98% of the time I think my co-workers at Minerva Rising are brilliant.  But then there’s that 2% when they ask me to write about Keeping Your Head On Straight During and After AWP.  I am the last person who can tell anybody anything about keeping her head on straight!  If you were to look at me right now, three weeks after my epic trip to the Association of Writers and Writing Professionals 2014 Conference in Seattle, you would say, “Wow, Emily, your head is still crooked.”  So while I may not be the world’s foremost expert on organization, discipline or anything that has anything to do with anything at all techie/ bloggie and/or twittery, I guess I can tell you what I’ve learned over my past four AWP conferences.

You gotta eat

They don’t build time in for lunch breaks.  Sometimes you can’t even leave the bookfair to grab a banana.  So here’s what I do:  go to Walgreens the night before the conference and buy a box of protein bars.  Dog them throughout the day like they are the secret key to getting published at Tin House.  Because everybody is looking for that secret key and you gotta make yourself believe that you have found it and it is locked within your protein bar.

Buy books

Buy chapbooks. Buy books with beautiful covers that you never intend to read.  Buy books from the presses you want to be published in and buy books from the presses that you may not think particularly interest you today.  Because they might interest you tomorrow.  Or they might interest the cleaning lady.  But the point is, buy books.  Buy books with cash because half the time those little Square things don’t work and next month you will get a line on your credit card bill that reads something like “Fork Zone 77” and you won’t have any idea what you’re being billed for and you will waste precious writing time calling your credit card company trying to track down Fork Zone 77, which turns out to be an obscure independent publisher out of Anytown Oregon.  So you will decide to submit to them.  You will get sucked into reading all the (fill-in-your-genre-here) on their website, and you will believe, really believe this time, that you have just the piece they’re looking for.  You will submit it to them.  Three months later, after you have forgotten this rabbit trail of events, you will get an email in your inbox from Fork Zone 77.  They have rejected your piece.  Now you feel like shit.  And you’re hungry.  You reach for a protein bar.  The box is empty except for a receipt from the Walgreens next to the conference center.  Now you remember everything.  The conference, the bookfair.  The conversation you had with the chick with purple hair who was working the Fork Zone 77 booth.  The nervous laughs you and she shared when it took her a while to get your credit card to work on that Square thingie.  You will wish you had paid cash.  Next time you will.  And you will thank me.

But that’s not the point.

The real point is buy books.

Follow Up with Yourself

This part is tricky but I have broken it down into three phases for you, so stay with me here.

• Phase One:  every night, when you get back to your hotel room, no matter how much wine you’ve had to drink, no matter how tired/ pissy/ homesick/ energized/ motivated/ inspired/ fried/ or freaked out you are, Write.  It.  Down.  Jot notes somewhere, anywhere, preferably on paper.  Write down snippets of conversation you overhead on the escalator (I’ll tell you my favorite in a minute.) Write down leads on the backs of business cards, or even what that guy was wearing or what his breath smelled like or whatever it is that will jog your memory, because you will forget.  The painful truth is, AWP is so overwhelming that no matter how observant you are, no matter how good your memory works on a normal day, you cannot possibly remember all the wonderful ideas that you are riding on right now so write them down.

• Phase Two:  As soon as you get home, write everything down again.  Go back through your notes and make more notes.  Pick out the one idea you are most excited about and Make it happen.  Right away.  If you were thinking about starting a writer’s group in your area, call three friends the day you get back.  If a deadline has a super-fast turnaround and you need to submit NOW before you have even unpacked or flossed, for Pete’s sake, do it.  Do it!!!!  Pat the dog, make love to your spouse, send your kids off to school, then do the One Thing.

• Phase Three:  Now it’s time to settle in to the marathon.  You’ve been home for three or four days.  The laundry is running, you’ve made an appearance at the office, taught a class, taken your regular yoga class.  But back at your writing desk, you have to focus on endurance.  Make lists and piles and stacks.  Make creative use of the free sticky notes highlighters you collected.  Decorate your workspace with all the paraphernalia of your successful conference time.  Get naked and roll around in it if you want, if that will help you maintain the high.  Because it’s all about stamina.  Right after any conference like this, you feel re-inspired and re-energized, and you don’t want another year to go by before you feel this way again.  When you see it all laid out in front of you, you will thank me again.  You will say, “Yeesh!  Making copious notes every night was such a drag, but I’m so glad Emily made me do it.  Now I can follow up with that website/ publisher/ poet/ panel/ story I was thinking about, because I remember it.  It didn’t get lost in the recesses of mental AWP fog.  It’s all right here in front of me, written on paper.

Just the other day, I came across the note I made of what the girl behind me on the escalator said.  This is a direct quote, and if you’re the girl who said this, and you’re reading this right now, I love you.  She said, “I feel like my desire to eat vegetables is just really overwhelming right now.”  This is what AWP does to you.  It gives you overwhelming desires.  Whether your desires are to eat vegetables (or protein bars), to find more time to write, or just to keep your head on straight, I hope that the Universe rises up to meet them.  Namaste.