Laini Taylor keynote: in search of street performer with an eyepatch #scbwiwwa

OK, so she's not really still looking for that.

She does tell us that a turning point for her was when a famous writer read some of her early work and said, "You are the real thing. Keep writing."

She stopped writing right after that.

But then she went to art school and met the man she'd marry, Jim DiBartolo. (Awww.)

Since then, she has been blessed with happiness but afflicted with perfectionism.

"Ideas are just so perfect and everything we do trying to tug them into existence seems to disfigure them," she says.

Perfectionism is a barrier that prevents forward momentum. It is an enemy to grapple with. It sucks.

"Lazy and scared are a killer combination about which I know all too much," she says. "You can live quite comfortably at the threshold of your dream for a long time."

So, she says, we need to make the commitment to go through that door. Referring to the TV show Firefly, she said, "You have to be the brilliant mechanic who can keep your brain working, lest you be lost in space forever and die, gasping, like a fish."

The only way anything is ever going to happen: "Form a habit of completion and put your butt in your chair."