Buried Alive, Writer’s Conference Workshops

 

    Choose one from column A and two from collum B…unless you want something from columns C and D, that is.

This is what it felt like looking at the list of workshops available at my first writer’s conference.

   

    How to Write a Bestseller.

    How to Write Dialogue

    What do Agents Really Do

    Why Are You Such a Crappy Writer (followed by Why You Will Never be a Writer)

   

    Every hour there were five or six presentations that I knew I had to attend if I was ever going to write a breakout novel. It was overwhelming. But good solider that I am, I went for it. Circling each hour’s offering that seemed most relevant with naive abandon.

    The first hour wasn’t bad, many of the other attendees seeming just a lost as I was. A precious few appeared even more unaware than I was of the maze we’d entered. It gave me a momentary feeling of superiority, like I had an edge. Until the woman with the MFA from Cornell sitting next to me started asking questions with literary terms I didn’t understand.

    I’m pretty sure that’s when the seeds of depression and doubt first took root. It would be another day before they bore bitter fruit, but on some level I could feel them burrowing into the cracks, splitting the rock of my confidence. But before that, it was on to the next presentation.

    Lunchtime came and went and more workshops followed. Until, exhausted beyond coherence, I stumbled to my room (expensive as hell) to rest before the first night’s dinner where I had been promised to be “enlightened and entertained” by the speaker, Well Known Editor. (I had no idea who he was, though MFA Lady assured me he was a god in the publishing world.)

 

Next: The Conference Dinner, Cold Mashed Potatoes and New Friends.