Once upon a time, I’d go to a club in zero-degree weather in Boston wearing weather-inappropriate shoes, carrying a teeny purse, a tube of lipstick, and a wadded-up $20.
I didn’t have a phone, because this was the ’80s. No one knew where I was. I didn’t know when I’d be home, or who I’d come home with. I’d stay out all night, somehow surviving on full sugar Coca-Cola and greasy slices of pizza, then stagger home in time for class with my eyeliner definitely not intact.
Now, in 2026, I’ve been thinking about my electrolyte needs for an author conference two weeks before it begins.
Welcome to middle age, friend.
I’m going to NINC this week, the Novelists, Inc. conference, which is conveniently being held practically in my backyard in St. Pete Beach. I’ve attended plenty of writing conferences over the years, and I’ve learned that the older I get, the less my packing strategy resembles “lipstick and twenty bucks” and the more it resembles prepping for a natural disaster.
My first essential is a large tote bag.
Not a cute little purse. I need something substantial enough to hold everything necessary to keep me alive inside a dry and air-conditioned resort for twelve hours.
There will be deodorant. There will be mints. There will be reading glasses. I’ll bring a notebook and several pens, because even though I possess a phone capable of storing virtually all human knowledge, the minute somebody says something brilliant in a workshop I absolutely must write it down. Plus, I have a lot of empty, cute notebooks, and few chances to show them off. This is my Christmas, Super Bowl, and Fashion Week all rolled into one.
I will aim to bring business cards. However, I always forget business cards. Every conference, at some point, someone says, “Do you have a card?” and I end up scrawling my email in my notebook and then ripping out a piece of paper from my cute notebook.
Not this year. Probably.
Then we have the medical-supply portion of the tote.
Electrolyte packets. Water bottle. Tylenol. Advil. Band-Aids or blister patches, even though I now possess the good sense to wear ugly and comfy Birkenstocks. I’ll bring a protein bar or another emergency snack. Also lip balm. Tissues. Hand sanitizer. A phone charger.
I’m also bringing a sweater or wrap, because it’s Florida in September. Outside it will be approximately 147 degrees with 200 percent humidity. Inside the hotel ballroom, they will be storing sides of beef.
And because I have achieved the stage of life where spilling coffee down the front of my shirt is a given, I’ll pick up one of those little stain-remover pens or those Tide wipes.
The twenty-year-old version of me would be horrified. She would also be freezing outside a Boston nightclub in four-inch heels while waiting for a cab at 2:45 in the morning with a really terrible guy, so I’m not interested in her opinion.
The funny thing is, I’m genuinely excited about the conference. NINC is one of the rare places where I can spend several days talking about writing and no one gets bored.
But there’s a physical aspect to conferences that we don’t talk about enough. You’re sitting, standing, walking, talking and being socially “on” for hours. It’s a LOT, and I fully expect I’ll be mentally and emotionally spent by the end. I’ve already carved out the two days after the conference as recovery time. This means little to no work, a massage, and many naps.
That’s one more thing I give myself now in middle age: grace.
I don’t have to attend every session. I can go outside, warm up under a palm tree and collect my thoughts alone for fifteen minutes. I don’t have to stay at the bar until midnight because everyone else is there. I can skip an event entirely because my social battery has sputtered out.
I spent enough of my younger years believing that leaving early meant I was missing something.
Maybe that’s the biggest difference between the woman with the wadded-up twenty-dollar bill and the woman packing electrolytes. At twenty, I was always trying to stay out as long as possible. At fifty-five, I finally know that having a good time sometimes means knowing when to go home.
As the late, great Kenny Rogers once wrote:
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
What are your essentials for a writing conference?
Tara Lush writes Florida-based cozy mysteries about women starting over, finding community, and often stumbling over bodies. Her witchy Crescent Moon Mysteries feature a cat named Freddie Purrcury, beginning with Eat, Pray, Hex. She is also the author of the romance novel Drive, which has been adapted for Prime Video.