Last week I traveled to New York City for a writer’s conference. After paying fifty dollars for a short taxi ride from the airport to the hotel, and feeling the culture shock of being surrounded by all that concrete, I posted the picture shown here on Facebook and mentioned that I dislike New York City. Actually, I said I hated it. With some venom.
But seriously, that isn’t entirely true. I’m just not a city person. I dislike noise and crowds. I love nature. I live on forty acres in the country right outside the Shawnee National Forest, next to a string of orchards and the Southern Illinois wine trail. But wow, did New Yorkers react. One of them blocked me. Wow.
So I bought a New York t-shirt and posted a tongue-in-cheek explanation. Here’s what I wrote:
“To all of you who suffered psychotic breakdowns and PTSD because I don’t like NYC, this may appease you: this is my fourth time here and I think the people in NYC are some of the nicest anywhere. The 9-11 Memorial is astounding, the food is delicious, the Statue of Liberty is unforgettable, the Broadway plays (I’ve been to six) are top notch, and getting to sit in Seth Meyer’s audience was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Here’s a t-shirt I bought that has a picture of NYC. I hope you can now sleep tonight.”
But here’s my new I-love-New-York thing. The conference was fantastic. If you’re a writer and you want to connect with an agent, that’s the place to do it. I met eight and out of those, seven made partial or full requests of my most recent manuscript: Ambiguous: Growing up in the Violence of the Coal Mines with a Sexually Confused Mother. What that means is that two agents requested my proposal and entire manuscript, and five others requested either my proposal and/or sample chapters.
I can’t emphasize strongly enough that, if you’re a writer who wants to get traditionally published with the larger publishing houses, you gotta go to conferences. It’s way too easy for agents and editors to overlook queries in the hundreds of emails they receive every day. Or maybe they just want to find writers who have made the effort and spent the money to come to a place where we can hone our craft, understand what we face in order to sell books, and prove that we can be social and presentable.
Yes, all of those requests have me pumped, but it’s only the first step. Will one of those agents decide to represent me? Will they be able to sell my book? Will lots of people read it?
With all that’s left before me, however, here’s what encouraged me the most. About half of the agents present at the conference are interested in memoir. The genre isn’t dead and it isn’t dying.
Vive la memoire
Vive la New York City
