"It is time."

Last weekend was the Arkansas Writers Conference. It's a small local conference and rarely has any big-name writers as speakers. There's usually not an agent or publisher in attendance to accept queries at the conference. Yet the past couple of years, I have found this conference really inspirational.

I think I got more out of the little sessions by local writers no one has ever heard of, than the ones with the more prominent regional names. These local writers are on the same level as me. They haven't strayed so far from the world of the struggling aspiring-writer that they still acutely understand our place in the writing world. Although they have experienced minor success, many are still in the same place as the unpublished.

I was sitting there during one session at the end of the second day at the writers conference. The session wasn't anything extra special when compared to those from the rest of the day, but I got this feeling that was almost spiritual from it. The session was entitled, "Bloom Where You're Planted" and was about a lady who took what life gave her and wrote about it. I feel like my writing is very close to blooming; I just need to give it a little care to help it bloom.

And as I sat there, I thought back to a session at an conference over a year ago. The speaker told about an Olympic high jumper who was so close to beating the world record, but didn't "because he wasn't ready." While I sat in the last session during the second day of this conference, I felt a voice deep inside my heart say, "I am finally ready. It is time."