(I’m writing from an undisclosed location far from home. You might even call this attempts to write about events as the occur "live blogging." As opposed to the dead kind I usually engage in.)
It’s been a difficult week.
Last Monday, my Memphis Tigers pulled one of the greatest chokes in the history of sports, managing to lose the NCAA men’s basketball national championship game when they had victory well in hand. The loss filled me with undulating waves of despair and anger, which stopped only after I nearly destroyed a piece of furniture whose only crime was to be sitting in my path.
A work assignment then crashed on my head like a bag of wet cement, which tied me to the computer for 14 hours a day. On Saturday, Wife and I had to clean up the house all day on account of a canine inspection for bed bugs (more on that later); Sunday, I spent the greater part of the morning on my hands and knees, scrubbing excess caulk off the floor. (I had caulked the 3.3 million cracks in the floor because of, yes, bed bugs.)
I awoke at 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning feeling as if two semi-tractor trailers full of mucus had driven into my sinus cavities and collided. I trudged off to work, then boarded a plane in the afternoon to attend a conference at which, at least on paper, I am expected to actually work .
But all that I could handle. What I couldn’t handle was at the conference, I had to attend a "networking" reception at which I had to "schmooze."
Now, if there is one skill essential to a writer of modest talent like myself, it should be knowing the right people. It’s hard enough to get noticed, nearly impossible over the transom, and having connections, however small, are important.
Of course, this essential talent is so antithetical to my core that just considering it creates a walnut-sized tumor in my gut that is likely to expand to the size of a Barca-lounger by the time I am finished writing this sentence.
Write this, Candace
If Hell is other people, my idea of the Ninth Ring of Hades is a reception at which one is forced to wear a nametag and make small talk with strangers, in which the inevitable awkward pauses when one runs out of things to say lasts for all eternity.
It turns out that the reception went fine, full of forced bonoomie, free-flowing booze, and canapes as cold and lifeless as Dick Cheney’s heart. By the end, I had accomplished my three goals. First, I had managed to speak to more than one person without looking like a complete and utter fool. Second, I passed out my business card to several people. Third, I didn’t pass out in the clam dip.
(An aside: why is it that the cliched dip to pass out in is always clam dip? What’s wrong with the bearnaise sauce at the roast beef station? Or the Russian dressing next to the crudites?)
On this very topic of networking I have spoken eloquently, or, to be more precise, I’ve screamed about it like a raving maniac. Drop me into a room full of literary types who would love to talk shop or solicit stories for their publications, and I turn into the 15-year-old nerd trying to work up the courage to ask out the head cheerleader on a date. I don’t exactly turn into the Sphinx, but I don’t turn into a politician, either.
The paradox of this state of affairs is that the same qualities that inevitably kill my pathetic attempts at networking — a tendency to blend into the background, not wanting to talk about oneself, my inability to fake sincerity — are the same qualities that all good writers need. If you are an outgoing person, you may be an excellent scribe, but you have to train yourself to listen to what others say; you have to learn how to observe.
Perhaps I overstate the need to make connections; after all, many a writing career was started in the slush pile. And no matter how many asses one has puckered up to, if one can’t write well or at least write something that’s marketable, you won’t get published (imagine Candace Bushnell writing a novel about the mating habits of the Vancouver Island marmot — no talent, no subject, no sale).
Fido says: Bookfraud is bug free
So, enough moaning and groaning. I promised myself I would end this on a positive note. The dog came in to check for bed bugs, sniffed and sniffed, but could not detect a single one. It’s the second "clean sweep" we’ve had in a month, meaning, we’re finally done with the scourge.
Fuck yeah!
Now, I really don’t have any more excuses for not writing.
But I’m going to be positive about it.
Congrats on the bed-bug-free-zone that is now your bed.
You’re not a shmoozy-do?! I’m surprised because you feel shmoozy.
So, what are you working on now, lemme heah?!
I don’t envy you the schmoozing — or the bed bugs! — one bit.
My condolences.
