On a sweltering Thursday afternoon one August, I dipped my toes into the shark-infested waters of publishing in the early 21st century. The pool of choice was a Hilton Hotel conference suite. The occasion was a dubiously titled writer’s symposium: Everything you need to know about publishing your book. The big draw was the promise of two personal conferences with agents from noted producers. Three hundred wanna-be authors would soon be swimming furiously toward the chance of being eaten alive. I didn’t want to miss that.
The first thing I did miss was the irony of the overly air-conditioned hallway I had to negotiate on my way to claim a seat in the modern second level of hell– a cooler place than the lust-filled room Dante imagined. I knew where I was going, but scoring a chair in the first over-booked seminar, Building Your Platform, wasn’t easy. Neither was digesting the informative construction how-to talk.
I could only hope the second session, a workshop titled, How to Pitch Your Story, would be better. It held promise when it was moved to the ballroom because more victims than expected signed up. We were all waiting breathlessly in our chairs of ignominy to hear the secrets to be revealed. Holding back our enthusiasm a few extra minutes before the speaker entered was an eternity. Then it happened:
“Listen up guppies, you’ve got ten minutes to get your book concept down to five sentences or less, preferably MUCH less– and make it interesting. Take out your pens and start practicing– NOW!”
During the free write I considered just hiring an agent to deal with the agents. “Time’s up, how’d you do? Don’t applaud yourself too early. You’ve got a whole weekend to get this right. By the way, start EVERY conversation in the next three days with ‘Can I tell you about my book?’ ”
Two workshops in, I still needed something to get my adrenaline started. How about some sugary pastries and coffee in the hallway after a promising slate filled with divine self-revelation and trauma-filled ignorance? Three donuts later, I looked around and noticed the agents and editors seemed to be conspicuously absent. I guess they just couldn’t wait for a chance to listen to 300 pushy type-B word slingers pitching anemic pleas about their books.
“Hello there, can I tell you about my book?” came with a tap on my shoulder. Almost before I could turn, a mid-thirties woman standing too close in a too-crowded room launched into her soliloquy. I’m perplexed: you’ve got a book about…what? A sleeping fairy princess who marries a warlock troll and their kingdom is blown up by terrorist elves before her half-brother the ugly heir to the throne can wake up from his poison-sword induced stupor?
That sounds really a… a…interesting. Stop already, you’re about to wipe out a good coffee and sugar-induced buzz. Let me get a comment in edgewise. I’m guessing this is your fifth conference because you needed that many to get to the end of your pitch. You’ve written fifteen books? And you’re still looking for an agent? Hmmm. Get a clue, sister. And lose the cowgirl hat.
My next thought was, “find the exit,” but I quickly settled on “find the bar, fast.” Inside the cooling waterhole just this side of an early escape, I sidled up to a weary looking middle-aged woman. She had an unwritten memoir to publish about her life while married to a disgraced former diplomat in Iran in the early 90s. She was currently being forced to choose between two teenage daughters and a day job as a counselor in a chemical dependency detox clinic. We had a pleasant conversation while she was ignored by the bartender. I think she was still emitting woman-behind-the-burkha vibes, so I flagged down the barkeep for her. She needed a drink worse than I did.
After drinks and a forgettable bar-food dinner, we stumbled back upstairs to the main event. Bing. The elevator disgorged its glassy-eyed load – all about to be jazzed by colorful anecdotes from the highly-successful former-lawyer-turned-pulp-mystery-writer. A revelation hit me halfway through the entertainment.
He’s successful; you’re not, and you won’t be anytime soon because everyone is pushing pulp fiction and science fantasy. That’s where the feeding frenzy is. Never mind, go practice your pitch on another playwright wannabe. The room blurred, then… ahhhh, I’m out on the curb in front of the hotel again. The stagnant night air had cooled everything to a pleasant 85 degrees– instantly preferable to a full day of anxiety-induced 67-degree tension that I’d just experienced.
On the nearly empty light-rail home, the doors opened too often to let nobody in and all the marginally conditioned air out at every stop. Soon enough, “Third and Pike, last stop,” signified an official break in today’s action.
