I’m attending the Life, the Universe, and Everything convention this week in Provo, Utah. It’s the 42nd LTUE, so I wanted to make sure I made it. But also it lined up with life as I’m trying to get more seriously into the career portion of writing this year.
I’ve wanted to be an author for a long time. I’ve loved reading all my life (ask my mom; or don’t, that might be embarrassing) and telling stories for about as long, but the first time I remember realizing I could publish books was in middle school when my teacher assigned us to write a book as a year-long project. She gave us the topic, we had new updates and prompts throughout the year, and no I’m not sharing that here.
Since then, I worked towards writing as a career. I wrote 2 books and several short stories and novellas during high school. One even won a Twisted Fairy Tale competition; my first paid work. It was a combination of Rumpelstiltskin and Dante’s Inferno. In college I originally geared towards being a veterinarian and an author but eventually ended up veering more to the English side with a minor in Fine Arts.*
*I would not recommend this to other college students; a degree in English will let you study old books, teach you interesting things about history and writing, and show you how to write a research paper in nothing flat, all of which I really enjoyed, but it doesn’t really lead to anything employable after college unless you get a Master’s degree to follow up. Lots of directions you can go from English if you get a Master’s, or you could do an Editing major instead. I did not get a Master’s degree.
I got married about the same time I graduated. The day after, in fact; my husband jokes that we were both bachelors for a day. And, not having a successful publishing career yet, I went to find a different job to work at while he was in school. I tried a journalism internship for an SEO company, walking the mile there and back every day- the terms were “unpaid for a month, then if we like your work, we’ll hire you.” Dumb of me to take, I know. To my credit, when the month finished and they had a meeting with me where they said they liked my work and would like me to stay but couldn’t afford to pay me, I told them I couldn’t afford to stay and walked out. The good news is they also couldn’t afford to pay their video editor who put in a good word for me with his uncle/new boss and I got a job with them. Still SEO. I worked that job for two or three years and the pay negotiations changed several times during as they tried to find ways to not pay me as much. Pay by the hour? Pay by the word? Combination of the two? I tried to make sure I still got paid for my research as my job was essentially “Write blog posts and engaging social media posts for these struggling companies.”
The problem with this job was twofold: Putting my writing energy into this meant I didn’t have much for my own project and also it was soul-crushing work as I put creative energy and time into companies that, frankly, I didn’t trust in the least. Research on them showed that several of them were probably unethical and lying about their business practices; the time I saw one of them on facebook being rated 2-3 stars by everyone except my boss who lived halfway across the country made me very suspicious of the moral standing of the job. On the other hand, I needed to work- my husband was in school, I had a kid, and we kind of needed food and shelter.
Eventually, I did quit, and turned to substitute teaching as my main income. I supplemented with working at craft stores since neither job really wanted to hire anyone full time. Then they might have to *gasp* pay benefits or maybe a living wage. Believe it or not, the general stress and dealing with mental health issues didn’t leave a lot of energy for writing still. I did have a writing group but it began falling apart around then, all of us dealing with fairly similar issues to varying degrees. I was writing some; mostly short stories and noodling away on a book I’d been trying to finish since college. But it still felt like swimming up a waterfall to get anything accomplished.
Time went on, my husband got a job, I stopped working and stayed at home with 2 kids, then 3. We bought a house. My oldest started school and we signed her up for a virtual academy, a year before a certain global health crisis struck. But there we were, all at home. I wasn’t the only one at home watching the kids, I had time, I only needed to keep up with the house, teach kids or at least make sure their schoolwork got done, try not to stress about the political landscape or other giant world events, and deal with my own mounting anxiety. A perfect time to write more. Right? … Right?
But I did actually start writing more. I wrote a novella; another fairy tale retelling, something I’ve really enjoyed since my successful one in high school. The result was Prayers of the Princesses, one of my most polished works to date. I was determined to try NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2020, pulling together bits and pieces of ideas I’d written down to combine into something that felt cohesive. This became Chasing Stars, which I will soon be starting on the 4th draft of. I found/founded a new writing group with peers and friends from college and have enjoyed and learned from their writing. I’ll be touting their work when it goes public, and it will, because they’re stellar. I found an editor for my novella through of all places a live-play D&D twitch stream. She gave me excellent feedback and also a confidence boost, which I know creatives all need.
So that brings us to now. Life is settling into a less hectic routine, the kids are old enough they can find entertainment and occupation when I need time to write, we’re more financially stable, I’ve started anxiety medication (that’s it’s own whole story) (Well, it’s a short story that goes “My appointment was first scheduled in August and I finally made it there last week, in February.”) so hopefully that will help me be able to focus more and stress less. And now I’m looking to make connections and get more into the professional writing world.
This will be my 4th time attending LTUE. I went to school in Provo for college, which is how I came across the convention, so I have a nostalgic attachment to it. Being, well, not really flush with cash during college and after, I attended my first in 2013 as a go-fer volunteer, thus earning free admission through helping out. The experience was exhilarating, being surrounded by creatives who were into the same things that I was, so the year after that, I volunteered for the committee to bring the next one about. It happened in February, we moved away shortly thereafter, so that was the last one I attended for a while. The third I attended was in 2018, when I was on the committee again as a friend asked if I’d help out. I joined committee meetings through Zoom and attended when my mom, who I asked to also attend to bring a librarian perspective to some panels, helped me join the conference with financial assistance- she flew me out and we stayed at a relative’s house over nights. So this time will be the first time I’m there as just an attendee, no obligations, staying in the hotel so I can make it to the later events. I’m really looking forward to it.
It’s been a long journey, but hopefully this is still only the beginning and I’m excited to see where I go from here.
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