A Beginner's Guide to the AWP Conference

(This was going to be a breakdown of my experience of AWP and then it turned into a primer for new attendees. Maybe it will be useful to people google searching AWP.)

If you haven’t been to AWP, it’s probably for a few reasons.

1)   You’re a regular person who doesn’t concern themselves with strange hyper-cultures.

2)   You’re not a Creative Writing Grad Student, English Professor, Lit Journal Editor, Small Press Owner/Manager, Poet, Novelist, Memoirist, Satirist, Essayist, Slam Poet, Genre Junkie, Agent, Publisher, etc.

3)   You exist in the real world where famous people are movie stars and rock stars not authors and poets.

So if you’re not any of these, then you don’t know what AWP (The Association of Writers and Writers Programs) is all about, where it is taking place every year, and why you would be interested in this meeting of 11,000 lit nerds.  Your life may be less.  Or it may be better.

It’s a scene.  For a writer, it is simultaneously inspiring and depressing.  To be in a place where Fiction and Poetry and Essay is the center of the universe is amazing and makes you feel at home.  That you can talk to anyone, to thousands of You, just waiting to gush over the absolute cultural importance of books is something.  That everyone understands why you’d rather be lost in a fake world than found in the real world is refreshing and worth exploring.

But to be a writer among thousands of other writers sometimes diminishes your uniqueness.  It makes you feel like one of the pack, all fighting for a little sliver of immortality.  It’s easy to lose your sense of camaraderie.  A usual AWP conference is a bipolar rollercoaster of importance and obscurity.

The panels range from stuff as broad as “How to Land an Agent” to crazy specific stuff like “Gender Studies of Uzbekistani Poetry Written By Survivors of the Frog Plague of 1936”.  One of those panels was real and one of them you wish was real.

I have to recommend balance.  You can’t go to every panel.  You have to ditch.  You have to eat lunch and hang out in the bookfair and get a sense of the city and just not let yourself get sucked in completely.  Because if you don’t detach here and there, it’s dangerous.  Your ego is at stake.  Either it will swell with the headiness of writerly importance or it will deflate rapidly and leave you charging your iPhone in a corner, tweeting about how these hacks will one day fall at your feet and worship the meager words you let them sup on.

Eat an expensive meal while you’re there.  Get jazzed about something else for an hour at least.

Lastly, there’s the Bookfair.  This is a whole different animal.  It’s giant rooms filled with tables of journals and MFA programs and small presses and sometimes some weirdo just hawking his own book.  Stay away from that weirdo.  Everyone else is normal.

The MFA programs are interesting because as a graduate of an MFA program, it’s like driving by a bunch of car dealerships after you bought your car.  So they must be for a younger crowd.  I barely even knew about AWP before grad school so it seems weird that undergrad students are so up on it that they know to go to it and scout schools.

The journal and small press tables are where you should spend most of your time.  They’re friendly and most of them are students that were given a free pass to AWP if they sat at the table and hawked some books.  The students look bored and are frequently dying to speak to someone to pass the time. 

The presses are interesting but it’s a like a mobile bookstore where you’re looking at the owner of the bookstore and trying to figure out how to escape.  You may buy something sometime but you’re not a high roller and you can’t just shell out for any random book no matter how much the publisher or the author put their whole soul into it.

Here’s the deal.  AWP is great.  If you’re the right person.  If you can immerse yourself, cool.  If you have friends to go with, friends to meet, even better.  The excitement of the world revolving around your craft for three days is good for the soul.  You should leave thinking:  I can’t wait to get home and write!  If you go home and never write again, well, that’s one less person for them to compete with. Success either way.

AWP BOSTON 2013 - Day 1 - Doppelgangers

For those who don't nerd out completely on books and writing, the AWP Conference is a yearly Lit conference that pulls in writers, teachers, and book nerds galore.  I think I heard 8000 people are at the conference this year.

It runs for three days and it's mostly filled with panels on topics ranging from Gender Studies to Finding an Agent to Weird Crap That Is So Specific Two People on The Planet Care About It And They Are Hosting the Panel.

But one of the most interesting and depressing things about this conference is seeing yourself.  Over and over.  Because this place is full of doppelgangers of you. (If you are a lit nerd.)  And you will run into yourself over and over.

This does two things.

1) It confirms that you are in the right place.

2) It makes you feel wholly unoriginal and that you should take up bricklaying.

Which is ridiculous because I would be beaten up in any sort of brickyard when I was instantly recognized as 'NOT A MAN'.

So here's who I saw today.  And I'm sorry I don't have pictures because that would have been extra awesome but I'm not smooth or creepy enough to take pictures of strangers.  Even if they're pretty much me in tweed.

