Eight, eight… I forget what eight was for.
Today started off slowly with a mad dash through the bookfair, where I managed to still somehow spend $100 (and other ways the bookfair is exactly like Vegas AND Target), but I now own signed books by all the best people, like Sean H. Doyle and Myfawny Collins and Sandra Marchetti and Brandi Wells and even a pre-order for Wendy C. Ortiz’ next.
THEN I went to an entertaining and informative panel on revision that included so lovely zingers such as: “It’s boring to be accurate about a fact when you can be hesitant about a fact.” (Sven Birkirts) On the subject of using multiple physical forms of a piece of writing, “Everyone go find a fax machine…” (Sarah Einstein via Sven) “You can’t just drop in a reference to throwing sausages of a high rise like a scofflaw.” (Alexis Paige) Penny Guisinger said to look for the bad verbs or the good verbs in stupid tenses, but then corrected herself with “There are no stupid tenses.” And she also cautioned, toward the end of revision, “A little rabbit-holing, but not too much. Write that down. It’s helpful.” And Sven again, described drafting as sexy and revision as custodial, but then made scrubbing our epistolary toilets seem noble.
Then I went to lunch with some amazing folks and then I guess I wandered around the bookfair a bit more. I tried to network at a press party that was WAY too crowded, so I sat out on the sidewalk with some new and old friends and told jokes about Yacht Rock for a while before heading to a reading in a brick factory. After that a couple of us peeled off in search of burgers and some rock and roll history… and by then it was nearly midnight. Just like Vegas, man.
Yesterday was about finding my people all over again, but today I spent a bit of time getting to (re) know a few folks, spent a bit of time apart from the madness and fray talking about important and unimportant things. I also had a sandwich that was just a slab of Guiness soaked roast beef with spicy horseradish and now I’m ruined on hot roast beef sands for life. If you have an amazing early panel tomorrow, I’d like to apologize in advance for missing it.