To sum up...

Okay, FF&W. It's a long story.

The encapsulated version: I got to work early on Thursday so I could leave early so I could make the first session and I did. Then I listened to Luci Shaw do readings, always a highlight of anything. Over the next two days, I attended several sessions, some interesting, some helpful, some incredibly funny, and one very boring and pointless one. I was very tired at the end, somehow managed to lose seven pounds over those two and a half days, and had one moment of combined bravery and shrinking violetness. And then I took Sunday off to breathe in spring air, nurse my sunburned and itchy skin, and completely enjoy the silence. It was nice.

Longer story:
First, Luci Shaw. I heart her. I do. I want to hang out with her and plant things with her and give free reign to my metaphorical nature impulses and speech which I can so rarely do around other people. And, because of her, I have to figure out where I can find a Tibetan prayer bowl. Which may be difficult as I don't think that's actually the name of the thing. ETA: Nepali singing bowl! Not Tibetan. Thank you, random blogger.

The "I've Written Something...Now What?" session was a given to attend. Realistic, depressing, but fun. Trying to write for eventual publication can be such an exercise in futility and yet, like Sisyphus, we keep rolling that hope up the industry hill, which just gets steeper and more slippery every year. At which point, maybe I mean the glass mountain with the princess at the top. Regardless, very helpful session with three industry insiders, one of whom I worked with directly at Baker, but who, I'm sure, would not recognize me at all. Good session.

The session on C. S. Lewis and Moral Imagination reinforced my assertion that children KNOW good and evil exist, no matter what adults try to tell them about the relativity of truth and despite our attempts at protecting them by filing down the teeth of fairy tales.

Brian Doyle, essayist extraordinaire, was deeply encouraging to a person who also employs excessive adjectives and wandering sentence structure.

The three ladies of "Can Christians Tell the Truth?" did just that and generated no less than three ideas for further writing according to my notes. My favorite line (or at least the only one I wrote down) was from Deb Rienstra: "Romance really is the Christian story, isn't it?" I quite like her.

No one who knows me will be surprised that I went to a session on metaphor. There was much discussion and an assignment on finding your own writing metaphor and discovering its inherent strengths and weaknesses. Mine surprised me. I'll do a complete write-up on that in a different post. Quite enjoyed it, though, and furthered my previously formed desire to someday speak to and learn from Leslie Leyland Fields.

Davis Bunn, best-selling author in both CBA and ABA markets, gave two interesting and useful sessions on writing commercial fiction, which is somewhat unusual at a conference so often focused on literary work. They were great to sit in on since, though my non-fiction is decidedly literary, my fiction tends toward genre fiction. (I think. I often find myself rolling my eyes at the difficulty of pinning down a pigeonhole for my writing.)

Chip MacGregor gave the session that I found the most completely practical (and at the same time, wildly amusing) of the entire conference. He's self-deprecating, which I always find funny as long as it doesn't make the audience uncomfortable which this absolutely did not. He told us the anatomy of a good book proposal from the inside, what all of the terms mean exactly, offered a helpful set/subset form of the three things agents and editors look for (Big Idea, Great Writing, Platform), and encouragingly reassured his audience that it's not only okay to be derivative, it's unavoidable. I like him, rather a lot. If I wrote Christian fiction, I would so want him to be my agent. (I kind of want him to be anyway, but I don't know if it would be a good fit--that's the annoying thing about being a Christian who's a writer, but not a "Christian writer").

The "Laughing Out Loud" session (starring Haven Kimmel and Joan Bauer, moderated by Calvin prof Karen Saupe) was an incredibly accurately titled time. Because that's ALL we did. Laugh hysterically. Which was great.

The last session I went to was...well, by this time, I didn't think I could go to a bad session. I didn't think there would be anything (at least in the sessions) that I could regret. I was wrong. This was pointless, boring, unhelpful, and had next to nothing to do with what it was supposed to be about. Grr.

Then I went to a mix-and-mingle reception for Seattle Pacific University's Creative Writing MFA program and proceeded to feel very badly about myself when I, unsurprisingly, was bad at mixing and mingling. I was hoping someone in the program would come over and talk to me, try to get me interested in spending money to go there and learn. Instead, I wandered around, feeling shy, telling the three people who came up to me that, no, I didn't have anything to do with the program but was, in fact, here to find out more. Which wasn't particularly helpful to either of us, as they were too. I wandered past Brian Doyle by his lonesome (the only person of the four I specifically wanted to talk to who wasn't surrounded by other people) a few times, trying to get up the courage to say hello, thank you, "Gee, I like essays," whatever, but never could. After half an hour, I left. But I went and I stayed for half an hour! Which is great for me!

In the midst of all of this, I got to talk to several people at magazines, publishing houses I don't work for, writing programs, and a matchmaking website for authors and publishing houses. True story. I was encouraged by the amount of people who want to see my work based solely (apparently) on conversation with me, my description of my own confusion on defining my writing, that I work in publishing, and am fairly articulate and easily amused. It's actually rather intimidating because I feel like their hopes are higher than my writing skill can deliver on, but I'm trying to focus on the "Cool! They like me!" side of things.

Now that it's over, I'm following through on contacts, writing furiously, considering the merits of SPU's MFA vs. finding a good mentor or two (which would be cheaper and possibly more helpful more quickly, but WHO?!), etc., etc. And this morning yet another book idea came to mind and I really want to write it, but I should probably finish the two I've already started first. Or I could take the 25 hours a week SPU says is average for writing in their program and just write simultaneously on all three and whatever else comes up, but I desire feedback and bettering my craft and...and sometimes my mind moves too quickly for my own good.

That's what I have to say about that. Sorry for the length.