God! Those bed bugs again?? Now I get the inspiration for the opening line, “They lined the highway like an unbroken chain of smoke, up hills, through valleys, along rock crevices….”
What a nightmare. I’m glad and very hopeful the bugs stay away for good!
As for schmoozing – I’m with you. Hate it but gotta do it. Put me behind a pen & paper any day!
Two things most writers seem to hate – networking (ninth ring of Hades – I love it) and reading their work to a room of strangers. Who decided writers were especially deserving of such torture? I can’t think of two other acts so at odds with the private, solitary act of writing.
Because the words “clam dip” are funny. In fact, the letter “c” is funny — some comedian, I forget who, pointed that out.
Bedbug sniffing dogs — that’s an incredible artifact, you know. (Congrats, by the way.)
I strongly, vehemently disapprove of “networking” as an activity separate from regular life. It should be stamped out! All nametags ought to be destroyed! The application of the business model to literature is what’s ruining it.
katie: thanks for the good wishes re: bed bugs — it’s been a nightmare. truly so. i’ve actually had nightmares about them, bastids.
i feel schmoozy? but i didn’t let you feel me, katie.
thirdworst: appreciate the condolences. like i said, i survived the networking and bed bugs, almost simultaneously, so i’m gonna live. remarkably.
writerkat: it’s a good thing the bed bugs or gone; otherwise, i would have had to keep writing about it.
if there is a writer who loves schmoozing, i have yet to meet them. Then again, i’m not going to the networking events to actually meet them…
verbivore: who decided writers were especially deserving of such torture? who the gods wish to punish, they first make insane. writing is a solitary act; networking forces human contact. bleech.
rellis: “clam dip” is funny, you are correct. who ever thought of putting clams in a dip?
the dogs are amazing; we hired them out of desperation. thanks for the congrats.
you are correct: nametags should be outlawed. along with forced frivolity, bad appetizers, and talent-free, butt-kissing writers. interesting take about the “business model” applied to writing. i may have to steal that blog idea from you…
I hope you are truly and finally bug free.
Horrible situation.
Jeez, you make one of my worst weeks sound pretty tame. I hope you are at least feeling better!
I’m with you on the not liking to schmooze. My one talent as far as social skills seems to be that I can manage to hook up with good friends who do that for me. I just don’t come across well much of the time. I even work with the public and get more complaints because they took something I said to HELP them the wrong way. (Just call me obnoxious AND officious, I guess.) If I’m ever told I must go on book tours, I’ll simply curl into a ball and die. Really.
I have an excuse however, and that is my job doesn’t allow for random days off. I have to put in for them in October. Yup. Keeps me from wasting money on the MFA or writing conferences, too; so that’s probably a good thing.
I’m a member of a writing org that actually calls its meetings “schmoozes.” Whenever I can force myself to go and not become a part of the wall, I try to bring a writer friend of mine so we can introduce each other. “This is my friend, Blah E. Blah and she wrote a book called Blah…” It’s a helluva lot easier to talk up someone else’s book than your own.
I FEEL you here, bro.
I always leave these situations–no matter how “successful”–needing a shower and three days alone in a quiet, dark hole.
I HATE schmoozing! I’d rather sit in the bar and drink – or better yet, stay home. Congratulations on passing the bedbug test. I’ll sleep better knowing they aren’t crawling all over you.
That is why so many writers drink. So they can schmooze with the bed bugs.
The Comedian as the Letter C is a poem by Wallace Stevens. I don’t know his feelings about clam dip. But I have it on good authority that he drank a LOT when he went out with his work colleagues. Oh, and he doesn’t seem to have liked literary get togethers any more than you do. On at least one occasion he wrote a weird apology letter after one such get together where he believed he’d had too much to drink. In the letter he claimed he’d done some insulting thing no one could actually remember him doing. And one more thing: he once got into a fist fight with Ernest Hemingway in Florida, probably while drinking. And he didn’t acquit himself well.
Why do I tell you all this? Who knows. That’s what comments are for.
