around. I tried to find people with friendly faces, which didn’t work well because they all had friendly faces. Dammit. This wasn’t going to be easy. I saw an empty seat on the edge of the couch and figured I’d sit down and look as forlorn as possible and wait for someone to adopt me.

It took about 3 seconds.

A woman named Elly who is an angel right here on God’s green earth was seated at a small table near the couch. She looked over right after I sat. “Is this your first year? Are you by yourself? Come here.” Apparently I kick ass at looking forlorn. I moved to the empty chair at her table, declined her gracious offer of fries and ketchup, and learned that she was so happy to be wearing Walmart underwear after the airline sent her luggage on a tour of the United States that included every city but Dayton. The missing luggage was due to arrive any second, with fresh undies and a supply of postcards promoting her book that’s coming out in the fall. She had a few postcards on her, thankfully, in a small bag imprinted with “Please don’t fuck with my shit,” which made me immediately love her even more.

I introduced myself to the rest of the women sitting there and we were off to the races. People came to the table and left the table and everyone was so damn excited to be there and to meet old and new friends and I drank it all in like a weary traveler stranded in the desert for the past year. We exchanged business cards. We discussed what sessions we were interested in, and when I pulled out my program with its color-tabbed pages, I was celebrated for my nerdness. I promptly pulled the pack of tabs out of my bag and happily shared them. Communal office supplies equals friends for life, I always say.

You know how the universe works in weird ways and you somehow end up always near your EBWW soulmate even in a crowd of hundreds? That was Holly. I met her at Elly’s Magical Table, too. This EBWW was her second, and she became my bestie/security blanket/introduction to even more wonderful people. We ate every lunch and dinner together. We also shared Skittles. That’s some bonding right there, people. She introduced me to Becky, who introduced me to Candy. This is my tribe. These are my people, and I love them.

And the sessions! Holy mother of blessed motivation! I chose the offerings on craft and creativity, feeling like since I haven’t written anything in so long it was pointless to attend the ones on pitching and publishing. Ain’t got nuthin’ to pitch or publish, after all, at least not at a humor writers’ conference, at least not right now. I was in the right place to hear the message I needed to hear, which, in a nutshell, was this: get off your ass and write. Of course, this was said with grace and humor, and only a very few expletives.

As if all that weren’t enough, we were hit with great keynote after keynote, each one making us laugh so hard our bellies ached, each one telling us to write, dammit. Just write. Tell our stories. Share our truths and ourselves, because there’s no greater gift.

I’m still basking in the glow of EBWW, and I’m already looking forward to 2020. In the meantime, I’ll get to know all my new friends better on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and, God help me, maybe even Snapchat. (I pray every day that Snapchat implodes because I’ve been on it for weeks and still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It’s the work of the social media devil.) I’m feeling my humor returning, and maybe even a twinge of confidence. So many times this weekend, telling someone a story from my life, I was asked, “You’ve written that down, right? You’ve written about that?” Each time I had to say, “No, but I ought to!” I have more fodder than I realized. I just need to get it out of my head. I realized, on the last day, that perhaps the reason I gained over 40 pounds during The Shit Year is that I stopped writing. All those words have backed up inside, and they’re waiting to come out. Forty pounds of words is a lot of words, and damn, I’m tired of hauling them around.

Erma said, “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.” Time to laugh, friends. And just think, it’s only roughly 1.05 million minutes until the next EBWW. But who’s counting?

#blog#EBWW#personal essay#writing