My client Joe Clifford agreed to write a guest blog for us on his experience at AWP this year. I'm currently shopping Joe's mystery/suspense novel LAMENTATION. To see more from Joe,
Grandpa Has a Tumor—Let’s Go Fishing!
By Joe Clifford
If social media is to be believed, most people who attend the
AWP Conference walk away pissed. At least my friends and the kinds of writers I
read. There was this gem by Steve Almond a few years back, which chronicled the nightmare in
Denver and produced my all-time favorite line about AWP (“[It’s] this sad,
lovely space where Mid-List Authors Come to Feel Like Rock Stars”). The Boston
version ended a couple days ago and already we have this graphic headline from
the field. Publishing Perspectives: “AWP 2013, Day 1: Like a Giant Toilet Bowl Filled with 11,000 Writers.” I’ve
written my own series of essays on my less-than-satisfying experiences with
AWP, the best probably being this one.
If you read any of these, and certainly if you read mine, your
next logical question has to be, “Why would anyone go to this?” Or more to the
point, “Who in their right mind would go back?” That’s like the guy who’s had
two disastrous marriages and gets hitched a third. (But in my defense, my
lovely wife, Justine, is proving to buck the trend; the 3rd time
really is the charm. And what can I
say? Like all cynics, I’m a wounded romantic.)
Being a writer today, probably more than ever, means building a
platform. If you’ve ever tried to land an agent, you’ve heard about this
platform. Publishers. Editors. Publicists. Everyone talks about the need to
have one. And while the introverted writer’s best friend may be social media, every
once in a while you need to kick it old school and actually, y’know, put on
pants and leave the house. At least I convinced myself I did.
It had been a few years since the disaster that was Denver. I
won’t recap that miserable experience in its entirety. If you care to know just
how awful it was, I’ve linked the story above. I was certainly part of the
problem. Fresh out of grad school, novel(s) in hand, desperate to be noticed
and validated, I, like the rest of the furry rodents scurrying the wheel, was
singularly focused, stopping at nothing to let the writing world know I’d
arrived. I gathered around the tables as the “mid-level” held court. I laughed
at jokes that weren’t funny and praised work I either A.) hadn’t read or B.)
had read and found underwhelming. I hated myself while I was doing it. And I
hated myself when it was over. Like a fat kid horking back pie through the
tears but unable to stop. Heavy on carbs, light on sustenance.
I am not comfortable in social situations, and in Denver I
approximated what I thought a “normal” person is supposed to act like. Which is
bad enough at dinner parties. Never mind holding a flimsy MFA degree, surrounded
by ten thousand needy strangers and strapped with 70K in student loan debt, feeling
like you needed a book published yesterday. Having spent most of my adult life
on the fringes, refusing to sell out, I wanted badly to buy in. I was shucking
and jiving with the rest of them.
There’s nothing wrong with the construction. AWP is like any
other insurance salesman convention. You glad hand, you meet for drinks at the bar
at the end of the day. Mostly you band together with the other “too cool for
school” kids and mock others. Starts in grad school, ends at the grave. Certainly
nothing to get worked up about. No, the part that really gets to you (if you
are a writer, and if you weren’t a writer, why the fuck would you be at AWP?)
is the phoniness.
Writing—good writing—is about cutting through the bullshit,
telling hard truths, however ugly. It’s integral to one’s character. “Building
a platform,” while entirely necessary, stands in stark contrast to that ethos;
it just feels wrong (“Remember, you’re not selling a book—you’re selling you!”).
Add to that, shelling out several hundred bucks to spend three days walking
around a book fair (and that is what AWP basically is, a big book fair), with chirpy
people and woeful college writing—mix in some self-loathing and regret, which
results in needless introspection, and way, way too much shitty coffee—and you
can see why no one seems to walk away feeling good about themselves.
Well, almost no one.
There does seem to be a small contingency that genuinely enjoys
the event, and this isn’t to besmirch them. The older I get, the less
besmirching I do (smirching is a messy business). My guess is that those having
a good time at AWP are simply more social. And have books out. I have books out.
But—and it’s a big one (which of course we know do not lie. Sorry)—I don’t
write…literary fiction.
There’s the rub. AWP is a literary fiction event. No way around
it. While I may be able to chalk up part of my miserable time at the conference
to my less-than-cheerful disposition (I could be depressed rolling in a pit of
kittens), it is undeniable that this thing just ain’t meant for me. Like Chris
Rock says of rap and white people. AWP is a topsy-turvy world, a place where poetry
sits atop the literary food chain, and genre is the slugshit you scrape off the
bottom of Birkenstocks. Walk out on the street and say you write poetry, and
who gives a fuck? Say you write poetry at AWP, and you probably have the
chapbook to prove it. Short story collections. Obtuse, indie novels. University
presses. These things matter at AWP, and if you are one of the current literary
darlings, I imagine it might be fun to be relevant for a bit. Like going to
your 20th high school reunion and still having hair (and being the
best looking guy there—suck it, Tad Brenner!).
But while I weathered heroin addiction, kept my hair, and shone
at my 20th, I write noir and hardboiled these days. And AWP is no
place for criminally minded.
While
bitching at the Office (Facebook) upon my return to the Bay Area, commiserating
with other, equally dissatisfied pulp fiction writer friends I’ve never
actually met face to face, Alex Cizak, editor of the print journal Pulp Modern, wrote, “Maybe it’s time to
start a conference for Writers Who Write about Things Other Than Fishing with
Cancerous Grandpa...” Fishing with grandpa and his tumor. Yup. That’s literary
fiction and AWP.
Fortunately,
I think they already have a conference for the other guys. It’s called
Bouchercon. I’ve never been but I’m going this fall. I’ve heard good things. I
hope to see Alec and some of my other figurative hardboiled buddies in Albany
come September. It might turn out to suck, but at least I’ll be surrounded by
my own kind and maybe this time I won’t feel like such a fraud.
