I’m timing this post to be released when I’ll be on the road driving toward San Francisco. Depending on what time I leave the house (hopefully early enough to avoid Denver rush hour, slow time appears to be between 3-4 a.m., the rest of the time it’s a zoo), I want to say it will be released to the Internets when I’m on the road somewhere west of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Now that I’m living in Colorado and equidistant from both of my children (one in Michigan, the other in San Francisco), I’ve decided that driving to either destination is the best option. Airline travel takes a lot of time: you drive to the airport, you hassle through the TSA lines depending on whether or not your ticket says “pre-check” (which it sometimes does – how I don’t know) or not, you draw the lottery over an upgrade, a draw you normally lose; there are connecting flights to catch (or miss), maintenance issues which may delay you, deplaning at your final destination (when you’re in row 42, you might as well take a nap), waiting at the baggage claim and hoping your psychedelically colored bag hasn’t been mistakenly routed to Kenya, traveling AirTrain to the rental car building (a short trip also fraught with pitfalls – I nearly took out a Japanese tourist once, by accident, when my bag and I tripped on the escalator and fell on him), waiting at the rental car counter for hours, etc., etc.
No wonder I’m exhausted by the time I arrive at the conference! It normally takes me three days to acclimate to the jet lag, and by that time, the conference is over and I have a terrible case of conference crud (one year I had the crud DURING the conference, which was no fun at all) which takes all of a week to eradicate, or at least get under control.
No. Driving is the best option. I’m in control. It might take a little longer, but my nerves (and my gray hair) will be better for it. I won’t have jet lag. I’ll have hours to sing along with Tom Petty radio, or to imagine the Old West as it was 150 years ago. I’ll have carefully packed snacks: fruit, granola, nuts, hard boiled eggs, my own bottled water that won’t cost me $8 at the terminal bookstore. I’ll have my own car, which I won’t have to clean out a rental at the end of ten days and hope I didn’t leave my glasses or my Lipitor prescription in it. It will be a two day trip, or a day and a half, or, if I’m feeling particularly spry and alert, I might go for it in one very long day and save myself a stop in Elko, Nevada. (One extra day with my son.) My son says to bring chains for the pass between Reno and the western slope of the Sierras, but I have an extra day built in just for such an emergency. I-80 is a major artery; they’re not going to let 30 feet of snow stop a major vein of commerce between the Left and Right Coasts.
I can take my time if I want. Or not. I haven’t decided.
This year will be my tenth San Francisco Writers Conference. Ten years. If you read the very second blog post on this very blog, you’ll see where I started: writing about my first San Francisco Writers Conference. I had a lot of dreams back then, not to say I don’t have them now. My dreams now aren’t the dreamy dreams of a fresh writer who had just finished her first (massively huge) manuscript. Dreams are good, as long as a guiding hand of reality steers in the background. I have no illusions of a client hungry agent tapping me on the shoulder to offer me a six-figure deal. That might happen for some people, but if it happens to me, I might have a heart attack and die.
Money is nice, but that’s not why I write (or draw, or create jewelry, or weave baskets). I subscribe to some writer blogs that say you MUST be in it to make money. I’m sorry, but after fourteen years of writing (again) and ten years of conferencing, I still have to disagree.
I write to tell a story.
Some of them are surprising stories, totally different from my favorite reading material. The one I’m working on now? A girl in 1898 Colorado Springs? If you would have told me a year ago I’d be writing about this girl and her struggles, I would have laughed at you and said what-kind-of-stuff-are-you-smoking-can-I-have-some. I didn’t even think about this girl until after the first of January 2019. And the one right before that, political shenanigans ripped from the headlines? Again, mad laughter.
The truth of the matter is that there are stories all around us, and most of them are multi-layered, and many of them compelling. Good writers can pluck a story from anything or anyone. The trick (or skill) is to write the best book you can and portray the characters so that they’re relatable and real. Once you achieve that, the entertainment value is apparent.
You can still learn a lot from ten years of conferences. Learning never ends. Every year, I learn something new and am grateful for the venue and the knowledge it affords me. Every year, I go in thinking “I am a sponge; give me something to soak up.”
If you go in thinking you have a chance at winning the lottery and leave disappointed that the conference failed you because you got a couple of eye-rolls from agents during your speed dating hour, you’re missing the point. Attending a conference of this magnitude is winning the lottery.
And now I must pack.
See you on the other side.