Versions of Me I Saw:

Gay Duck Walking Me with a Scarf That I Would Kiss a Gay Me For

Serial Murderer Me

Undergrad Deja Vu Me Hardcore Leaning Into a Girl Trying To Convince Her To Makeout With Him Which is Just Real Undergrad Me

Overweight Jolly Me Who Thinks He Can Rock a Vest But Surprise, Buddy, No James Best Looks Good in Vests Ever

Me Speaking About Free Beer Like My Tongue is Dying From Lack Of

Know-It-All Me Which Already Exists, Position Filled, Doppeljerk!

Smoking Outside the Conference and Making Me Smell Like Crap Me

Gay Duck Walking Me Kissing Gay Version of Lou Diamond Phillips Finally Answering the Questions I Had About What I Looked Like Kissing LDP

What You Suspected About Me and Val is True

You may have suspected.  You may not have wanted to say anything.  Because you respected us.  Because maybe we couldn’t tell you.  But there was just something unspoken about us, right?  You looked at me and Val and thought, “The pieces don’t exactly fit.”  And you’d be right.

It’s like you thought.  We’re spies.

Yes.  Agents.  Undercover.  We’re a power couple in the most real sense of the word.  Because we’re packing power.  I have a Beretta.  Valerie prefers a HK45 Compact.

Spy couple.  Well, we’re on spy retirement for now.  (Or are we trying to throw you and evil governments off our trail?)  But we want to congratulate you for discovering our clever secret.  The US government commends your deduction.  Let’s hope they don’t kill you because of it.

Let’s review some things you might have figured out on your own that made you suspicious. Now that we’ve moved to “Boston” we can reveal a few things.

1)   TWO ARTISTS LIVING TOGETHER IN NEW YORK – Weird, right?  How are they living there?  How are they paying their rent?

Where’s James at?  Oh, he’s at some crazy job in ‘television’ where he works like 15 hours a day.  He’s at a ‘poetry reading’.

Where’s Valerie?  Oh, she has ‘class’.  She’s at ‘auditions’.  She’s in a ‘play’.

Yeah, right.  You saw through all that.  We were usually murdering foreign dictators. Mostly with household goods.  Valerie is an expert with crockery execution.

2)   YOU WERE MARRIED SEVEN YEARS WITH NO BABY? – Suspicious.  Do you know how complicated jumping onto a helicopter railing is while being pregnant?  I’ll never know.  But Valerie had to make some very tough womb decisions.  Does Kevlar cover different gestational periods?  What if we had to set up a sniper’s nest and we ran out of snacks?  Pregnant ladies get crazy hungry.  So we had to wait.  The country’s freedom was our baby.

3)   THAT BABY DOESN’T EVEN LOOK LIKE YOU – You got us.  It’s not exactly our baby.  It’s a super-baby built in a lab that Valerie bravely volunteered to carry like an ever-growing roll of microfiche.  It’s sort of a cover, it’s sort of a science experiment.  What you think is chubby legs and cheeks are protein sacks that will be converted into super-strength muscles as she gets older.  She can already lift our fridge.  Valerie and I love Edie just as much as you can love a science freak.

HOW OUR SPY RELATIONSHIP WORKS

Valerie

She does all the master of disguise stuff.  Her acting skills are formidable and she has even fooled me sometimes.  She’s like a female Jason Bourne, too. You may think she’s sweet, but there are tigers sleeping in her fists and two grizzlies in her delicate feet. She also has a rhino in her forehead and two sullen goats in her kneecaps.

James

Oh, I take care of sniper stuff and body disposal and stunt driving and gun fights and making fake ID badges and maps and finding hideouts and watching our back and throwing star retrieval and that move where you clonk two guards heads together and picking proper pump up music and general high ranking official homicide.

HOW WE KEEP THE ROMANCE ALIVE

We just don’t bring our work home with us.  We have never, I repeat NEVER, assassinated anyone at home.  That’s a rule. But when we are working we have fun.  When we’re staked out on some lonely mountainside waiting to shoot our Javelin missile, we play a lot of card games.  Sometimes we sing old folk songs in rounds.  We have a novel we’re working on together.  Then we blow up that evil world leader into human tomato soup and get home.  To our super lab baby, Edie.  Who is being groomed to be the President of the United States and the Moon.

ISN’T THIS BLOG POST BLOWING YOUR COVER?

No.  Because who reads blogs, really?  Not bad guys.  Just our friends.  And really, any information about  us that those bad guys need will probably be tortured out of you.  Good luck with that.  A hint from some pros.  It’s good to think about something else.  And fingernails grow back.

