It’s the obligatory post written on the flight home from AWP,[1] and here I am, not even hung over. I’m sat down next to a nice person named Dianne with whom I’ve talked books, publishing, readings, community, all the good things — and we’re about to get our drinks from the flight attendant. I feel, more or less, pretty good, having slept almost very well.
The AWP conference is an odd thing. It’s an institutions thing, largely, it is an institution in itself, and (because of this?) it’s one of those things that everybody loves to complain about and still (I would wager) enjoy also. It travels around from place to place and this year it was in Kansas City so I went, because that’s where my parents and grand parents are, and why not: I’ve got a manuscript to do something with. What that is —
It’s maybe not very "cool" to like panels but I kind of like panels. Especially when I’m at the conference to learn what to do with my manuscript. So I went to a lot of panels. Many of them of variable quality and usefulness. They all have an angle (of course) and you filter. To skip to the end a little bit, the big takeaway is the title: "write good stuff and don’t be a dick." Easy, right? That was more or less the refrain: the work is important, being nice is important. That’s how you get things done, published, etc. That’s how you don’t burn bridges or ask too much of folks who are already, always, forever over-taxed. And generally it’s also just, you know, good to be nice to the people around you.
The first panel I want to was about publishing with a small press and it more or less convinced me that I want to publish with a small press. This was true at least until I talked to some folks who’ve published with bigger presses, and now I don’t know what to do.[2] I made fresh contact with this very nice young woman who happens to be an agent and maybe I’ll ask her opinion about it at some point (I’d rather be friends though — that our cats look a like is the basis of this potential friendship, and this is, of course, the best basis for any friendship, i.e., cats). I’ve got a potential lead with a small press I’ve sort of worked with(ish) before, and I’m going to pursue that because I really like what they do (even if I think my book, weird as it is, is the wrong kind of weird for them, maybe?), and I think they’re just super fucking nice people (don’t be a dick). But I’m all in my head about it and I need to sleep on it more.[3] And anyway who knows? Maybe my novel actually sucks!
But the "don’t be a dick" thing — I feel like I got to maximize my Midwestern and my extrovert and I talked to a lot, a lot of people. It was fun and energizing (mostly). A lot of my conversations were just sort of "you’re bored tabling, I’m just walking around aimlessly to kill time and look at stuff, so let’s chat a while." I got some good solicited and unsolicited advice, I saw some old friends and teachers, ran into some folks over and over again so now I consider them new friends,[4] I hung out with a friend from grad school who still lives in Boston but whom I just don’t really see all that often, and I somehow managed to find the one tech booth and ask about their backend (Django, which I speak) and so maybe I might even get a little work out of being friendly.[5]
The "write good stuff" didn’t really happen on this trip, but if I’m honest that was expected. And I’ve been doing a lot of writing if revising and rewriting counts (which is does, right? right?). I mean, I picked at an old story every day, doing little edits, I did half an exercise once, but this was the time to do what someone at some panel or other called "author work" as opposed to "writer work," a bifurcation that I think I probably could have eventually reasoned out for myself, but one whose pithiness I appreciate and will therefore borrow. This trip was "author work," or at least, "aspirational author work." I don’t know if I like the selling thing but I really do like the talking to people thing, so I focused on that. And boy did I talk to a lot of people.
It’s still fresh enough that I don’t know if I can summarize exactly what my "learnings" were.[6] I do know that it made me feel really good about the work I’m trying to do to organize writing community in Boston, about my general (re)focus on doing the work as opposed to worrying about publication and what not.[7] I know that I have a lot of reading to do to figure out what contemporary books are, try to figure out what a comp title might be. And all of this is "author work," but at least the community work, the reading, will help the "writer work," and isn’t that the point.
I mean, it’s a silly thing, this conference. But I do think I got something out of it, maybe even something that I meant to get out of it, and that feels alright. And (more?) importantly, I got to see my parents, my grandparents, my parents' old, old dog whom I love and their other dog whom I like.[8]
Anyway: Go Chiefs.[9]