Okay, so I realized I work at BlogHer. And I also realize I am moderating a panel at BlogHer Writers '11. So this is going to look very fake and sales-y, and that's actually not what I'm all about. I will be very direct if I am doing that.  Here is me being direct: I'm writing this post of my own volition and speaking only for me, not for BlogHer in any, way, shape or form. 

Now bear with me while I jump up and down around my library for a second, throwing hardbacks in the air with glee for the love of publishing. Ouch. Of course one just hit me in the head.

I am just really excited about this because it's going to be chock-full of Penguin Publishing editors, authors and publicists as well as a bunch of bloggers who have crossed the print line. And anyone who has read this blog ever knows that I am a publishing fiend, unable to resist any opportunity to find out more about the world's most confusing business. You'd think I'd know everything after a book, right? 

That is not true. Especially with what's happened in the past five years to publishing. 2008 feels like 25 years ago, not four.

There are no guarantees in life, but it never hurts to try for the face-to-face if the opportunity presents itself. 

The conference is three weeks away. It's in NYC. It's only one day -- Friday, October 21. There are basically two tracks -- one for newbies, one for people like me who have been through the publishing wringer before and have the glutton-for-punishment need to do it again. You can get the whole schedule here.

I'm moderating a panel about marketing -- my experience with BlogHer Book Club has been educational and so much fun for me. I've "met" online two of the three Penguin authors who will be speaking -- Jean Kwok (Girl in Translation) and Ann Napolitano (A Good Hard Look). (Haven't yet met or "met" Dominique%20Browning. Will have that on the docket, for sure.) Look! I even get to be on a panel with Jean.

Track 1: Your Role as Marketer in Today's Publishing World

Writers are–or need to be–marketers, and your command of social media provides a critical edge: both pre-book deal, to validate you have a following, and post-book publication, to help you sell your book. BlogHer editor Rita Arens (editor of Sleep is For the Weak) moderates a discussion with Penguin Business Development Manager Colleen Lindsay, author Jean Kwok (author of Girl in Translation), independent PR consultant Lauren Cerand, and Penguin marketer Lydia Hirt.

I'm also waiting eagerly to see old friends/speakers Kamy Wicoff, Carleen Brice, Jane Schonberger, Kathy Cano-Murillo, and a bunch of other heavy hitters I don't know well yet.

And ... the part I'm most excited about is the small-group mentoring. Here are the topics available:

Seeking fiction agent
- Seeking nonfiction agent
- Seeking help with a book proposal
- Memoir group
- Literary novel group
- Genre novel group (romance/mystery/thriller/scifi, etc.)
- Children’s (YA/middle grade/picture book)
- Humor/novelty (ex: LOLcats/Cake Wrecks, etc.)
- Cookbooks
- Shorter works/anthologies
- Expert platform nonfiction 
- Book blogging

That? Is something that never happens. Except it's happening. Next month. Good Lord, I can't wait. (For those who are wondering, the conference is $199.)

AM GIDDY. PLEASE TO JOIN.

END WRITERLY FREAK-OUT.

FOR NOW.

This week I corresponded with a friend of mine who is writing a memoir. She had some questions, and I had some answers she had to wrap her head around for a day or two. At one point, she wrote something akin to "I thought I was running a 5k, and I got two miles in and realized it was a 10k." I nodded sagely and spent last night working on my own novel for two more hours, two hours added to the hundreds I've spent since I started writing in 2009.

We wrote back and forth a little more, and I told her about my own struggles and time commitments. I told her how I felt when someone asked me at BlogHer '11 if I'd sold the novel I mentioned at BlogHer '10 yet and I had to say no, that I'd thought it was finished but it was so not finished last summer. Not finished at all. I've overhauled it completely since then.

Somewhere along the line, I had to face the -- is it humiliation? Maybe that's too strong a word. But it's an emotion similar to that, the sort of emotion that drops your stomach an inch when it hits you, the sort that brings a flush to your cheeks and a burn to your ears and maybe some frustrated tears to your eyes, whether you want it to or not. It's something akin to humiliation that creative people feel when they talk about their work publicly and then don't immediately succeed in the eyes of the world, in their own eyes even. It's something akin to humiliation that stops many people before they even start.

I faced it pretty hard core that day at BlogHer '11 when I realized I'd talked about this novel at my panel and then had the audacity to show up a year later with no hardcover to sell. There's a balance one must achieve between laziness or fear and hubris in order to query at all. In order to survive rejection, you have to be confident in your writing, in what you're doing. It's a mental game as much as any endurance sport, because you can't win unless you compete and finish, and just finishing alone can feel so insurmountable most days.

I write about my process here because I hear behind the scenes from so many people who think book deals drop out of the sky. Since I started working on Sleep Is for the Weak, I've managed to meet and become friendly with at least twenty published authors, and they all echo back what I emailed my friend this week: It's hard. It's painful. It's worth it. Don't give up.

I've always found the community of writers online to be so tremendously supportive of each other.

At BlogHer '11, Lisa, Elisa and Jory announced a writers conference put on by BlogHer and presented by Penguin in New York City on October 21. I'm going to go. I'm hoping to meet in person a few of those authors who were such an inspiration for me. If you find yourself in that place where you need those emails, you should go, too. But either way -- it's hard, it's painful, it's worth it, don't give up.

I won't, either. Ann Napolitano, one of our current authors, didn't -- it took her six years to write the novel I just read for BlogHer Book Club. And the writing was memorable, exciting and worth every minute, in my opinion.