Apparently I Need Help. Lots and Lots of Help.

I have been attending a writers’ conference this week, and I might as well admit from the start that I have a lot of ambivalence about this sort of thing. My ambivalence is not limited to writers’ conferences, though: I tend to steer clear of conventions in general. Maybe it’s the hotel context. I feel alien the moment I step into the lobby. I get uneasy just lining up to register and scanning the schedule and trying to find a place to sort things out, and I stink at schmoozing and strategizing and selling myself. I hate assemblies in grand ballrooms with garish carpeting and rows of folding chairs and someone at a distant podium pointing to an overhead. And put me in a meeting room for more than forty minutes and I start to feel like a caged animal, especially if I am surrounded by people wearing name tags and earnest expressions who have been schlepping laptops and folders and water bottles and swollen canvas book bags stamped with the names of publishing companies and an organization logo.

It isn’t that I don’t want to succeed, and I know I have a great deal to learn from others. It’s just hard to sustain the energy level, the public face, the receptive mind. What’s more, where others might feel camaraderie, I sense competitiveness. And maybe it’s all in my head, but let’s face it: I spend a lot of time alone out here at the ranch; when it comes to social cues, I long ago lost my edge.

What can I say? I'm an introvert.

But I won this. It was a contest, and I entered a couple of essays and was offered a scholarship to attend, and it was awfully hard to decline what is probably a fantastic opportunity. So I decided to accept and embrace it and participate with as much enthusiasm and effort as I can muster. Don’t get me wrong: I am also grateful, because it’s a generous prize and an encouraging one. It’s just that I need to work myself into these kinds of experiences. I’m low threshold, high maintenance – okay? Anyone who knows me understands.

So on Day One I am engaged in small talk with a woman in the lobby and doing, I think, very well, almost like a normal person, when I somehow let slip that I have a manuscript ready to go and I plan to publish it myself but just for the heck of it I made one of those ten-minute appointments to meet with an agent but I haven’t given it any further thought and I’m just going to play it by ear.

Apparently this is just plain stupid. “You have to talk to X,” says the woman, rather insistently, referring to some fellow on the faculty. “I saw him in the bar.”

“Oh, no,” I reply sheepishly, "I don’t want to bother him if he’s in the bar. I don’t even know what I would say.”

“You tell him you have a manuscript and an appointment with an agent. Find out if you can just hand her the manuscript or if you need to write a proposal letter too. Ask him what you should say. Ask him what you should do. He’ll know. He’s The Guy.”

And this woman is like my new best friend and she literally takes me by the hand and pulls me into the bar and we veer around tables until she thinks she has glimpsed The-Guy-Who-Knows and she deposits me in front of his tiny round table in the corner where he is sipping white wine and engaged in deep conversation with a very suntanned blonde in a tangerine summer dress.

“She has a question for you,” says my new best friend.

And I feel like I am twelve years old and someone has just told the study hallteacher that I don’t really understand my math homework.

I stammer something.

“Tell me in one sentence what your manuscript is about,” says The-Guy-Who-Knows, “If you can’t sell me on your book in one sentence, you’re never going to convince an agent.”

I think my first word is ‘um’ and then I mention that I wasn’t prepared for this…and see that woman who just darted away? She actually dragged me here…and well, frankly, I’m the sort of person who needs to think about things in advance and I’m really sorry to interrupt his private time and I appreciate his advice but...

“You should be able to explain it to me in one sentence right now. Ready, set, GO.”

I know what he’s doing and I notice he is the kind of person who can’t quite keep himself from smiling because he is so pleased with himself. He is, after all, important around here, perched on a faculty, inspiring protégées, perhaps. He can be challenging. He can be indulgent. And my discomfort amuses him. Even the blonde is entertained.

But I’m such a good girl: the A-student, former school teacher, overzealous mom, all that stuff. We aim to please. I give it a shot.

It is a very long sentence.

He calls it a paragraph. He compliments me for using a big vocabulary word in there that maybe even the agent wouldn't understand. And he lets me know I haven’t made the sale.

“First of all,” he tells me, “relax.”

(Here’s the thing: I hate when people tell me to relax. Relaxing is simply not something one does on command. In fact, telling someone to relax has absolutely the opposite effect. Not only that, when he told me to relax, I already was relaxed. By my standards, anyway. Because relaxed is a relative term.)

“This is me being relaxed,” I say to The Guy-Who-Knows, “Believe me, if you saw me otherwise, you’d understand.”

We aren’t hitting it off. That much is clear.

My new best friend reappears.

“So how did it go?” she asks. “Has he told you what you need?”

“What she needs is help,” says The Guy-Who-Knows, “Lots and lots of help.”

He tells me his workshop times.

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I run into him later in the grand ballroom assembly.

“You again,” he says.

“Yes. Thanks for giving me advice,” I say, always the girl scout, still trying hard.

“And devastating you in the process,” he says with a tinge of pride. His lips curl up into that smug little half smile.

“Not even close,” I tell him.