First impression: All tables are in fact rectangular. Also, my suit of armor appears to be out of place.
Friday 2pm Non-Fiction panel:
Moderator Janet Reid is funny. Beloved editor Bruce Tracy has a goatee, looks like evil Bruce Tracy from another dimension. Janet asks how many people in the audience are memoirists. Fifty percent of us raise our filthy hands.
Top three questions from the audience:
1. How do we break in?
Answers: Write a proposal, get an agent. Get published in magazines and online. Be a good writer.
2. What else can we do to increase our chances?
Answers: Research your market, get a platform, don't be a rude asshole. Be a good writer.
3. Here is a summary of my book idea, which I will present to you for as long as I am allowed to hold on to the microphone.
Answers: ...
Saturday 2pm Memoir panel
I am on this one, along with five other memoirists and a moderator. There are enough people on the dais for a scrimage. I sit down between Phoebe Damrosch and Stephanie Elizondo Griest and immediately bump my knee on the table leg.
Top three questions from the audience:
1. How much can you fudge?
Answers: (Varied, depending on who was answering. General consensus: Tell the truth.)
2. My family's going to kill me.
Answers: Yeah, probably. But don't worry about that until you're done writing.
3. Here's my entire life story, not that you asked.
Answers: All right, then.
Saturday 4pm Master Class with Sharon Mesmer
"When Words Won't Come: Generating New Work When You Think You Can't." Excellent. I really need this one. I pull up a student desk and get out my notebook. Sharon, who I used to know back in the Nuyorican days, and who is now associated with the Flarfists, says that block is often a result of "being too invested in your own ideas, clinging to familiar themes, characters, your own 'voice.'" To get us out of our own heads, she has us do surrealist exercises -- working with random phrases, rearranging cut-up strips of words. I wind up with two really dark existentialist pieces about death. Hello, third book!
Sounds like fun! Sometimes it's hard to tolerate the Q&A. I don't know why the crazies always get the mic and try to turn it into an audition.
I went to that conference the first year and was disappointed. The whole audience was nothing but those crazies. It seemed to be more about getting into print (and everyone assuming they DESERVED THIS) than about learning to be better writers. Sounds like they have improved the conference over the years. Sharon's workshop sounds AWESOME!!
Posted by: Anne | Apr 14, 2008 at 10:19 AM
"and be a good writer"
Oh damn. I knew I'd forgotten something.
Posted by: satia | Apr 14, 2008 at 04:56 PM