Writing

Muse & the Marketplace: Day 3

Business time 

The day’s first session was with Courtney Maum, whose fantastic Before and After the Book Deal I impulsively picked upon my first trip to a physical bookstore since February 29, 2020.

The book and the talk were both packed with information, context and perspective. But the most important lesson I learned was this: 

Guard your joy. 

Courtney Maum

On the journey to publication, there are highs and lows, unpleasant surprises, and confusing ways to lose the very small amount of money you make as an author. It’s good to be prepared for those moments. 

But the reason you prepare for those moments, the reason for any of this is: It’s fun to write. It’s a joy and it matters deeply. And you can’t let the marketing side, the business side, the publishing side ruin that for you. 

Odds are I’m not going to move to NYC and go to readings three nights a week. I’m not going to get an MFA. I live in a small city distant from other small cities. Odds are not exactly on my side (or anyone’s side) in this mad publishing game. But I love writing, I love reading, and this journey is worth it, unpleasant surprises and all. 

As long as I remember to guard my joy. 

Craft time

At lunch, I attended Vievee Francis’ session on writing the ars Ppoetica.  These “live only” sessions really trigger my FOMO, but boy am I glad I attended this one.

I love me a good ars poetica poem and have written so many small ones:

But I think to myself: Does the world really need another ars poetica? Hasn’t it been done, you know, kind of a lot

But today’s session illuminated the value of these poems, no matter how many have been written. No matter how many have been written by a single author, even. 

Vievee read us some incredible examples, and talked about how our poems will tell us what we think. And how what we think affects what we do. 

If we think our poetry doesn’t matter, she said, then we may write a poem that matters and not even realize it. 

At the end of a gorgeous lecture, she gave us a writing exercise. I wrote about the yellow roses that are blooming now in my yard, because that seems to be all I can write about lately. 

They are wondrous and reliable, mundane and miraculous.  And I got the start of a pretty decent poem out of the deal. I can look outside and see a symbol of my writing life blooming wild and raucous. 

It’s an exercise I plan to take with me, do again, and again, because my mind changes. 

Makin’ friends

One of my goals for the conference was to “make some friends”. Meeting other writers and people in the industry has been a goal of mine for two years running. I want to find people who are juggling a job and a novel, people who are shooting for publication, people who won’t mind if I suddenly turn up with a poem about yellow roses instead of a chapter of my novel. 

As with many things in life, raising your hand and asking for help works. I asked for writers who wanted to form a cohort around science fiction and fantasy, and a little group of like-minded writers is starting to coalesce.

Today’s surprise: Pomegranate mojito mix, which I drank while sitting on my back patio and writing. Cuz it’s Friday! These small shared experiences are adding so much to the conference.