Maybe You Know This About Me, Maybe You Don't

PERFECT IS JUST AS GOOD AS IMPERFECT

I'm an imperfectionist.  I like things to be a little messy.  A little haphazard.  I don't think planning too much helps.

When I eat food, let's say when I heat up something, it doesn't have to be the right temperature.  If I heated up some soup and it's not as hot as I want, I don't care.  (Maybe it's laziness.)  I'll just eat it at warm instead of hot because is it going to be that much better?  Am I going to greatly increase the taste? In my mind, no.  It's good enough.  It's imperfect.

When I write, I work and work at it and then I let it go.  I don't edit past a certain point.  Maybe six months afterwards.  Because in six months, I'm a different writer.  I've absorbed too much.  To make changes on something older is just me patching the new me on top of it.

So I leave it imperfect.  I see the flaws and I think that's part of the whole.  The holes are part of the whole.  The whole hole is the hole in the whole of my soul.  Souls bowl for trolls on the dole near the shoals.  Lol lol lol.


UNCRITICAL AND UP FOR ANYTHING

I'm not a critic.  I don't like being one.  I don't go into a situation looking to hate something.  My mind is open to enjoy something to its fullest extent.  I laugh pretty loud.  I don't get up to the bathroom during the middle of something.  I stay.  I let my mind engage.  I don't check my phone during movies or plays or talking to people. (Or I try not to.)  If there's a card game or a board game to play, I'm down.

If you want me to come out to dinner with you right then and I can do it, I will.  Can my best friend Val come along?  She better be able to because we do everything together.

Does your piece of art suck?  I don't know yet.  I haven't seen it.  I'm ready to check it out.  Is your dog an annoying rat who barks and tries to nip noses?  I don't know if he is.  I'm going to bend down and pet him.  Does your political candidate remind me of a better looking Hitler?  I don't know that yet.  I would love to come listen to him/her speak.  Let me know where and when.

I'm just saying I like to live my life undimmed by expectations.  I like to let things surprise me.  And when I do, I find life to be a little more beautiful, spontaneous and worth exploring.

DAIRY IS MY COMMON LAW WIFE

I know you think you love dairy as much I do.  But you don't.  We got married.  Because we just lived together for so long that Johnny Law was like, "You guys are sicking me out.  I pronounce you married."  And we're so happy together.

How much do I love dairy more than you?  Let's see.

1. Would you drink half n half all day?  I would.
2.  Do you eat cottage cheese?  I do.
3.  Do you use butter generously?  Did you eat it with your fingers like peanut butter?  Do you like toast buttered only?
4.  Do you like another snack like chocolate better?  I don't.  I'd give up chocolate for dairy.  Easy.
5.  Sour cream?  More, please.  Cream cheese?  Put it on anything.
6.  I would eat ice cream in a bowl of condensed milk with cream cheese on top.
7.  Cheese?  Have I met any that I don't like?  Yes, yak milk.  All other animals are fair game for my mouth hole.
8.  I think it's a hoax perpetrated by NASA to cover up the moon not being made of cheese.  I know it is.  Those nerds are hogging it for themselves.
9.  I would sleep in a waterbed full of milkshake.
10.  Luckily, Valerie and Edie are not dairy or else they would be dead.  From my cravings.

Busy is Busy is Busy

It’s hard to sum up what has been done.  Life is busy.  For everyone.  Life gets filled up.  The quality of what fills it is debatable but I would never argue against anyone being ‘busy’.

So yes, we’ve been busy.  Valerie and I moved.  Into one apartment temporarily and then finally into our new home in Winchester, MA.  I have a new job during the day.  Valerie has a baby and a thesis to write during the day.  Edie has been learning how to say ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ and how to hi-five.  She also hoots like an owl now when she likes something.

Flux is hard.  It upsets routines.  It makes you gain or lose weight.  The former for me.  I’ve been writing a lot but the writing hasn’t been appearing here.  I need to stop making posting on my blog such an event.  Stop making it a place where I have to fashion something new .  Just make it a place where I can put up some pictures.  Say, “Hey, dudes.  This is what has been going on.  I know the rest of you use your blogs for that. Why can’t I?”

I’m always making blog resolutions.  Blogolutions.  Resoblogtions.  Here’s a new one.  I’m going to use my blog as a better journal.  Since I have no real journal.  I just have notebooks full of writing and notes.  If you pieced together my life through the dozens of notebooks and journals I’ve kept you’d find very little true information.  Or maybe it’s all true.  Maybe you’d get a map of my head instead of my life.