Home was a stifling, yet mentally-relief-engorged oasis. I couldn’t fully explain to my wife how I had a good time today, so I resisted the urge to practice my pitch again and muttered meekly, “My ego is too deflated.” There might still be time to recover my self-respect before morning.
Morning always comes, so at 7:30 I inserted myself into the sparsely filled bus to downtown, found my way underground to the light-rail, and considered today’s program options. A half-hour on the train is plenty of time to rewrite yesterday’s sorry excuse for a pitch and practice giving it to myself in the window reflection without wincing noticeably. Too quickly, the train braked at the end-of-line. Day 2 is not yet a dream come true.
Inside the hotel now, coffee and continental breakfast is waiting in the crowded, noisy hallway. I somehow decided “I’ll let a panel of editors/agents disabuse me of believing this conference will be a ticket to somewhere.” Curiously, during the panel nearly everyone seemed eager to meet me, if only for the allotted ten-minute interview.
Only one problem. My randomly pre-assigned agents at the panel were all trolling for women. Next stop: the appointment desk. “Do you think I could see someone who is only 50% more gender friendly?” My assigned editor had seven openings, and I don’t wonder why. Now feeling Super-A, I scored three appointments with people who might not be openly passive-aggressive.
Coming up: meetings about something, coffee, meetings about something else, and “Can I tell you about my book?” everywhere. One more “that’s a great story idea you should write it down,” and, look at the time! Get ready for your first high-wire act with an agent. Are you feeling charged yet? My conscious self is speed-dating through unconscious micro-conversations.
Then I’m up. “Hello, my book is about a lot of things...” Wait, let me finish, I haven’t got to the good part yet. You already love it? Are you supposed to say that? Yes, the book is finished. Yes, you can buy it on Kindle. Wait… don’t buy it on Kindle, it’s a lousy format. I can send you a real book next week, and, what was that... you can’t wait to read it? Are you supposed to say that? You’re giving me your PERSONAL business card? Are you supposed to do that? Here’s mine, you’re not supposed to pretend like you want it.
Scrape me off the ceiling, and shovel in the next round. Did I do well, or just imagine it? What’s this in my pocket? William/Morris Agency, New York. “Damn, this might actually work,” I delude myself.
After floating around for the next three hours, I woke up and wondered if the workshops I think I just attended would have been more useful if I could have heard anything over the elation-inflated noise in my head. Time to hit the no-host bar. I’m feeling good, and I want to buy.
Inside, I met an 80-something woman from Canada who, her name badge said, is a finalist this year in her category, Children’s Literature. We have nothing in common aside from attending this conference, but we proceed to have a more-than-pleasant time NOT pitching our book ideas to each other.
In reward, she offered to show me the alternate route to the conference ballroom via the pool and garden. I’ve just been picked up by an old lady in a hotel bar, and now I’m going to be her date for dinner. This is different.
We shared a delightful conversation at dinner and many cute quips between pauses in the highly entertaining spy-thriller-author’s speech about his life in the CIA. He does NOT discourage us from attempting to become authors, but cautions that the best work, even fiction, comes from personal experience.
I flashed back to the night before and the woman in the cowboy hat who was fantasizing about her life. She wasn’t going to be a fairy princess in this or any life, but she might wake up one day at a writer’s conference and find out she was really the troll.
Back to my date, who is enthusiastically upbeat about having little more than a snowball’s chance in hell of winning in her category (“never got higher than third place in three years!”), and yet still entered again. You go, granny!
When I woke up, I was outside the hotel entrance being overwhelmed by the day while I fondled the agent’s card in my pocket. I felt relief in the 85+ degree climate. Endorphins, I love you.
At home, Elizabeth doesn’t have to guess how I think I just hit the lottery because I called her from the hotel. She will get another happy earful before I run out of ways to re-tell the day’s events. Sleep? Not much chance. Gotta’ re-write that pitch in my head all night until it’s just right.
