The Art of the Cardigan: Lessons Learned at AWP

Last week, I attended my first writers’ conference, AWP 2012. This is a big-deal conference in the writing world, and I just lucked out that it happened to be held in Chicago this year. It was overwhelming and inspiring, so I thought I’d share a few things that I learned:

• Once I am published, I will need to obtain a wardrobe of chic, artfully draped, long cardigans in dark colors. (Corollary for men: If you’re under 30, the cardigan must be Mr. Rogers-style and be paired with black-framed hipster glasses; if you’re over 30, you can just go with a sport coat—no cardigan required.)




• It’s really cool to hear famous authors read from their books. The national award-winning authors I saw at AWP include Bonnie Jo Campbell (American Salvage), Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad), Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres), Darin Strauss (Half a Life), Isabel Wilkerson, (The Warmth of Other Suns), Jaimy Gordon (The Lords of Misrule), and Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). I know a lot of you loved Henrietta Lacks, so you’ll be pleased to know that Skloot seems like the kind of person who’d be fun to meet for margaritas.




• It’s also really cool to “discover” authors who I hadn’t heard of. If you’re looking for books that are not on the best-sellers lists (yet), check out Alexi Zentner and Alexander Yates for literary fiction; Kristen-Paige Madonia, Kat Falls, and Bridget Birdsall for young adult novels; Amina Gautier for short stories; and René Colato Laínez for young children’s books. Colato Laínez’s The Tooth Fairy Meets El Ratón Pérez looks especially fun (El Ratón Pérez is the Latin American/Spanish equivalent of the Tooth Fairy—in the book, the two characters accidentally meet at the home of an American boy with immigrant parents), and the author is an entertaining speaker.




• Translations aren’t just for Greek epic poems that you had to read in high school. A lot of publishers specialize in English translations of books from other countries. I picked up a copy of Children in Reindeer Woods by Icelandic author Kristín Ómarsdóttir. Amazon and B&N don’t even have it ready to sell yet, but I’ve got it! Muahahaha!




• Not all literary journals are full of relentlessly depressing stories and abstract poetry. There are some fun, unique journals that you might not always find on the bookstore shelves. Fairy Tale Review (variations on familiar fairy tales), Kugelmass (humor), and The Normal School (a blend of humor and other offbeat pieces) particularly caught my eye. I bought copies of those and will probably look into submitting too.




• My obsession with funky-colored pens is not uncommon to writers, even in this technological age. A lot of exhibitors were giving away cool pens. Score!




• A lot of them were also giving away pins—my favorites are the ones in the photos here.




• Wait until the last day of the conference before buying anything—the exhibitors don’t want to carry all those books and journals back home, so they’re selling them at a discount or giving them away!

Have you ever been to a book-oriented conference? Have you ever met a favorite author? Tell me about it in the comments!

 

Ready Player One: A Love Letter

I finished Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One a few weeks ago, but if I’d written this post then, I would have come off like a squealing 12-year-old at a Bieber concert. So in the interest of maintaining my professional decorum, I gave myself some time to chill the frak out.

Because I loved this book. Really, really loved it. It’s set in a dystopian America in the year 2044, where most people are dead broke and living in city slums or “stacks”—trailer parks where the trailers are stacked dangerously high in the interest of saving space. However, there also exists a virtual reality, the OASIS, in which nearly everyone in the world works, plays, and attends school. Friends are avatars who you interact with every day, but may never actually see in person. Virtual travel costs virtual money and occurs via virtual vehicles.

When OASIS creator James Halliday dies, he leaves behind a video game-style scavenger hunt, the winner of which will inherit his multi-billion-dollar fortune as well as ownership of the massive virtual world. Our hero, 18-year-old Wade Watts, joins the millions of gamers worldwide who join the hunt for the virtual keys to the ultimate prize.

Halliday came of age in the 1980s, so most of the scavenger-hunt clues and games are related to movies, videogames, and music of the era. Wade and his fellow hunters become experts on 1980s pop culture to get into Halliday’s head and decipher his puzzles. For instance, Wade’s obsessive knowledge of the movie War Games and the Rush album 2112 turn out to be valuable skills in his quest.

