!anaj ,em s'taht

I’m going to the Women Authors’ Forum!

I really won me a place in the Autorinnenforum! Sometimes life is just to good to be true – my endorphin levels were already ridiculously high after being accepted at the Microlearning conference, and now I am in for another Writer’s high.

Now, this one is by far the higher one. When I came home from work today, I had two big envelopes in the post: my weekly subscription of the SPIEGEL and another one, soon to be identified as a message from the Forum. Interesting looking envelopes are normally ripped open right away, but I didn’t dare to do that today. It’s not that I have participated a lot or in any significant writing competitions so far (this definitely being the most important one), but if I really think back hard, there might have been two or three or even more, most of which are already blissfully forgotten or repressed;-)

But the sight of the envelope brought back those feelings of disappointment and irrelevance that always followed the arrival of mail from the organizers of such competitions. In the past of course, the envelopes were the small ones – the sight of a BIG envelope immediately kindled the hope that it might after all come true: That I might be among the few chosen ones. And I didn’t want to open the envelope too fast, I wanted to hold on to that sweet sensation…

…and I don’t think I’ve ever been engulfed in a similarly delirious emotion like I was in the first twenty seconds after realizing that I was indeed invited to join the forum:-) YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! Still can’t believe it – and hope it’s not too late to respond, because they request the registration form back by April 16 – which is today. Then again, the message was only mailed on Friday the 13th (my lucky day from now on;-) so I must have been on the waiting list. Double lucky me!!!

Ok, and here’s the deal: The forum takes place in Berlin, from the 9th until the 14th of June, it includes a festive opening night, a symposium and three days of writing workshops. Woah! 548 women entered their texts, 60 were chosen. There’s also prize money to give away on which I shan’t put any hopes, as a likely waiting list candidate, but the workshop (as a first trigger to the shaping of my writer personality) was what I was in for anyway:-) I signed up for short story (1st wish), novel (2nd wish) and drama (3rd wish).

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORAY!