Welcome to the Literary Key Party
Last summer, I was invited to attend a summer writer’s workshop, the kind that could expose my writing to agents and editors, decreasing the inevitable future of paying off student loans as a green-hat at McDonalds. As part of the acceptance packet, I received a card with a questionnaire about my living arrangements. With the exception of not being a vegetarian, or bi-curious, the questions seemed to define how much of a wannabe writer stereotype I am. Yes, I eat meat; yes, I smoke; yes, I drink alcohol; yes, I’m filled with angst. The last question asked me to rate, on a scale from one to five, how social I thought I was. Instead of being honest, I shaded the fourth box.
For the last few years, I’ve operated under the false assumption that an aspiring writer is a shut-in. As a matter of fact, what’s most appealing about the idea of being a writer is that it’s one of the few jobs you can do in your pajamas. With a computer, a television, a treadmill, and a trip to the grocery store, you too can live like hamster. Sweatpants and ugly T-shirts with things like ONE DOLLAR MAMOGRAMS can be your business casual. But that’s only partly true.
On his last book tour, Chuck Palahniuk was asked, “What’s it like being a writer?” After pointing out how inane of a question it was, he said he existed on each end of the social spectrum. He spent the majority of the year writing and living like a hermit, and a few months meeting thousands of people. The writing life—at least a successful one—is by necessity social.
The writer’s workshop lasted a week and turned out to be something like a Bacchanalian cult. Other aspiring writers paired off each night as if it were a 1970’s key party, leaving a brick wall of empty cigarette packs, two fifty-five gallon trashcans overflowing with wine and beer bottles, and a hot tub as brown and salty as gravy. There was a point near the end of the week where I was sandwiched between a middle-aged man and a married woman in a hot tub overloaded with writers. I sobered up enough to realize that I was the only one still wearing a bathing suit. If an orgy is a five step process, we were on step four—polyamorous atmosphere, alcohol, nudity, and fondling. I leapt out of the water and went to bed, but made sure I had everyone’s e-mail address, just in case I wanted to send something to their lit magazine in the future.
Despite any romanticized ideal of living in self-imposed exile like Bukowski, or Kerouac on Desolation Peak, meeting people and developing professional relationships are essential. The more I think about it, the more that writing sounds like a real job. Whether we like it or not, we all have to get into the metaphorical hot tub orgy eventually.
Tags: bark, networking, the writing life, writer
Are you going to mention the hot tub scene to the married editors when you send them your stuff. :-)
I’m watching “The L Word” on DVDs and one of the characters is a writer. In one of the episodes she told a friend “No, this is not one of those things I did just to write about the experience.” (She was talking about sleeping with a woman for the first time.) I sometimes wonder how often we subconsciously decide to participate in stuff because it would make for great material—discounting all the stuff we do because alcohol is involved. I know that visiting my family has become a lot easier after I realized how inspired I am put our unoriginal dysfunctional interactions on paper after spending a week or two with them.
And hot tub orgy, you have to admit that’s fantastic material no matter how or why or how you ended up in that situation.
Yeah, you’ve gotta be social if you’re a writer; otherwise you’ll start writing like Trollope. Not that that’s bad, if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Sigh.
Hilarious post, by the way. I’ve been on the fence about applying to one of these professional summer workshops, assuming that they’re more of a shut-in, belt out your fucking memoir in a month sort of deal, but after reading this I may have to go ahead and shade the fourth box. Or maybe the fifth box, depending on who’s floating in the gravy. Ew.
I got a genuine, out-loud laugh out of this post. This is the part that got me:
“but made sure I had everyone’s e-mail address, just in case I wanted to send something to their lit magazine in the future.”
I can utterly relate to the boy (though, Scott, I know that you are a man) in a bathing suit in the middle of an orgy, thinking about email messages.
hilarious. katie roiphe is disappointed in you, however, for not hanging around in the gravy…
I was just putting submissions together, fighting off the ever-present thought of how pointless and time-consuming it is, wishing there was a more direct way to make connections with people at these magazines so I could be reasonably sure my submission was at least read (I often suspect, because not even the stapled corner of the first page is bent, that no one has even read the story, but merely stuffed it back in the SASE), but now I’m a lot more okay with my removed distance and remote chances of getting “in” with these people. Thanks.
[...] was as the Port Townsend Writers Conference a couple of years ago, and because there wasn’t a hot tub there, and because I was eating meals with people I didn’t know, I started asking people [...]
Wonderful blog, i want to read your blog posts when I can. Is there a way to have these sent to my email and then i can read it when i want to? let me know please.