The Writing Conference

            I would really love to attend the Writer’s Digest Conference coming soon. Would anyone want to wire me the money to go? Please? I really need to attend one, but not now. Hopefully soon I will be able, as they usually have 60+ editors/publishers there, waiting to tear your work to pieces, and your soul! Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Imagine standing in line for three hours, waiting rather impatiently as you slowly nudge forward. The woman in front of you has a voice to match her girth and talks only of her cats at home; the man behind you can’t breathe through his nose, and so uses his mouth, nearly sucking your blazer into his throat. You begin to have thought of moving aside and allowing the human vacuum to inhale the cat-woman; you smile to yourself at the thought. Oh, the woman wrote a story about her cats. Imagine that! 200 hundred pages of furry paws and whiskers you endure slowly and painfully, much like torture. Finally, it’s your turn and you hand them the work. They (meaning some awkwardly looking, intimately deprived woman in her mid-forties who wears her glasses on the tip of her hawk-like nose) look at it with sadistic pleasure while you try not to compare her to that Chihuahua  you saw taking a shit on the sidewalk earlier in the day.

            She puts it down, adjusts her glasses (even though they are nearly cemented to her nose) and stares up at you with this look, half-crazed and wildly bizarre, as if saying “if you ask me out tonight, I will publish your book.” You can’t say yes because you are still hung-up on the idea of that dog, and so stare blindly at her. She then, realizing you will return to your hotel room alone, begins a diatribe of your work, telling you first that it is utter shit (see previous sidewalk comment). You still smile. She then tells you about your characters, you know, the people who have been living in your head for over a year and are nearly like family. They are too dry, too human….wtf, you think; but still you stand there, smiling and dying. Then, for the final blow, and she removes her glasses for this one, folks, she says the only think your work is truly good for is pipe cleaning: no, not the ones beneath your sink. No, the only pipe she has in mind was the one connected to my ass, the same one she now wants me to shove my story up!

            As you leave the building, feeling more like trash and less like a writer, you see that same dog. He’s finished doing his business, and out of compulsion you desire to kick him. What’s the use, you say, and walk back to your hotel, where you will probably cry until the sun rises.

            So, would anyone want to sponsor my trip to the conference?..................