Of course, as in any good ’80s action story, there is an evil corporation that is looking to beat our hero and take over the (virtual) world. As the end of the contest grows closer, the stakes grow higher in the virtual scavenger hunt and in some cases, have real-life consequences.

Ready Player One is funny, fast-paced, and clever, and I might had shed a tear here and there. (I admit to nothing.) It’s Cline’s first novel by Ernest Cline, although he has written numerous spoken-word pieces and screenplays, including the hilarious indie Fanboys.

If ’80s pop culture isn’t your gig, then this probably isn’t the book for you—although I think that sci-fi/fantasy fans of all ages will appreciate this great yarn. As a sf/f-loving child of the acid-wash decade, I adored every page of it. Warner Brothers has reportedly secured the movie rights, so read it now and be ahead of the curve!

(Side note: While researching Cline’s publishing history for this post, I found out that he owns a DeLorean—which he has modified to look like Doc Brown’s time machine in Back to the Future! How awesome is that? Now I love him more.)

Bad PR = Good News?

The old saying that there’s no such thing as bad PR has turned out to be true, at least in the case of the book I just finished.

I picked up Lauren Myracle’s Shine after the National Book Award committee accidentally included Shine on their Young People’s Literature shortlist instead of a similarly named book. When they realized their mistake, instead of just adding the sixth book, they went public in saying that Shine had not made the shortlist and essentially forced the author to withdraw. Even though the book had been deemed good enough to make the nomination list, the committee apparently decided that public humiliation was the best way to go.

But the author handled the whole situation with such cool and grace. Despite feeling like crap, she withdrew but requested compensation for her trouble—in the form of a $5,000 donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation (Shine is about a girl trying to solve the violent hate-crime suffered by her gay best friend).

So this was a writer I wanted to support, and I bought the book—and I definitely made the right choice. Shine is a complex, heart-pounding mystery, with rich descriptions of setting and a vivid cast of characters. (Full disclosure: I’ve had a thing for gritty young adult lit lately.) The themes of gay bullying and drug use also make it a timely read.

The publishing media reported that Shine saw a big bump in sales during and after the book award debacle, so I hope that the net result for Myracle is that she’s gained a whole new set of fans.

Blackout!

As much as I’d like to participate in the Internet blackout, I don’t know how to take down my blog for the day. (Well, I do, but I’m not confident that I could get it back up tomorrow!)

So instead, I’m linking you to information about SOPA/PIPA, the legislation that could literally wreck the Internet as we know it. It was initially designed to try and stop Internet piracy, but the bills go too far. Way too far. They eliminate the “due process” and “innocent until proven guilty” system that our government is supposed to be based on.

If you haven’t done so already, contact your senators and representatives and tell them to vote against these bills. Sadly, one of my senators from Illinois, Dick Durbin, is one of the co-sponsors of the bill. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from big media, so don’t think that’s a coincidence. But that didn’t stop me from pestering him anyway. When he loses the next election, I want him to know why.

Published!

Well, sort of–it’s a review, not my own fiction. But it’s for Ploughshares, one of the most well-respected literary journals in the country, so I’ll take this one as a win.

I mentioned here a few months ago that I had been selected to review a past issue of Ploughshares, edited by Sherman Alexie–and here is my piece! Read and enjoy.

“Back” to Work?

Angry bird is angry!

A few months after my oldest child was born, I became a freelance writer. Over the subsequent eight years, I wrote articles late into the night, scheduled phone interviews during nap times, and answered client emails on my Blackberry while my kids played in the sandbox. I got over my paralyzing fear of “networking” and reached out to former co-workers and bosses and others who might have projects for me.

I got to be a pretty damn good freelancer, if I do say so myself. Most years, I’ve managed to bring in nearly the same salary that I was bringing in at my last full-time office gig—if you count the fact that I’m not paying for transportation, dry cleaning, or child care, my family has probably come out ahead.

Meanwhile, I got to keep the parts of my office job that I liked (writing, editing, and researching) while getting rid of the parts that I didn’t (meetings, committees, meetings, departmental budgeting, meetings).

