A Brag on WAG

As a new officer in the Writers Alliance (WAG) of Gainesville, I’m impressed with the concern of the Alliance Board that WAG members may not be getting the full benefit of their memberships.

Attendance at meetings and in pods represents a modest fraction of the full roster of around 190 members. Within this local group rests a wealth of experience and talent, friendly people willing to share their successes and failures and to help both new and seasoned writers.

If you have been a passive member of WAG, I implore you to come to meetings, talk with authors, and ask questions. Volunteer for something and chat up folks. While WAG may not land you face to face with an agent or land you a book deal, I’m struggling with how to describe the potential benefits you might hunt for elsewhere that are right here in WAG.

A few years ago, I saw an ad for an upcoming writer’s conference in Atlanta. Pay a little extra and get ten minutes to pitch to a real live agent. Great! Talk with other writers, attend mini-seminars, hear speakers from major writer magazines like Writer’s Digest. There would “Invaluable experience!” The registration seemed reasonable—and hey, a long weekend in Atlanta with my boyfriend, super! I worked on polishing my pitch and submitted my first page for a chance to be a critique guinea pig. Three dogs boarded, a five-hour drive, dinner out, nerves simmering all the while. Hardly slept. The next morning was it.

Presentable outfit, check. Hair, check. Brushed teeth, check. Materials, check.

Breathe.

The GPS got us to the event hotel only to find that the parking lot was under construction. No signs about the conference or alternate parking. We circled with other confused guests in vehicles, like koi in a frog pond. Rick dropped me off across the street. See you later! Good luck!

Once inside the lobby, I hoped to find a greeter or signage. Nothing. Let’s face it: express hotels are to comfort what Spam in a can is to fine dining. No lounging at the cozy bar, no meeting with friends on plush couches in the lobby. And no event placards. The lobby was merely the passageway to the elevators and the express cafeteria. I wandered past the express breakfast bar (to-go coffee and pre-wrapped power bars) to a narrower hallway and nearly collided with a man with an ID badge.

“Please say I have the right hotel for the writer’s conference.”

“Down there,” he gestured while brushing past. He wore a dark sports jacket and high agitation. He called out something curt to another stressed, name-tagged person. Mr. Curt reappeared later as the main presenter for the event—a heavyweight from a major writers’ magazine.

Thoughts of turning tail, bolting out the door, and flagging down Rick, likely still mired in the slow-swirl parking pond, crossed my mind.

You can do this. Calm down. It’ll be fine.

A cloak room and a card-table registration desk. Ah, direction at last. But no, I was not welcomed by the woman behind the table, who gave every indication of being a quart low on coffee. I found my own name tag and meet-an-agent tickets. The woman seemed put out by having to direct me further down the signage-free, Habitrail hallway.

Room A was obviously also Rooms B and C when divided by moveable walls. It was now packed with rows of chairs like an economy airplane.

The first friendly person I met taught me exactly why one should prepare a three-sentence pitch. About eight minutes into her plot, which unspooled like a summary of the entire run of Days of Our Lives, I excused myself and escaped to the rest room.

The main event

Five agents from cities like New York and Philadelphia formed the panel. Our speaker, now all-affable with car-salesman smiles, would read an attendee’s pre-submitted first page, selected at random. If he could reach the bottom of the page without three agents raising a red-flag hand, then it was considered a pretty good first page.

Optimistic when I submitted my first page, I now dreaded that mine would be selected and mocked publicly.

The first offering was read. Hands flew up before the end of the second paragraph. Boring. Info dump.

The next piece. Four hands up! Too erratic. Hard to follow.

Next. Three—four, all five hands! Point-of-view conflict! Pedantic language!

The atmosphere in the audience, comprised mostly of middle-aged women, with a ratio of about 50/50 Caucasian and African-American, was tense.

Mr. Curt picked one more page. This story, clearly set somewhere in the South, was largely dialog driven by a character called Honey-Chile. We could not see the page on an overhead, so I can’t be sure how the name was spelled, but it was surely meant to be pronounced like child without the d and not chili like the powder in your hot sauce. And yet, we listened as the speaker kept reading, “Honey-Chili.”

Mouths fell open. People turned to look in disbelief at each other. Chairs squeaked as people shifted in confusion. Nervous twitters.

“Hush yo’ mouth, Honey-Chili…” he continued, stumbling over the dialect.

He almost made it to the end of the page. The panel launched a bizarre conversation that volleyed back and forth about how one shouldn’t attempt dialect, it bogs. Few do it well. Don’t attempt this at home. Not one of the panel members made mention that it obviously should have been Honey-Chile, not Honey-Chili.

I found it hard to take advice from a panel preaching to an audience in Atlanta about dialect and not knowing it was not Honey-Chili.

Later, my meeting with two agents went great. Promising! Please send the first 50 pages!

I did, with a cover letter. Never heard from either of them. Meanwhile, I got some encouraging responses from cold queries for which I had not paid $20 each.

While I’m not sorry I attended the Atlanta event, it did not further my writing goals as I expected. Meanwhile, by joining WAG for $36 a year, I’ve met writers and editors, had my work critiqued, learned from presentations, and most importantly, found a community of support.

What I’m sayin’ Honey-Chile, is if your membership in the Writers Alliance is mostly on paper, you are missing out on an amazing resource.

Hope to see you at a WAG event soon.