Jerome K. Jerome begins his classic Three Men in a Boat with the narrator remembering a trip to the British Museum where he started reading up on a treatment for his hay fever in a medical journal. As he idly turned pages, he realized to his horror that not only did he have hay fever, he'd unknowingly suffered from typhoid fever for months, as well as St. Vitus Dance, ague, Bright's Disease (though only a mild case), cholera, and had apparently been born with diphtheria. The only thing he didn't have, he decided, was housemaid's knee. Finally he concludes, "I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck."

My first conference experience, at the 2003 RWA National Conference in New York, was very similar. Imagine my horror when, after attending a mere handful of workshops, I discovered my heroine was unsympathetic, my hero unheroic, my dialogue stilted, my plot hackneyed, my pages packed with idle back story, and my writing voice too mainstream.

I would never sell. I would never even have a chance of selling. That was it. My short-lived career as a romance writer was doomed.

The single most important thing we can do is learn to love our own work.

My conference roommate showed great patience and not a little amusement over my steady decline. A few positive moments -- an encouraging chat with an acquiring Harlequin editor who was reading my manuscript, another encouraging chat with the senior editor of my targeted line -- lifted me from my despair, only to be followed by a workshop. My villain, it quickly became clear, was cardboard.

The only thing my manuscript had going for it was formatting.

It took me a while to realize my manuscript hypochondria is just another symptom of my perfectionism. Conference workshops fuel my perfectionism like little else. Where else can I go to find literally dozens of new worries to obsess over?

This recovering perfectionist has finally figured out how to "do" conferences. If you suspect you may suffer from manuscript hypochondria, these tips may help.

Choose one or two elements of your writing to focus on before attending the conference. This is a must. We all suspect what may be our weaknesses, so by putting our attention on only one or two of them, we create a manageable mental space for ourselves. Conference workshop listings can look like a smorgasbord of opportunity to pummel our manuscripts and ourselves. By restricting our participation to the workshops that focus on our specific interest, we lessen the likelihood of leaving the conference feeling beaten to a pulp.

Plan your workshop attendance schedule in advance. Sure, this can be difficult to do because the workshop listings will inevitably change as things firm up, but browsing the offerings early can help us focus. I went into the 2003 National Conference bright-eyed and bushytailed, wanting to attend everything and soak up as much as possible. If you're a normal human, this attitude is great. If you're a perfectionist, beware! Recovering perfectionists need boundaries we can use to protect ourselves from...ourselves. So choose wisely and leave plenty of time for relaxing and chatting with new conference friends, which is a great antidote for obsessing.

Cultivate a sense of perspective. Nine times out of ten, my heroine is unsympathetic, my hero is unheroic, and my villain is cardboard in one or two instances in the story. But my busy little brain plucks those moments from the 350 pages and screams, "See there? The book's a failure!" when in fact, a week's worth of consideration and editing will fix the problem. If at all possible, try to suspend judgment about your own work until you get home and look at your story again. (And if you dare bring your current work in progress with you, try to spend as much time talking to new people as you do looking at your story. Sometimes getting your mind far away from a problem will cause its solution to spontaneously spring forth.)

Remember there will always be another workshop at another conference. It's in perfectionism's nature to assume that if we don't get the information that we need -- right now, at this conference -- we'll somehow have lost an opportunity that will never come again. I can tell you from experience this attitude is migraine-inducing. Many workshop presenters speak at other events. Some have written books on their workshop topics or take their workshops on the road. Best of all, if the conference you've attended has taped the workshops, a small investment can allow you to catch up. What we don't learn today, we will learn tomorrow.

In conclusion, the single most important thing we can do is learn to love our own work. I'm not talking about getting warm fuzzies after reading a scene we've written, though that's part of it. Nor am I talking about being so set in our ways and being so arrogant that well-meaning and accurate critique falls on our deaf ears.

I'm talking about knowing, deep down, that what we have written has worth. That it's part of us and deserves to be respected because we put those words on the page. Whether the book ever sells -- whether we even finish it -- those words have value simply because we produced them. A foundation of respect for your own work can go far in saving a perfectionist from post-conference screamers.

Sandra K. Moore has plenty of opportunity to recover while writing for Silhouette Bombshell. The Orchid Hunter is a 2005 Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Nominee. Dead Reckoning is scheduled for July 2006.

Copyright © 2004 Sandra K. Moore. All rights reserved. Used with permission.