Writer's Conferences, Pools, and Bed-time Stories...

We were off to Las Vegas again last Wednesday to Saturday. This time it was a working vacation. Work for me, play for Daughter and Baby Darling, but then, of course, I played too. Our reason for being there?  The Las Vegas Writers Conference.

The conference was held at Sam’s Town and Gambling Hall, and enormous complex that looked like it sounded, Old West with the Casino players over 50—different strokes for different folks blossomed all over Las Vegas.

The conference was great, the people friendly and informative—I met a couple of women I love, one writes like an angel.  If an agent or publisher doesn’t pick up her book, I’m going to smack them.

Okay, what did I learn?

First there are three rules for writing a novel—the trouble is no one knows what they are...

I learned some good stuff, like word count, and that a memoir is treated like a novel, how long it should be, you know, all that jargon. Some say to call a memoir Fictional Narrative or Creative Nonfiction.

Regarding being published, 90% of manuscripts are rejected IMMEDIATELY.

There are three stacks of queries in a publisher’s office, one for agented material—they feel obligated to read those.  A second stack is from authors they represent already.  Recommendations from friends are also in that stack. The third, the largest, contains the holy unwashed—the rest of us. Time line is 18 to 24 months.

Most publishing houses are based on the “Good Old Boy’s” network—if you don’t know someone you don’t get in. On top of that most major publishing houses are closed to submissions now.

Is that discouraging enough?

However, one presenter encouraged writers to give traditional publishing a chance—not to get so tired of looking at your work, thinking about it, that you say “*%$#  I’ll publish it myself.” But, she emphasized, expect 90 to 100 rejections.

Mechanics are important, presentation, the cover letter. There is no excuse for submitting something unpolished. [Brother, I never know when it’s done. It gets done, undone, redone. And mechanics, I swear I can read through something I have written and ALWAYS find a mistake. Now that’s where I need an editor. Remember, though, according to one presenter, “There will never be a time in your life when you don’t say, ‘I could have done it better.’”]

Okay, bottom line: PERSEVERE.

Most Conference attendees were there to pitch an agent. I attended to learn about pitching, and whatever else was pertinent.

And surprise, I came home with new eyes regarding my manuscript and couldn’t wait to get back to it.

Now that’s a good reason for going to a conference.

Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I loved, loved, loved The Mandalay Bay Resort.  I got an excellent rate for the booking.  The Shark Exhibit is located in that hotel which was one reason we choose it, so DD and BD could visit the sharks, the crocodile, the boa constrictor, the octopus, and walk to places while I attended the conference.  The hotel was better than we anticipated. The pool was exquisite, the best we have seen since leaving Hawaii. It included a wave pool, and one quarter mile of “Lazy River.” The river has a current of two miles an hour, two water falls drop onto one’s head like bricks—great massage down the back though, and you could avoid the falls if you want. And no chlorine smell! They must treat the water with something else. The river was about four feet deep. Baby Darling rode on Daughter’s back as we coursed the river, round and round, squatting slightly due to the depth, and when our legs turned to noodles we got out.

That afternoon we walked on those noodle legs until mine were worn off at the knees, then we collapsed in the hotel, grew new legs and began again the next day.

Bed-time story by Baby Darling: A princess came upon a bee’s nest, she couldn’t tell the color of her dress because it was transparent. She found a door at the back of the bee’s house . It opened. There was a kitchen. In the kitchen she made toasted cheese sandwiches with tomato and onion, and a mosquito helped her. (Now all we need is a threat to the bee’s nest and the princess saving the day.) Hum, who’s going to be the writer?

Charge ahead!

Joyce

 P.S. One presenter at the conference, named Kevin B. Parsons, has a blog I will follow. He is going to blog every day as he and his wife travel 50 States in 50 Weeks—on a motorcycle.
www.kevinbparsons.com

The Easter Blue-Eyed Skink

I’m afraid I’m losing the scent of Easter.

Over the years I would occasionally—on off days—mornings usually, come across the scent, and I would blurt out, “It smells like Easter.” And my kids and husband would wonder what I was talking about, and would ask me. I would try to describe it, but it was never satisfactory, and they never quite understood.

Easter fragrance is the scent that flows over the land after a rain. The smell of fresh green grass. Ozone maybe, although ozone doesn’t smell as fresh as Easter. I can’t say, except that I know it when I smell it. The scent became stuck in my nostrils before I was six years old. It came one morning when I was hunting for Easter eggs. We lived in Illinois then, and I remember that morning…

I’m afraid I’m losing it.

