Muse & Marketplace Day 1: Friday

I figured I’d blog about the Muse at the end of the weekend, but way too much happened today so I’m going to make each day its own post. And then I have more content, so it’s a win-win!

I didn’t sleep well last night. Saw that one coming. I was excited! Woke up at 5 am and brainstormed the adult romance set in the same universe as Hand Magic that I sort of want to pleasure-write.

Here’s the thing. Leigh Bardugo wrote the Shadow and Bone trilogy, a classic YA fantasy bildungsroman girl comes from dirt, has magic superpowers, and saves the world series, which was like. Fine. And then she went and wrote Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, a heist duology in the same universe that tore the absolute roof off. Star Wars did the same thing with Rogue One! An incredible, creative, intensely gripping heist film that came after they made their sort of mid-tier sequel trilogy. Telling a different genre of story in the same universe as a classic SFF series works! It works really well! It works with heists! Why shouldn’t it work with romance? I just want to try it!

Anyway. I’m making notes and ranting into a Google doc. But I also didn’t sleep well last night, so I was sooo tired all day. Luckily, the Orange Line goes to Back Bay, so I could take the train in and walk to the Park Plaza Hilton, the location of Muse & Marketplace 2024.

The keynote address was a conversation between Desmond Hall and Jonathan Escoffrey. I’ve not read Escoffrey’s book If I Survive You, but I enjoyed the conversation. And I ran into the two women I met in my How To Network workshop at GrubStreet, Sue and Becky! So pleased about that. Then we broke out into our workshop sessions.

My first workshop of the day was The Power of Place in Coming-of-Age Narratives: Global Readings and Craft Tips. I won’t lie, the “Coming of Age” bit tricked me into thinking there’d be a YA focus, but the readings were most definitely from adult literature. But I was still productive! Y’know…on my laptop working on my novel. My roommate calls that body-doubling. Chuck Palahniuk offers a similar tip, which is go write in a DMV waiting room or a law office. But it offered some good tips. Make the setting a part of your MC’s journey. Make the setting affect what they do, how they think, who they think they are. That’s a good tip. Makes me even more certain I’ll have to go back to the UK and do on-site research.

After this workshop, I had some downtime before my twenty minute Manuscript Mart meeting with Becca Podos. And man, I really wanted to take a nap somewhere beforehand. But I didn’t. I was a brave little toaster and ate a snack and showed up five minutes early to the entry room. I’m not sure why I thought there would be like forty people and crowded tables everywhere of people waiting to talk to agents. My time slot consisted of three people, including me. I looked really pretty today, I so I guess you could say I was prepared.

Honestly? Good experience. Becca Podos is really nice and looks very different from her Twitter profile pic. I got some good Jewish fantasy comp suggestions that I’ll add to my list of research reads this summer. Good tips on the query. It’s funny, my morning workshop and the agent meeting are basically screaming at me:

“Claire. Do more world-building.”

Which is exactly what I want to do! The hard part will be compressing it into a query letter. Somehow, I have to tie all of the factions (of an alt-British Empire in turmoil and about to enter alt-World War II????) to what the protagonist wants and what she’ll do to get it and what happens if she fails. In 350 words. The true test of writing chops, I guess. 91,000 word manuscript? Whatever. 350 word query letter? Just kill me.

I’m so tired, I’m literally struggling to remember everything that happened six hours ago. I know I journaled in the hotel lounge and got an El Jefe’s burrito on the Commons for lunch. After that, I went to my second workshop. Break Every Rule: Trusting Your Instincts in Process and Craft. I should clarify: this wasn’t my first choice. The workshop I actually signed up for (First Impressions: How to Hook an Agent with Your Opening Pages) was canceled because the presenter had a family emergency. So off I want to this one!

Thing is, I don’t consider myself a rule-breaking creative in any way. I have favorite craft books, I follow their rules, I get good results. I’m not really experimental, at least not in my technical elements. But the lady teaching the workshop wrote My Salinger Year, which did pretty well, and she was funny and engaging, so the workshop was enjoyable. Also, it turns out most of the “rules” she’s breaking are more related to writing culture than writing craft.

You can write anywhere. Don’t feel like you have to always be producing. Productivity is the enemy of art. Etc. And I do consider myself a rule-breaker in that regard.

I’ve taken whole years off and then cranked out a novel in three weeks. I used to bring my Macbook to my shifts at Jimmy Johns, wrap it in apron, and hide it on one of the wire rack shelves so I could write in the Starbucks at the City Creek mall after work. I have no rules on when I can write and when I can’t, I have no daily word counts to hit, I don’t have any structure containing or organizing my practice. Sitting down to write is never hard. I never need incentives to do it. The only times when writing has felt like a chore were the months/years I most definitely needed to be on antidepressants. So maybe the fact that I genuinely feel lucky to be able to do it now is part of why it comes so easily.

Anyway, after this workshop was my favorite workshop of the day: Dynamics of Opposition with Desmond Hall. First of all, very engaging presenter. This was the only workshop where I felt engaged the whole time. Secondly? Profoundly useful stuff. I thought “Opposition” meant antagonists, and it sort of did, but not just external ones. Internal ones too. Your character struggle, basically. How it all needs to tie together emotionally. A lot of stuff from Story Genius, but reframed in a really useful way!

I got so much good shit from it. I already know I’m going to have to rework some stuff to accommodate my MC’s new character journey, but this gave me actual pointers on how to do it. Can’t say enough good stuff about this workshop.

After this, I chilled out on a bench in the hotel mezzanine for like forty-five minutes working on Hand Magic. Then I went across the street to Davio’s Steakhouse for my Shop Talk meeting. In this event, you pay to be at a tall table with two agents and three other people for an hour, and they serve you wine and finger foods. I decided to do it because I saw Kiki Nguyen was added to the list of agents and I’ve admired her stuff for awhile. This event wasn’t part of my scholarship, so I did have to pay $125 dollars to go.

So worth it. I had such a fun time. You’d never guess it, but this queer engineer isn’t always the best at networking. But I realize now that only applies to corporate settings. Turns out I can schmooze just fine with other queer book folks. Lucy Cleland and Kiki Nguyen are lovely people and had great, interesting takes on the state of publishing and the literary world. They helped me with my pitch and let me give them my business card, which was very nice of them. I immediately went home to fix the disaster that was the mobile version of my website. So it’s fine now! I’m well-represented on the Internet.

At this point, it was seven pm and I’d been out a full eleven hours. Got back on the Orange Line and went back to my house to tend to my screaming cat. And blog about the day! I have another full day of stuff tomorrow, but I’m skipping the morning keynote so I don’t have to be at the hotel until 10:30. Thank God.

xx Claire