So I need to tell you about our new adventure. I’m sure you’ll get more Edie and Pop textings and more of my Romance Novel and whatever else hits my whim bone.  But I want to be better about some recording of life stuff. I’ll be here more regularly.  Stop by.  

Edie and Pop Ep. 11 - Forever Vacation

The continuing saga of text messages between me and my baby.

EDIE:  Where are you?  I keep turning my little baby neck and you are nowhere.

POP:  I'm not near you.  I'm in Boston.  You're in L.A.

EDIE:  I don't know what that means.  Distance is a mystery to me.  Are these the names of rooms?  Because I'll crawl to Boston and lick the walls on the way.

POP:  You'd have to crawl through the hallway of Nebraska and you would die from boredom.

EDIE:  Just come out of the Boston room.  I want to play.

POP:  I'm sorry, baby.  Boston isn't a room.  It's a city.  I'm very far away from you.

EDIE: That sucks!  I hate you now.  Never come back.

POP:  Well, you're coming to me.

EDIE:  Not likely, pal.  This room is amazing.  I have grandparents and cousins and a dog that looks like a mop.

POP:  The "L.A. Room" is great.  But we're moving to Boston.  You're just on vacation.

EDIE:  Well, vacation is awesome.  Let's always be on vacation.

POP:  So says every adult that works ever.  My fingers would sigh but I haven't always been gainfully employed so I really have no right.

EDIE:  What's the big deal?  Just move out and here and live with my grandparents.  They're great.  You should meet them.

POP:  I already know them.  And we can't.  You can't just live forever with parents.  It's like a societal thing.

EDIE:  I'm not always going to live with you? What will I do?

POP:  Well, eventually, you'll feed yourself and clothe yourself and provide for yourself.

EDIE:  If you kick me out, I'll just live with these "grandparents" people.  They freaking adore me.  Who are they anyway?

POP:  Those are your Mom's parents.  Do you really not know how relationships work?

EDIE:  I know how they work.  I scream for food or a toy and everyone who is related to me jumps and everyone who isn't watches me like I'm a little monster.

POP:  Nope. You completely understand.

EDIE:  Fine.  So let's say I do want to see you again, theoretically, and I'll come with Mom to "Boston". What's so great about it?

POP:  There's lots of history here. Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, Thoreau all lived here-

EDIE:  Boring.

POP:  The beautiful forests.

EDIE:  Great.  More gianter things than adults.  Next.

POP:  You could acquire a weird accent.

EDIE:  It's going to mix with my Brooklyn one.  I'm going to sound crazy.

POP:  And people will murder you here if you don't like their baseball team. So dedication.

EDIE:  I don't know what murder is but it sounds wonderful.  Does it taste like hotdogs?

POP:   You don't really have a choice.  You're coming to Boston with your mom.

EDIE:  You're not the boss of me. Does Boston have endless blue sky like L.A.?

POP:  Not exactly.

EDIE:  Does Boston have delicious fish tacos and mexican food that you or Mom will feed me little pieces of?

POP:   No.  There's no good Mexican food out east.

EDIE:  Does Boston have a swimming pool?  Grandparents?  Moppy dog?  Uncle James or Cousin Taylor?  Otter pops?

POP:  No, no, no.  It just has me and your Mom and a buttload of winter.  Just get over it.  This is where we're living.

EDIE:  I'm staying here!  Try to make me leave!

POP:   You're a baby!  I just have to pick you up! You have no muscles!

EDIE:  You're kidnapping me!  I'll call the cops!

POP:  Well, you're out of luck non-speaker.  You can't text 911.

EDIE:  I'm doing it.  I'm texting them.

POP:  Good luck with that.

EDIE:  Oh no.  You can text 911.  They said they're coming to our house!

POP:  I don't know anything about this.  Erase this message.

EDIE:  Deal.  Baby out.

The Real Scoop on Boston

"Suck it, monkeys. I'm going corporate." - Liz Lemon

We've talked to a lot of people.  We've emailed a lot.  We've said goodbye.  To some for good and to others just for now.

To those of you who don't yet, we haven't meant to be coy.  Brooklyn was very hard for us to leave.

Here's the deal.  We've moving to Boston. Who knows for how long.  We don't feel like we're done with New York.  So Brooklyn, you will see us again.  And my job is such that I'll probably be in New York a lot.  Enough that it'll be like we live in Westchester.  Or New Haven.  Somewhere just far enough way that we can't visit all the time.


I got a job at Converse. I'm their new Sr. Copywriter.  I'm the guy who provides all the words for all the stuff.  The stuff on the t-shirts.  The stuff on the walls.  The words on websites. The words in the stores.