Last fall, my youngest started “all-day” school, meaning that both of my kids are gone for nearly seven hours a day. To me, this means the chance to pursue more and bigger freelance projects, to finally write the novel I’ve always wanted to write, and to spend fewer nights tapping away at the keyboard well into the a.m. hours.

But apparently, to some others, my kids being in school means that it’s time for me to go “back to work.” I’ve been asked this a number of times in the last few months: “When are you going back to work?” “Are you going to get a ‘real job’ now?” One of these queries came from someone whose organization pays me thousands of dollars each year—I’ve written for nearly every division there. And yet I apparently do not have a “real job.”

Here’s what I would like to say to those people (but did not, because see above—thousands of dollars): Writing is not my hobby, dammit. It was my hobby when I was ten, but then I went to college and graduate school to learn more about it. Every job I’ve had since graduation has been a writing job.

And yes, I like writing, but I don’t write for entertainment. I don’t noodle around at it for fun. I sit down each day and write articles and software manuals and press releases and book chapters because that is my job. I’m good at it, and that’s why clients pay me (in some cases, quite well) to do it for them. Just because my office is the kitchen table does not mean that this isn’t real work.

So no, annoying questioners, I’m not going “back to work.” I can’t go back to something I never left.

Photo: Courtesy of ToNToNi, Wikimedia Commons

If the Networks Only Listened to Me

I started out the new TV season psyched about a lot of new shows–lots of sci-fi/fantasy/genre shows were on the schedule–but now I’ve only got a few left.

The ones I love:

Revenge: I wasn’t originally planning to watch this, but it got a good review in Entertainment Weekly so I put it on the DVR. I’m really enjoying it–it’s fun and soapy but the storylines are pretty complex and they’re setting up a well thought-out mythology. Plus, the two female leads are killing it, always making us wonder if we should sympathize with them or hate them. Love this one. (On a more shallow note, I think we’re supposed to be digging on Daniel and/or Jack, but I like geeky Nolan. Except when he wears cravats.)

Suburgatory: Funny stuff. This show could have turned out pretty average, but the actors save it. The girls who play Tessa and Lisa are hilarious, and Cheryl Hines has taken a role that could have been a caricature and given her depth. Plus, Alan Tudyk’s orangey spray tan makes me giggle every time he’s on screen.

The ones that are on the bubble for me:

2 Broke Girls: When it’s funny, it’s really, really funny. But sometimes the crass jokes are more crass than joke. The two lead actresses are both good, so I’m hoping the writers find a better rhythm.

The New Girl: Funny so far, but it’s too soon to tell if it’s more than a one-trick pony. Zooey Deschanel’s character could become insufferable if they’re not careful.

Ringer: Gah. I so wanted this to be awesome. I gave it three episodes only because of my goodwill toward SMG (or at least toward Buffy), and just when that ran out, they brought on Jason Dohring (Logan from Veronica Mars). So I’m going to give it a few more eps. But this show could be so much better than it is–it’s just really, realllllly sloooooow. Especially given the premise. I think they’re trying to go for a spooky/creepy/mysterious mood, but it’s just coming off as slow.

Buh-bye:

Pan Am: Split personality. It’s part fun-retro-cool, part spy drama, and part soap. They need to pick one. Or two.  Also, there are so many characters that I don’t find myself caring that much about any of them. They need to pick three or four, focus in on them, and then give us more on the others later. I gave it four eps and then took it off the DVR.

Terra Nova: Another one that I wanted to be awesome, but I never got around to watching any of it. The mister watched the pilot and his reaction was “eh” so I didn’t bother.

Person of Interest: Has anyone else watched this one? I DVR’d a couple of episodes, but never felt compelled to watch them.

The Secret Circle: I watched the pilot and liked it well enough, but it’s on at the same time as something else. I could watch online, but I guess I didn’t like the show enough to bother.

Jury’s still out on Once Upon a Time and Grimm, but I’m going to give those a try. The pilot of Once seemed good.

How about you? What new shows are you liking this season?

Photo: Courtesy of Oliver Kurmis, Wikimedia Commons