AWP Confessional: I’m A Conference Person Now
by Nonfiction Editor Steph George
“A Lesson in Wisdom”. Frederic Stuart Church. 1883.
I’ve never liked conferences. The first one I can remember attending was for Unitarian Universalist youth activists, so maybe you can imagine where my distaste stems from. It’s pretty much been a downward spiral through registration lines and PowerPoints about SEO optimization from there.
I’ve found conferences to be a brilliant method of convincing people to waste an entire day (or three) and spend several hundred dollars (or more). On more than one occasion I’ve left a panel discussion realizing that I could have simply read an article about crafting the perfect pitch in the comfort of my own home instead of sitting around a bunch of strangers with a weird lanyard around my neck. You get the idea.
So it was rather begrudgingly that I made my way to AWP in Los Angeles last week. Bright and early Thursday morning, jetlagged and my hair greasy from the cross-country flight, I looked at myself in the conference hall bathroom mirror and adjusted the purple lanyard around my neck.
For the past few months, I’ve been in a creative rut. I haven’t really been able to write, much less think of anything to write about. Not only have ideas felt elusive, the entire prospect of my creative endeavors has felt well… pointless. Every day I get a fresh piece of paralyzing news about something our current administration has done. Another international student detained. The recession is coming this time, really. Also, I’m thirty-one, and the fear of wasting time --that I’ve already wasted time-- is steadily creeping in. Change careers! Get another degree! Move to the city! Get married! Where does a poem or a poignant piece of writing fit in among all the noise?
In conferences past, which panels I attend has been determined by my job, or informed by what I think will be useful to me in the most practical sense. Will it help my career, benefit a project I’m working on, etc. This time, I said screw it, and only signed up for sessions that excited me. I reached some kind of decision paralysis breaking point and decided that actually, doing anything besides what nourishes me is what’s pointless.
So I attended panels about climate centered fiction and elegiac poetry ( I have written neither). I had invigorating conversations with writers from across the country. I went to a psych-rock backed reading at a pirate themed bar. I bought books based on how much I liked the cover. I forgot about the mile-long to do list waiting for me at home.
On Thursday morning, after fussing with my lanyard in the bathroom mirror, I walked into the first panel on my schedule: Writing Refuge. Admittedly, I did anticipate that it would help inform my writing about the laundromat as a place of retreat and socialization. But what I got was far more expansive and, honestly, kind of a light bulb moment.
The panelists described choosing soul as a form of exile, that to insist upon a life less practical but more affecting is, in a way, an act of rebellion. And our imaginations are the ultimate refuge, the place where our hearts can run wild. This all resonated with me, thinking about how little I wanted to play to win. And how much I wanted to create, put forth, uncover.
But what stuck with me the most was this: that the reason any of us write at all is to enter another soul, to understand that which we cannot easily understand, to connect with the people and places we’re made to believe are separate from us. And I think that sometimes, maybe most times, that person is us, and the soul we need to enter through writing is our own.
Something flipped in my brain, whatever switch that’s been stuck in the off position for way too long. It’s like I suddenly remembered that hey, there’s something worthwhile here. And it’s not frivolous. Art is rarely frivolous. I stopped worrying about professionalism and let myself, for a few days, enjoy what felt true and important. Could I have ever expected a better takeaway?
I still have my gripes (please, for the love of god, enough with the tote bags), but you can call me a conference convert. Well played, AWP. Well Played. I’ll see you in Baltimore.
Steph George is the Nonfiction Editor of Barnstorm Journal and an MFA Nonfiction Creative Writing student at the University of New Hampshire. She’s a freelance writer and audio producer in Dover, NH.