Notes On A Writing Conference

Or editing. Or publishing. Or drinking. Or brown nosing. These may apply to most any professional conference, but mine was the annual AWP conference in Chicago this weekend.


















1) It is inevitable that, in the long days of panels and socializing, you will begin to picture everyone naked. Then you picture everyone picturing you naked. Then you picture yourself naked. Then you start leaving your coat on in sweltering rooms just in case.

2) No matter how much of a big name you are, people will arrive 30 minutes late to your reading, then leave 30 minutes early as if they've just heard their mother died.














3) People you once knew--and who you never really hung out with all that much (maybe you should have)--will be very excited to see you, even calling out your name from across the room. You will talk a few minutes but the initial excitement will fade, and you will part awkwardly, wondering if you are now best buds. The trick in any encounter like this is to end it early, when you're at the top of your game, and not un-retire like Jordan or Favre.


















(Notice the udders)

4) At some point you will feel like a dirty dirty tramp for telling a few people about your writing projects--especially editors. You realize you are the 100th person to do so, but feel you must say SOMETHING about yourself when they ask, when all they really want is for you to buy a book.

5) When someone asks you about yourself, you ask them the same questions to be polite, and sometimes it's even genuine curiosity. But the conversation and words tend to circle one another and never catch up to themselves, like a dog chasing its tail, so you aren't too sure if you even had a conversation in the first place.


















6) You will wait at hotel reception for 30 minutes because Expedia did not book your reservation correctly. You will talk to them on the phone and they will cancel it and refund you (the hotel's idea). Then the hotel offers to rebook your room, but only for 2 nights when you need 3--turns out lots of lovers are coming in for V-Day (victory day? venereal day?). But hotels always have rooms in reserve for VIPs like you, and so you get bumped up to club level and get a tv in your bathroom mirror. Nothing like watching cops chase criminals across your chest.


















7) Your feet will stink. Get over it.

8) You finally hang out with all the people who you work with, go to school with, and who live minutes from your house.

9) You will need to decompress by doing a list of your weekend since you don't own any deep pore cleansing cremes, or have a sauna in the basement.

AWP and NYC and Herpes

A friend of mine did a list, which seems apropos, as too much happened this last week. I will say that I, too, felt the most grown up I've ever been while in NYC at the writers conference, to the point where I felt equal at some points to the well-known folks around me. And I met many interesting persons working the Prairie Schooner table.

People like this one woman, finishing her masters, who couldn't believe you actually WRITE while doing a Ph.D. For 10 minutes we talked as people came by getting magnets and buying subscriptions. She thought for sure all you did was get all hoity-toity theoretical and never write. What craziness. Who would do a Ph.D. simply to become an ivory tower block in the wall? I've successfully almost made it through grad school without really getting (or reading much) Derrida, Freud, Foucault, Jung, Kant, or Nietzsche, among others. Lord be blessed.

1) I nervously approached the editor of a press who has, for three years, given me many a kind note--hand written--about my poetry manuscript. He knew who I was right off the bat, and I thanked him for his notes over the years. This was awkward, especially as it occured after having been awake for only about 45 minutes. I'm not good at talking to people. I'd prefer a book contract, of course.

2) Ran in to one of my BFA profs, who also left a note for me. As well, one of my old undergrad colleagues left me a note. Pretty neat.

3) Met several MFA folks from way back at Ohio State. People even hugged me when they saw me at the conference. Why? I'm not approachable. And certainly not squishy.

4) Talked with a masters student--whose name I forget--at the Fugue table (published out of Idaho). Turns out he began his bachelors at Evansville just as I left. He knew me. Guess I left an impression in college. I wonder what kind?

5) Saw, from a distance, several writers that are well known. It was like going to the Guggenheim and MoMA--seeing famous art work / authors is sort of a "eh, so what?" moment. Especially the art, which we've managed to cliche up the whazoo so much, that I appreciate things I make at home out of straws and toothpaste much more. Too much Picasso in NY.

6) Bought two books by MFA "kids" I went to school with: Katie Pierce (poetry) and Sonya Huber (memoir). Both are very fine writers, so I look forward to the reads IF I get to them. I even got Sonya to sign my copy.

7) While being a bouncer at the Schooner soiree one evening, an editor of Crab Orchard Review--who published my first essay a year ago--talked with me about my work and the burgeoning genre. You know what's taken 8 years of grad school to tell me? Editors are people too. They like fart jokes, enjoy a drink, have good and bad days, even bleed. I am this dense. But helps me understand that my rejected work isn't complete crap, it's just crap that day.

8) Since AWP would not sell additional passes to anyone because it "sold out" (STUPID), my wife and I went to kinkos where we scanned my badge and made one for her. There were actually Italian mafia guys--hands folded across their belts, in suits--at entrances to events. Surreal. Dumb. She got in fine.

9) It's rare when you find decent food when traveling, but Pazza Notte was great; we only wish Lincoln had something half this good. French Italian is what I call it. Reasonable prices, very good food, 2nd best if not best fries I've ever head (and didn't expect to have fries at lunch with what I ordered, but it worked). The creme brulee looked perfect, and the wife said it tasted so. We went twice.

10) We went to FAO Schwarz and I bought a book worm (below), my wife mad cow disease. After looking at the company's website, you can also purchase Chlamydia, Herpes, Staph, Typhoid, Ebola, Athlete's Foot, Bad Breath.... Boy, all kinds of ways to considerately tell people what you think of them. http://www.giantmicrobes.com/