They offered it to me.  Out of the blue.  Tyson Schenk, good friend and Converse designer, asked if I wanted a freelance job.  Valerie and I had written some copy for t-shirts for Tyson over a year and a half ago.  We got free shoes and clothes out of the deal.  It was fun.  Then about two months ago, Tyson was telling me they were looking to hire some freelancers.  I said I'd be interested.

And then I got a call.  Which I thought was a call to hire me for freelance.  It turned out it was not.  They wanted me for a full time gig.  As their Senior Copywriter (which in television terms I keep translating into head writer and so keep saying it wrong) because they liked my portfolio, my background, and my weird sense of humor.

I thought it was in New York because that's where Tyson was working.  I was wrong.  It was Boston.

So after a lot of thought, prayer, and goodbye saying, we are on our way.  I'm here in Boston right now and Valerie is in Utah/California for two weeks visiting her fam.  She still has a thesis to write for her Master's and a language requirement to pass.  So she's going to learn Nantucketese.  And juggle a new city, and our baby, and a thesis.

So hey, Boston area friends.  We're here.  What's a Boston Baked Bean?  Is it different from a regular bean?  Is the chowder that much more excellent?  What is Bunker Hill?  Why does everyone dress like the 90s here?  So many questions.

Locations change but we don't.  Val and James and Edie 4EVER.

Edie and Pop Ep. 10 - B is for Boston and Baby Saddles

When Edie was only six weeks old, she learned how to text. This is the continuing saga of our communication.

EDIE:  Pop, there's weird brown things around our apartment.  And they aren't mushrooms this time.

POP:  Those are called boxes.  We put stuff we like in them so sweaty ex-Russians can put them in a truck for us and break the things we like.

EDIE:  Ok. I will register this taste as 'box'.  I'm off to lick the mushrooms again. What are the boxes for?

POP:  We're moving.

EDIE:  Cool. Where? To the park?  Because I vote for the park.

POP:  We're moving to Boston.  It's farther than the park.

EDIE: So it's by the library?  That's great.  I love that place.  The librarians are all nice and smell like gouda. And you know how I love gouda.

POP:  Do you remember when we took those plane rides to California and Michigan?

EDIE: What? We're going on a plane?  I hate those.

POP:  I know.  You adequately demonstrate that every time we fly.  Well, Boston is much farther away than the park or library.

EDIE:  You're taking me away from the PARK?!  You monsters!  I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

POP:  Are you throwing an actual temper tantrum or just a text one?

EDIE:  I couldn't decide.  Also, I'm stuck between two of those box things.  I'm going to lick a hole in this one and sabotage the whole move.

POP:  We can just get a new one.  This is happening.  Wrap your little head around it.

EDIE:  Fine! New plan!  I'm going to hide until you have to stay.

POP:  You get hungry like every two hours.

EDIE:  Rats! Alright.  Leave a bunch of cheese and squeezy fruit packages on the ground and then leave and then I'll hide.

POP:  Hey, I don't want to leave New York either.  Me and your Mom love it here.

EDIE:  What's a New York?

POP:  It's the city we live in. Actually, we live in Brooklyn which is a part of New York which is a city in the state of New York.  Boston is in Massachusetts.

EDIE:  I don't even know what you just wrote there.  How about you just not ruin my life and move us to the park?  I want to live near the Dog Pond.  Dogs are hilarious.

POP:  There will be a new park.  A new library.  A whole new world to lick.

EDIE:  Don't pigeonhole me, Pop!  Licking isn't my only 'thing'.  I'm complicated.  I'm a mystery wrapped in a cuddly blanket.  Which is 50 percent mystery and 50 percent rayon.

POP:  What are you licking right now?

EDIE:  The bed spread.  It tastes like soap and high thread count.

POP:  We might live near Harvard.  You could Good Will Hunting yourself into the school.

EDIE:  Do you ever get tired of saying pop culture crap to me I just don't get?

POP:  Not really.  Do you ever get tired of making me tired?

EDIE:  I do not.  Is there a dog pond in Boston?

POP:  We should just get our own dog.  Then you and me could just make our own dog pond. And by that I mean the bathtub.

EDIE:  I don't think Mom wants a dog.  Which is too bad because I just ordered a little baby saddle.

POP:  Oh my gosh.  The thought of you riding a dog makes me not even mad at you for using my credit card.  And being on the internet.

EDIE:  I want to be a baby jouster.  Boston has that kind of crap, right?

POP:  I'm sure. Boston is mega weird.  Your Mom's getting out of the shower.  Let's both look wistful while we stare at pictures of dogs.

EDIE:  I'll get some tears going. She's a sucker for my weepy peepers.