Last week 350 Colorado fiction writers gathered to celebrate Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ 40th anniversary. We heartily congratulated the founding spirits who have seen Colorado’s fiction writers blossom over the years; we savored the joys of writers’ brotherhood.

Organizations like RMFW are not talked about much; not written about nor televised by our many news outlets. Our event was a “good news story,” certainly as worthy of notice and broadcast as many police car chases, tree climbing or dumpster food thieving bears.

No matter: I write this to celebrate a great organization’s birthday, that I joined two decades ago. It was a much smaller group at a heady time for my colleagues and me. We wanted to learn the craft of fiction writing, quite prepared to toil long and hard to develop our craft – thus paying our dues. We spent time in critique groups with others who were as passionate about what we were doing; reading each other’s work, making it better. The sum total was to become better writers.

Many were the novels I began, only to abandon them midway because they didn’t have legs to stand on or I had not thought them out fully. Such is the story of novel crafting and as Malcolm Gladwell says, we become experts by spending 10,000 hours working on something. Not that we counted the hours or pretended we were expert writers. Only a few of us wrote novels but the point is, we learned the basics. Writing no longer gives rise to trepidation; it becomes part of our mind set.

We learned that honesty was our North Star. Whatever one makes their characters do, they always start at the center — truth. Truth of words, truth of the character’s actions, truth of the world created. And as one plots the story, it must be logical. Logic and reason are the backbone of a story, for it has to stand in its reader’s hands. It has been said that writers are the conscience of a nation. If that is so, it requires one to be a responsible writer, responsible purveyor of news and information.

To be a good writer one has to be an omnivorous reader. So as we read our colleagues’ books, we had the advantage of hearing their thoughts on the why of their character’s behavior. In many ways, it was like being in the kitchen as meals were prepared; looking at, examining the recipe. We felt privileged. This ability to be around the ring as the battle unfolded was our reward for the time sacrificed to the god of literature.

As for me, for a long time I wore two hats: a surgeon’s and a writer’s. I had the pleasure of observing in my own brain: a general creative arena full of fictional characters exist beside a very detailed, specific and disciplined surgical thinking. Creating with a pen is as distinct from wielding a scalpel as night is to day; different, but complementary to each other. It was scintillating, one moment to walk from the green fields of speculative fiction; and next, brightly lit, blood soaked scenes of my other life. I learned how to balance the two parts of my existence.

The one regret I have about RMFW is that, like many other groups, it’s a majority White writers’ place, though luckily the last decade has seen a few minorities join. BIPOC writers are invited to join; only they can write the books that need to be published at this moment that clamors for literary agents and publishers to seek more BIPOC writers.

The keynote speaker, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a Lakota writer and professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver gave a rousing speech about the way America’s majority has for so long behaved as if Native Americans are incapable of original thought, and therefore writing. His award winning books have distinguished themselves for their excellence, erudition and content. His speech pointed to a slow change in the national conscience towards BIPOC who have much to say. They too have original thoughts and discipline needed to persist and write books. In fact, the only thing that distinguishes colored people from the majority is skin deep. Many think deep thoughts.

The anniversary celebration allowed us, older writers to recall, relive moments of creation; hearing our colleagues’ accolades and the general readership’s cheers. There were more young writers than I’d seen before — tomorrow’s nation’s conscience, I thought.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships (AAHEP); co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students’ STEM education. He is a National Public Radio commentator, Huffington Post blogger, and past columnist for Denver dailies.