“why is it that the cliched dip to pass out in is always clam dip?”
Because who would miss the clam dip if it were destroyed? Seriously, it is almost to parties, like parsley is to fine dining. Unless it is utilized properly, it becomes an inconsequential garnish.
What sad times we live in, that bed bugs have made come back, but not good jazz and or a new Algonquin Round Table. I’m glad to hear the dog gave your house a pass, I wouldn’t wish those vermin even on Rupert Murdoch.
I must be the only person in the Known World who likes both fruitcake and clam dip. No wonder I piss people off so well!
Somewhere along the way, some diabolical marketing genius realized there was money to be made from all those writers sitting quietly at their desks. Eventually writers were persuaded that to succeed they must attend conferences and join workshops and get MFAs and buy how-to-write books and network and jump through all the other circles of hell that make up the creative-writing-industrial-complex. The clam dip was just an afterthought.
bernita: you have no idea how horrible. Thanks for the kind wishes.
writtenwyrdd: i aim to please. if I can make your otherwise bad weeks tame, it makes me feel just a little better.
i think you’re on to something — i think we should hire people to hook us up with people we need to know. that way, we avoid all the awkwardness and death-inducing awfulness normally associated with networking.
yes, save the money on the mfa and conferences. spend it on hallucinatory drugs instead.
leigh: brilliant idea. use your existing writing friends to break the ice. it certainly beats the strategy of getting stinking drunk and passing out in the clam dip, as i usually do.
kate: you and i should start our own non-networking event, in which you have to take a shower before going. that will force us not to be as icky during the event, which means we would sully ourselves in schmoozing.
anti-wife: better yet, stay at home and drink. that would certainly solve all of my problems. yeah.
the bugs made life hell. if we ever get them again, i’m gonna kill myself.
bloglily: you are more right about why writers drink than you can ever imagine. we’re shy, solitary creatures.
i also have good authority that wallace stevens he drank more than should be allowed when going out. of course he didn’t like getting together with other writers — he worked for an insurance company.
i didn’t know he got in a fight with papa. who is one cat i wouldn’t wanted to fight after i’d been drinking, and especially if he had been drinking.
keep telling me all of this and more in comments. yes, that’s what they’re for.
write procrastinator: excellent point. i had never thought that the clam dip might be there for passing out in, not for eating. otherwise, we’d just waste perfectly good dip with our faces.
bed bugs never really went away — our friend ddt almost wiped ‘em out, but after it was banned, the buggies came back with a vengeance. but i would wish them on the rotten old bastard murdoch.
tai: you have said in one short paragraph that which i have struggled to convey in page after page.
though “creative writing-industrial-complex” was my idea.
well put. clam dip is never an afterthought, however.
I like your plan, bf. Drugs? Anyone? (Seriously, I get pee tests where I work, so, sadly, not possible because I like making mortgage payments…I’m that masochistic.)
Clam Dip = the grossest thing I can think of
Schmoozing = grosser than clam dip
“I awoke at 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning feeling as if two semi-tractor trailers full of mucus had driven into my sinus cavities and collided.” Perfect description, and I know from experience.
In our area (Dallas/Fort Worth) a cement truck recently flipped over and smashed another car. Which is exactly what the area behind the eyeballs feels like with a sinus infection.
No comment on the clam dip. I don’t eat fishy products that have warmed to room temperature. Nothing funny about that.
writtenwyrdd: if you need some cover from the drug test, i can get some pristine hair for testing. it will cost you, though.
j.: i hadn’t thought of clam dip as that gross, but it seems to be the consensus. how about schmoozing while in a vat of clam dip?
britta coleman: thanks for the nice words.
you should really write about fish products warmed to room temperature. eating said aquatic creature it would probably feel like two semi-tractor trailers filled with vomitus drove into your stomach and collided.
Glad to hear your bug-free!
doesn’t the humor of ‘passing out in the clam dip’ derive from its latent reference to female anatomy? being sloppy drunk and spent before actually getting down to doing the deed?