Yes, Networking is Art, Too.

Special AWP 2023 addition!

Today I write from America’s largest writing industry conference: AWP. I know big conferences can feel overwhelming to many of us, but personally I love a bustling conference.

Program notes: This AWP I’m on two panels, one on writing linked story collections (thanks for the invite National Book Award nominee Jonathan Escoffery) and one on humor in fiction. Multiple prizewinner and friend of this newsletter Deesha Philyaw has joined the latter panel. I’m also doing the off-site Glitterati reading at 6pm PST on Saturday night at the Rabbit Box. Furthermore, I just signed on to the South Word Literary Festival and the following week the Word of South Literary Festival. I’ll also be teaching an intro to fiction writing class on April 29 and teaching at Maine Media this summer.

“My mother always told me, ‘Never give up because you never know who’s praying for you.’” – Denzel Washington.

Let’s see…I’ve gone to AWP nine times (10 if I count the virtual stuff in 2021). New Orleans has several very good literary conferences and festivals I’ve attended too many times to count (Words and Music, Faulkner Fest, Tennessee Williams Festival, New Orleans Book Festival, etc.). Read My World in Amsterdam a few times. Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Muse and the Marketplace over in Boston and several others. I went to legal conferences back when I was Corporate Lawyer Maurice. I always felt run down about halfway into them. I never tire of writing conferences.

Many writers have asked me why I’m so gung-ho about going to these often frenetic events. Especially, the massive ones like AWP. They talked about their discomfort with the crowds, the chaos, the sturm and drang of it all. I get it. And for those who aren’t into it, be at peace.

I wasn’t into them either…until I was.

There’s a voice in the back of my head that tells me to do things. When I listen to it, things tend to work out for the better.

In 2011, that voice told me to listen to a friend (the genius Jamey Hatley) that recommended I attend my first AWP in D.C. I was working full time as a corporate lawyer but had neither the time nor the money to go away (three-piece lawyer suits and four-wheel lawyer BMWs are expensive). Still, a couple of years before I had pointedly dropped out of my law-related extracurricular activities—conclaves on the drafting of arcane 117-point resolutions that took years to draft and that no one in the real world would ever see—so that I could get my MFA at night school and make time for other writing endeavors. What did I set aside time for if not this?

The thing that struck me at that first conference was how many ordinary (i.e. unpublished) writers like myself were there. There were so many. Like 15,000, that I began to classify them. Hat writers and scarf writers and colorful-hair writers and look-at-my-cool-jacket writers and embarrassing shirt writers. What? You don’t classify people into mildly amusing categories when you’re nervous? Of course, you do. You’re a writer. But what I’m really trying to say is that I immediately felt at home amongst so many people, like myself, with deep interior lives and questionable senses of fashion. These were my people, I thought, as I walked into the huge registration area in my already woefully out of style, skintight Ed Hardy shirt, which was covered in black roses and ornate skulls.

The craft panels were another thing that caught my attention. As an unpublished writer, I was aching to learn. I think at one point there were three panels at the same time on fiction writing. Which to attend? It was a little like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. Of course, I loved it. In my regular life, few people gave a damn about the craft of writing. But here everyone did. I could get into a conversation with someone in the coffee line about the relative strengths and weaknesses of close third versus first-person POV. If I tried this back home, I would get a confused stare.

But all of that pales in comparison to the people I met and got to know. I remember seeing some of my classmates outside of a reading. They were smoking and complaining about the unrelenting pace and chaotic energy of the conference. But I noticed that every time I saw these classmates, they were together just like back home. What was point of flying across the country to hang with the same people you hung with at home? What was the point of having the same conversations? Discussing the same problems in the same ways?

A writing conference is a place for serendipity and discovery. A place to get out of one’s comfort zone. A place to challenge yourself on behalf of your art and your unwritten books. An hour ago, before I sat down to revise and post this newsletter, I saw a group of my LSU students at the hotel breakfast bar. I told them to go out and get into trouble. Don’t play it safe. Don’t be shy. Don’t doubt yourself.

I can recall every single time I overcame my anxiety and shyness to connect with a fellow writer or editor. Here are a couple of instances. One year while waiting for, I think, Margaret Atwood, to give the keynote address. I struck up a conversation with someone behind me. He turned out to be the editor of a small university magazine. We laughed a bit and at the end of our chat he gave me his card and asked that I send him a story. That became my first published story, a one-page flash fiction piece.

Another time, I went to a panel on publishing short story collections. Afterwards, I went down to the dais where the four panels with chatting with other attendees. Awkward and nervous, I told one of the panelists I had no idea what to do with the many stories I had written. He gave me his card (do you see a pattern?) and asked me to send a few of my stories. A month or so later he asked to publish my collection. I was stunned and grateful. Now, ultimately, I didn’t publish with that editor (he was wonderful; the press just wasn’t a good fit at that time). But those experiences taught me that while craft is the essence of writing, there’s a really an art to networking.  

We are artists first and foremost. Full stop.

Also too, networking is a four-letter word for those of us who live or have lived in various corporate or anti-artistic fields. Plus, we writers are usually closer to monks than salespeople. Most of us don’t really want to push our way into conversations and glad hand strangers.

And yet…we operate within an industry. An industry of dreams, mystery, tragedy, and, too often, chaos. Just like life itself. We know that life itself is better when we’re connected to people who care for us and whom we care for. Why should our writing journey be any different? Go to conferences if you can. Find your writing family. You won’t regret that which helps your art thrive.