Cattle Call

For the second year in a row, I dragged my unmotivated ass over to Myrtle Beach to attend the South Carolina Writer’s Workshop conference, which is held there every fall. I have yet to figure out why Myrtle Beach, year in and out. Every conference is at the aging Kingston Plantation, a series of midsized hotels and condo buildings clustered together on the beach. I can sort of understand the appeal. Most of the agents who attend the conference come down from New York City and want a little sun on their vampire pale skin, a reason to escape the late October chill. But why not Charleston? Surely they have room for a conference of this size. So what if it’s not directly on the beach? What it lacks in ocean view it makes up for in Southern charm and historical quirkiness.

The rooms sold out quickly at the Hilton, where the conference was held, so I had a room in a neighboring condo building. My one bedroom condo was actually smaller than a standard hotel room, only with a larger nightly price tag. The advertised seating area was literally a chair, and not an oversized lounge one either. A dining room chair. A waiting room chair. Kudos to marketing on that!

But the idea of the conference was not to stay tucked away in my tiny room, stewing over the false advertising and the long drive. The idea was to surround myself with my peers, fellow writers, both new and seasoned, to learn about the craft of writing, what sells, and balancing the two in a way that satisfies the creative need and the business model. In between sessions offered on a wide range of topics, we had the opportunity to mix and mingle and discover and bond.

Except the conference organizers forgot that key feature of writers which makes them good at what they do. They are mostly introverts. They tend to hide in their homes, usually in stained clothes (if they bothered to get dressed at all), unshowered and jacked up on too much coffee/chocolate/Capt’n Crunch. They don’t work in packs. As my daughter S once said before a nap, “I sleep alone.” Taking a group of shy loners and throwing them together does not create a community; it creates a sociological experiment. This awkward gathering was then sprinkled with publishing professionals like agents and editors, which tapped into a deeply rooted desperation that guaranteed social interaction.

The best example of this was the nightly buffet dinner. One or two publishing professionals were assigned to each round table in the ballroom. They were not allowed to sit with their friends and co-workers from back home, but instead were forced to be available to the many writers who paid top dollar for that kind of access. While the wannabe writers sipped their house wine and bar brand drinks outside, the professionals were brought in and seated like the celebrities they are. The attendees would then crowd around the one door in, pushing and shoving each other impatiently, hoping to volley for position to attack their agent or editor of choice. One poor volunteer was given the unpleasant task of checking each person’s access at the door, before the people gained admittance and sprinted furiously around the room, searching frantically for the “right” table. It was reminiscent of registration for high school classes, and inevitably someone was left out of the process and would stand alone, like the loser at musical chairs. The experts were then forced to make nicey small talk with people they would never consider conversing with in any other capacity in their professional or personal lives. They did it, they claimed, because they wanted to find hidden talent. More likely, they did it because they lost the office pool, or perhaps the devil had come for their souls.

The workshops themselves were not much different. The rooms were organized in lecture style, and no matter what the topic, one person who was slightly off would dominate the question and answer section, and sometimes even the lecture. This person, different in each lecture and yet surprisingly the same, had varying standards of hygiene, with bits of food clinging to beard hair or all the hair on one side of the head matted from the pillow. Sometimes she would take her shoes off and walk around the room. Sometimes he left his cane behind after each lecture so kind strangers would bring it back to him and he could trap them in conversation. He asked questions like, “Is it okay to like what I write?” She would thank the speaker and ask for a hug. It was painful to watch.

I did have something in common with the rest of the bunch. Despite the overpriced rooms, the adequate dining, and the stilted conversation, I was full of hope at the conference. Hope that I would make the right connection. That one extra witty comment would make an impression. That something I had to say would make someone with the key to success want to hear more from me. Was it fun? Not particularly. What is was, and no offense to cows, was a big fat cattle prod, designed to zap my rump into action. Hear me moo!