One Easter, before that six years old milepost, I got three baby chickens—one colored purple, one pink and one green. They never do that anymore—color the chickens, although I don’t believe it hurt them for they grew into white chickens and pretty soon I could tell them for the rest of the flock. I tried to make pets out of them, but chickens as pets are never satisfactory. Another Easter I got a bunny, a real bunny, and my mother’s boyfriend, the one who became my step-father, built a rabbit hutch for it.

Easter came last Sunday--which caused this contemplation. We went to brunch at a local winery down the hill from where we live. There they had a petting Zoo that Baby Darling adored, especially the Blue-tongued Skink. A couple of Christmases ago we found a Christmas turtle large as a man-hole cover, (The Hawaiian Hawk-billed sea turtle). This year it was an Easter Skink (lizard, about a foot and a half long)—impressive to a three-year old. The rest of us gravitated to the baby pigs. They had a micro mini pig, too, that would not get much bigger than Peaches, our poodle—fatter though. The baby pigs would squeal to high heaven when caught, but then settle down and snuggle into someone’s arms. Elderly Mrs. Wilson, wife of the husband and wife owners, walked around greeting people with a tiny pig on a leash.

In the past we have housed on our property, horses, goats, chickens, ducks, and Daughter Darling had ferrets for 22 years. Now, we have none of those—dogs and cats, that’s it. So we go to a petting zoo and see the animals like city folk instead of country folk as we have previously been. Baby Darling saw bunnies, and a burro and goats, and a turkey—who displayed his beautiful tail plumage the entire time we were there, and pigs, and his favorite, the blue-tongued skink—that is the lizard being held in the pictures.

As we leave Baby Darling tells us repeatedly that he never told the lady (who ran the petting zoo) his story. (He has one for every occasion—probably the one he would tell is about the Jungle River Cruise at Disneyland, or maybe it would be about Captain Jack Sparrow, or Alice in Wonderland, or Peter Pan and Captain Hook, or his new favorite “Splash Mountain,” a Disneyland ride he has never taken, but he imagines it and falls down a pretend waterfall, and can sing “Zippity do Da,” all the way through. (That is the the celebratory song at the end of the ride that tells you you survived, and BD has heard it from the train.)

I wonder about Easter…

As I was growing up it was an Easter egg hunt in the morning, and getting a little sugar egg that you could look inside and see a scene and I never ate it for I wanted the scene more than the candy, and the chocolate egg with my name inscribed was never eaten either.

I was born Catholic, so we went to Church on Easter Sunday, but we went to church every Sunday, so that was no big deal. Later I became protestant, and sometimes there was Sunrise service, which, in Oregon, we dressed in new clothes and went to the service and froze our butts off.

I remember new clothes for Easter, and how it felt to have everything new from the underwear to the shoes and socks and the dress, and how fresh it felt. And I wanted to start that tradition in my family so we bought new clothes this year—like fresh flowers, but we didn’t go to church. I don’t know where to put my beliefs.

What is Easter for you?

Is it the resurrection of Jesus?

Is it the symbolism of the Christ—the enlightened one, being an eternal being of which there is no death?

Is it one of the great high holidays—a tradition, like Christmas, that has been celebrated before we used the initials B.C. and A.D.?

Is it a way to get together and have the children hunt colored eggs? Or is it the tradition of coloring the eggs? How the bunny got to laying eggs is beyond me, or maybe he only delivers them, the chicken lays them. They are symbolic of fertility, and representative of a fertile time of the year when everything is reborn.

So I wish you a time of re-birth, and of a flowering of the spirit, and of knowing you are an eternal being, and for the children to have fun—like petting a blue-tongued skink.

This one will listen to his story.

                                                      

These won't.

Have you ever done this? (Or a reasonable fact simile.)

Last night at 1:30 a.m. after playing with Baby Darling—we made dragon’s houses, and caterpillar houses, and read three books, and after Baby D ran into the kitchen to tell me he had just peed in the potty chair, and washed his hands all by himself, I raved and said good night and dug something out of the refrigerator.

  

I poured myself a shot of tequila, ate radishes with peanut butter, licked salt off my hand, drank a swig of tequila, bit a lime, followed it with a few potato chips, and staggered off to bed, thinking to myself, Maybe I’ve died and don’t know it yet.