I’m at American Christian Fictions Writers Conference in St. Louis, Missouri this week. The place where writers and authors are gathering to learn craft and pitch their stories. For those that are yet unpublished, the anxiety before pitching can be crushing and the stress intense.

I remember my first time walking into a room of writers waiting to pitch. While most were friendly I couldn’t escape just how anxious many of them were. But then again, that year I didn’t pitch a story.