Climbing Alone

This weekend I attended the AWP Writer’s Conference 2009 in Chicago. I heard about the conference only two weeks ago, and that I discovered its existence was itself something of a fluke. However, being unemployed but financially secure I found myself capable of plotting a low-cost method of attending the show, and I’m happy to report I believe it was an excellent experience.

I worked myself into a semi-crazed nervousness leading up to the opening of the conference, wondering if my ‘transitional’ state as not-quite Undergrad, not-quite MFA student might disable me from picking up a “student” priced conference badge. Also, there is little I hate more than driving alone anywhere near the Loop, so I quested upon a means of attending the event without requiring driving to the actual location.

Successes abound, as my brother was able to offer I stay only 15 miles from the Rosemont blue-line station at his apartment. Figuring out the exact logistics of getting to and from the Chicago Hilton took all three days of the conference, but by Saturday morning I got it down and arrived at what turned out to be my favorite panel right at 9am, just as it was starting.

But that’s getting a bit ahead. Thursday was something of a daze, as I decided late Wednesday that it would be a bad idea to actually set my alarm early enough to make it downtown in time for the first 9am panels. Instead, I attempted an extra hour and a half of sleep, as both panels I’d picked out sounded pretty similar to each other anyways. Sleep was a consistent problem throughout the weekend as, even though my fatigue persisted, I found myself incapable of shaking my ill-conceived sleep pattern.

Somehow, I found myself downtown and present at the conference only a little after 11am, only missing a half hour of the first panel, something about first books and getting those published. The room was overcrowded, but no one yelled at me for standing by the door and listening in, drinking freely from the water dispensers placed about the 8th-floor hallway. The second panel I made it to was in a larger, beautifully-ornate room with mirror-walls and gorgeous crystalline chandeliers, and a handful of female panelists talking about strategies for writing first books. I can’t say I learned much between these first two panels, but did feel that some of what was said, if nothing else, confirmed for me that a lot of the research I’ve been doing about book-writing has been accurate.

The next panel was the first truly thrilling one I attended, and was focused on new-media collaborations and experiments with digital writing. Although some of the panelists had more interesting things to say than others, I ended up taking in a lot out of the information bantered about—and was graced with still images of hugely-inspiring works-in-progress that gave me some nascent ideas about birthing new projects of my own.

About this time I started to get a headache, which only continued to get worse and worse until I decided it’d be smart to leave the conference before the keynote by Art Spiegelman. I somewhat regret missing out, as I’ve read a little about this fellow and I’m still wondering what he might have talked about. Regardless, it probably was the better idea to escape the city earlier as the headache I was nursing by the time I made it to my brother’s apartment probably would have sent me off the road if I’d let it get much worse downtown.

All this said, I thought Thursday went well even though I felt a bit recluse, inhospitable, and even a little ill. Friday went better. I arrived a little late once again, but still felt like I got the gist of the panel I walked in on—a little something about legal contracts that I probably could have done without, but what I heard was nice to know . . . nice to get a little taste of something I hope I’ll have to consider on my own terms soon enough.

The next hour I had planned on sitting through a panel about promoting one’s own work, but the room was overcrowded even ten minutes before it started. So I wandered a bit and found a panel about turning poetry into opera that was rather fascinating. After that was a chat on writing omniscient narrators I chose to attend because, having studied Philosophy, I had to see what these folks had to say about “Omniscience.” I half-expected to be disappointed by this one, so I was pleasantly surprised that most of the info made sense.

The most interesting panel of the day followed, in the same room as the panel on poetic operas, featuring a number of scholars from the UK discussing cross-medium storytelling. I admit a large part of the thrill of this panel was listening to the wonderful thick British and Scottish and, oddly enough, Australian accents of the presenters, but they also said some excellent things about oral storytelling, about delivering stories naturally and vividly, and about motivating stories with powerful questions.

A panel in the same room followed that I misread the description for. The program booklet made it appear this panel would be about poetry appearing in comic books, but, in fact, it was a panel about poets writing poems about super heroes. Like, Batman and Superman and, I’m not sure what he’s from, Matter-eater Boy (or maybe Lad). Although I felt a little betrayed and mislead by the words I misread, the actual subject matter of the panel proved interesting in its own right, and, once again, connected well with some of my own cross-discipline thinking.

I decided to peruse the ‘book fair’ following the talk of Batman sonnets. I only had about an hour before the merchandisers were to call it a day, so I sped through very quickly—indeed, too quickly for my own good. I’ve been reading some other blogger wrap-ups about the event, and hearing about participants leaving the conference with oodles of free pens and notepads, and, sadly, I must have missed them all.

However, I did leave with a weird temporary tattoo of a grim-reaper on a rider lawn-mower, and a weird small-press book I’ve yet to crack open that I bought on a whim after the nice man behind the table gave me a few hints about where I might find some publishers of surreal works on the Internet. I hope to attend more conferences like AWP in the future now, and I’ve learned I should research what tables to check out in advance.

Saturday proved to be the most interesting of all, and indeed proved its worth right at the start. At 9am, on something of an approaching-malnourishment empty stomach, I found myself in the same room as the poem-opera, storytelling, and superhero poem panels, for a talk entitled “Quantum Narratology: Toward a Transactional Interpretation.” From the description in the program booklet, I was sure the room would be crowded with highly-intelligent folks ready to share their wild wisdoms with everyone their equals but me. In fact, the room was sparse, but thankfully not entirely bare, as a handful of avant-garde writers delivered, first, two papers about how writing has changed and, perhaps, should continue changing, and then two examples of wonderfully weird experiments.

I’m still processing most of my thoughts about this panel, the only one after which I was so compelled to shake the hand of any of the presenters, of whom offered a business card and asked if I’d send him an email. I plan on it, though feel daunted now after discovering the writer’s full credentials. If nothing else, the panel reminded me far-too-well of the odd vignettes I had been penning back in high school, the sort that I think Scott has kept up with all along. So, I want to share lots of details with him, rather than throwing everything up on this space.

Additional panels I attended focused on an animated poetry-film series, on how small-press publishers select work to publish, on writing thematic collections of poetry, on writing non-exploitative sex scenes, and on making the most of mundane gestures in fiction.

As another blogger, somewhere, had said, it appears there were really two types at this conference: those who schmoozed and purchased and socialized and left with names and books, and then those who sat and listened and whispered and left with ideas and tangents. Surely, I’m in that second category—happily, if not perhaps slightly regretful I managed to not once introduce myself to any of the vividly attractive women obviously there because they loved literature, perhaps even more than me.

In a way, it felt a lot like it does when I go to concerts alone: I tell myself, when I’m there waiting impatiently and witnessing these groups of socially-volatile folks making their fun of and with and on each other, and I sit in a corner with my hands folding over themselves slightly-worried but trying to feel content, that “I am here for the music.” And then the music starts and I am in front of the stage and the sounds arrest me, the lights rain, the noise percolates and invigorates and encourages feelings all-too-often buried for fear, for envy, for the worst and best reasons and for paradoxes, and, indeed, I am there for the music. And I leave satisfied, but a little mystified about the possibilities: about what if I’d said “hullo” to the black-haired lass with the painted lips, if I’d smiled a little more clearly at the woman wearing ridiculous heels and a denim jacket, but also overjoyed that I felt so connected and invited to the music itself.

I felt connected and invited to the ideas, to the leads I’ve been given, and I think I’ve come out of this my first professional conference with plenty to digest and follow-up on, even if I missed out on a few potential one-night-stands. So, it was an excellent weekend—and Saturday was probably the best Valentine’s day I’ve had in a decade.