All the attendees were jittery—clutching their folders and messenger bags and dog-eared books and rubber-banded manuscripts. Even though each writer was allowed only a twenty-page sample to share with the visiting editors and agents, many seemed to have printed out their lifework. They held the manuscripts to their chests as if they had to be fiercely guarded, lest someone steal their ideas through the pages.
Ranjana, Harit, Teddy, and Cheryl checked in at the front desk, then were signed into the conference by a perky young woman who looked as if she could have imagined no greater gift than passing out name tags on lanyards. Both of Ranjana’s names were misspelled, which would normally have been unsurprising, but this was a writers’ conference, so it seemed particularly egregious. Harit’s first name was fine, but his last name had two letters switched.
“Maybe we should just switch name tags. No one will notice,” Harit said, and Ranjana laughed out loud. Despite the ordeal that it had taken for them to get here, Ranjana knew: she was glad that they were doing this, pleased to discover that you could feel a friendship’s construction if you took the time and care to notice it.
“Should we drop our stuff off and then head to the panel?” Cheryl asked. She had signed all of them up for one of the first panels: “Who Should an Author Be?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Teddy said. Having been steamrolled by Cheryl during the road trip, he seemed newly energized.
They headed up in the elevator. It was a bit tense, given that Harit and Teddy were taking separate rooms while Ranjana and Cheryl were inhabiting the same one. Ranjana and Cheryl got off on the ninth floor, and Teddy and Harit headed to the tenth floor—of course, they had ended up mere doors apart from each other.
*
Despite the reinvigorating change back at his house, Harit felt the emptiness of his hotel room as if it were a long-coveted gift. There was poetry in the smooth comforter, the stiff curtains, the tasseled pillows, the sheen of the dresser and end tables. When he sat on the bed and caught his reflection in the mirror, he saw it as a portrait that had taken decades to paint. He felt a catch in his throat. He had worried that he might cry as soon as he got into this room, and he bent over and let it happen. His voice snagged on his sobs before laughter overtook them, and soon he was lying flat on the floor and feeling the rise of his stomach under his hands. It seemed so simple, but perhaps what he had needed was to be in a different city—to be somewhere away from the small square mileage of sidewalk, bedroom, bus, and aisle that had been his life for so long. He had never seen this ceiling, would probably never study its cake-smooth whiteness again, and he loved it for that. He loved it for its newness and its unimportance and its fleetingness. For a weekend, this room was his and no one else’s. Hotels let you be as selfish as you wanted, and he was going to be selfish, selfish, selfish.
*
Harit was the last to rejoin them back in the lobby. He seemed to have splashed some water on his face and combed his hair. They headed to where the panel was being held, a compact space made all the more compact due to the partition that had been dragged across the room to separate it from another event. About forty chairs were arranged in neat rows, and very few of them were empty. Ranjana asked if a few people might shift to accommodate her group, and they rearranged themselves quickly, mostly because no one wanted to be the last person standing up and complaining when the event began.
The room fell silent as a group of three professionals, two women and a man, was led in. The women had the easy fashion of New York City diehards, but the man was unkempt, with long, curly hair and an outfit of half-unbuttoned shirt, chinos, and loafers.
A woman in a bright yellow blouse greeted the room and asked everyone to turn off their cell phones, which was met with a titter of laughter and no activity on anyone’s part.
“I’m Sandy Gearhardt, one of the founders of the conference and a writer myself.” She tossed her head to one side and licked her lips as the audience produced a small burst of claps. “I want to welcome you to today’s panel, ‘Who Should an Author Be?’ Our guests are Suzie Hart, owner of her own boutique literary agency; Cathryn Calyer, senior editor at Spectacle; and Ezra Mann, publisher and editor in chief of Green Umbrella Press. All of them are successful and accomplished publishing folk who count Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times bestsellers, and yes, superstar YA authors among their lists. Please join me in welcoming them.”
A labored round of applause echoed around the room.
“We’ll start with an easy question,” Sandy said, settling into a seat and pulling out a series of salmon-colored index cards. “How much does an author’s personality have to do with whether or not you decide to publish his or her work?”
The publishing trio sighed, its members looking at each other as if they’d never seen each other before and would never speak to each other again. “I guess I’ll start,” Suzie said, freeing a strand of chocolate-dyed hair from her cheek by flicking her head. “If I’m being prim and proper and ‘literary’”—at this word, she rolled her eyes and jutted out her jaw—“I’ll say that it doesn’t matter at all. It’s all about the writing. It’s all about what I see on the page. It’s all about that lightning moment of finding a writer with a fresh, surprising point of view. It’s about the truth and power of the written word. But the truth is that I’ve definitely turned down books after speaking with the author and finding out she’s a total basket case.”
A few gasping laughs popped up.
“You see, I’m an agent,” Suzie said. She flipped her hair again. “It’s not just about the writing. It’s about forging a longtime collaboration with someone you’re going to do book after book with. And if the person writes like a dream, that’s what you want; that’s fantastic. But if the person can’t carry on a conversation like a normal human being, then who wants to work with that for years? I had an author once who was like Rumpelstiltskin. She would take the English language and spin it into beautiful sentences and stories. And I loved her; I really did. But she was always having some crisis that I couldn’t even try to deal with. She was one of these people who always sounded like she was collapsing under the weight of her own genius. And when that constant collapse gets in the way of being able to sign a contract or deliver a manuscript on time, it’s just not worth my fucking time.”
Then she added, “Sorry—time. Not ‘fucking time.’”
“Well, that’s one way to put it,” Ezra began, leaning on the table and holding his head up with one hand. “As a publisher, I must respectfully disagree. Our job is to publish great writing. It’s to nurture great writers. It’s to show that, in this tiny, oft-forgotten forum of the literary arts, that we are capable of putting aside psychological trauma and its victims and getting wonderful stories in front of readers. That’s what we do. That’s the job. At least it is for me.”
The laughter in the room was becoming more strained.
“And you, Cathryn?” Sandy asked.