Cons Continued: More Than Fun

Writing is work.

I used to hate that sentiment. Then again, I was a kid and equated work with chores, homework, and anything I didn’t want to do but had to. Writing wasn’t any of those things.

And some of that definition carries over, even now. But I try to make sure that I call my day job just that.

Because in the adult world, “work” is more than how you pay the bills – it’s where you spent the greater part of your waking hours, and it’s how the world defines you. If I call the day job “work” but not my writing, it lends legitimacy to the former while taking it from the latter.

One of the common first questions I get asked (yet rarely do I ever think to ask in return) is, “What do you do?”

I used to answer with the day job and maybe follow up with writing. Now I try to always lead with writing. That is, after all, how I define myself. I am a writer. It’s what I do and who I am. Far less important is how I currently pay the bills.

We all know that writing is hard. Not always, but the difficult moments far outnumber the easy ones. But whatever the reason, many of us avoid labeling it as “work,” particularly if we’re not fortunate enough to be able to make writing our day jobs. It took me years to reach that point, with a great deal of feeling like a pompous ass.

Cons are an even harder sell for my brain, strange though that may seem. I started attending them, after all, because I’m a writer and to further my writing. I have not trouble whatsoever thinking of them as workplaces for other writers, but for myself? The child in me whispers that I’m having too much fun for it to be work.

But they are so much more than fun. Not only great for networking, I love the birthing and building and growing of ideas. Some amazing stories have been created at cons – they’re infectious that way. Like an STD. Only awesome.

No one perceived me as a writer until I began to think of myself that way. (Family doesn’t count. Family can think many things of you and be only occasionally right.) So I hope that as I come to think of cons as an extension of my writing – of my work – others will begin likewise to respect my investment in them.

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