Darn, dozed off and now I can’t remember a thing, except what’s next. Long bus-ride, light rail, short bus-ride, airporter to hotel. Then, coffee, European pastries, coffee, and more seminars in tension-filled rooms. At least I’m breathing now, and I’m feeling good about my chances today. I’m looking forward to my confab with yesterday’s delightful panel guest who seemed hugely informative along with being sardonic, relaxing and erudite. I wish I could emulate those qualities in a crowded room.
Today, he was none of that— short, humorless, precise, decidedly unemotional. He clipped me off before the second line of my pitch. “That’s enough. Have you finished it yet? Good, send me the first fifty pages. If you’ve got a good storyline, I’ll know by then. You can sell anything that has a good storyline. How do you feel about editing changes? Good, I’ll read it.”
Whoah, two for two! Have I really enticed two agents? The good fortune made me giddy enough to sit down at lunch next to a perplexed-looking 40-something guy, who seamlessly proceeded to pitch his book about the sexual deviances of middle-aged Americans. Sort of a Kinsey Report follow-up written in an advice column format for the truly kinky Ann Landers crowd. He’s still trying to figure out what to cut because apparently no self-respecting publisher wants to know you can write an 800-page book about this subject.
I presciently tell him it sounds more like two books than one, maybe he doesn’t need to cut it, just serialize it. The suggestion doesn’t surprise him. This is not his first conference and not the first time it has been suggested.
I broke away after lunch to hear the spy-thriller guy again, who is no less entertaining just because the crowd is only overflowing a smaller room. Then I queued up for the next round of interviews. Waiting in line for the afternoon’s personal conference, I made a disparaging comment to my line-mate about waiting in line for everything in 70s Russia. The running joke was if a line formed, you joined and didn’t ask why. They were very likely giving out something you didn’t have, there being not much you actually did have.
Inside, I had a brief sit-down next to my acquaintance from Iran. She was deriding the ‘rule’ you couldn’t sell a memoir on concept. I didn’t reveal mine was written already when I said I had an offer to send the first chapter when it was. I was still feeling more lucky than guilty. We congratulated each other on current successes and she ta-ta-ed to her next appointment.
While I waited in the row of chairs with the next round of shark bait, I practiced my pitch and thought how much like Catholic grade school this was– naughty students waiting outside the principal’s office to receive their forty whacks for talking in class. How truly hopeful and earnest we all were today, muttering mea-culpas to ourselves one last time.
My final interview was with the nun from hell. I was only four sentences into my pitch before she cut me off cold. Then she turned the table upside down and beat me senseless with the leg she ripped off in the process.
“What’s your platform, who’s going to buy this, and why should I care?” were the kinder questions. “Why did I have to drag that out of you?” was her way of saying we weren’t communicating just right. I could only sit in dumb silence until I saw my opening to plead “sorry, first-timer.”
She lit into me for at least four minutes longer than my allotted punishment time, and still wanted me to send the first fifty pages to read. But… she wasn’t going to even touch the manuscript without a “really grade-A” query letter, and “I had better do my homework or else!” I slunk off with my tail still attached when it occurred to me that I had just batted 3 for 3 against some pretty heavy strike-out pros, good enough in any league, especially for a rookie.
Batting practice was over; the endorphins would be draining soon. I just did a reasonable job of impersonating Type-A for three days, and now it was time to find that bar again. Another line-up? No problem. Suddenly everyone seems friendlier and it’s not because there’s a line at the open host bar. File in, find a seat, one drink limit, back in line for dinner and closing ceremonies.
Tonight’s feature is the contest winners, and I’m more than a little curious about how grandma will finish this year. Too many categories, too many need-not-be-present-to-win awards. Children’s Literature finalists is the last call, and the winner is… wait for it: You did it Granny– First Place! A resounding cheer went up– she was the audience favorite, and finally broke the tape! Smiles and enthusiastic clapping all around.
I’m going to try to emulate her attitude in the coming days. I believe good things do happen to those who persist. I’ve got three agent’s cards in my pocket to prove it.
Author: Al Tietjen
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