Crash and Burn

And then sometimes you have a bad day.

Wednesday was not the best day of my life. It was a day that was rather symbolic of all my goals here in Boston though. It was also the day of the worst presentation I've ever given in my life. Wednesday was also the day of one of the best library experiences of my life. Wednesday was a bundle of very good and horribly bad packed into 24 hours. Wednesday was like this:

The day started Tuesday night, when I decided to stay up until 2am putting finishing touches on my book pitch for my 520 publishing class. I had been excited about that presentation since August, when I first heard about it. I actually started working on the thing in early October, when I turned the cover design specs over to Dust. I had to make myself go to bed at 2am, to get some sleep, to be ready.

I woke up about six and a half hours later, showered, dressed, and rode the red line over to Cambridge, to Harvard square. My Basic Materials Repair class was meeting on the steps of Widener Library, probably one of the neatest places I have ever been. I've used my Harvard work ID to get in twice at Widener - once just to look around and once to ask a reference question. Widener is marble, big, lots of paintings, beautiful, high security. I would love to work there. I got to the place way too early, so I sat on the steps and went over my math for the 520 presentation once again. My class assembled on the steps, and we were escorted inside, security checked off one by one. There were 24 of us plus the teachers.

Widener is like a museum or a temple, marble columns even on the inside, you have to worship the books, We, the class, went down into the basement, which is very much like catacombs with vaulted ceilings and strange twists and turns. We got a very awesome tour of the Book Repair and conservation programs they have down there. It was just amazing. Someone had won an award for the way the lighting was rigged in the lab. The worktables were custom made, the cabinets were covered to look like book board and the lights were suffused behind a material that looked like remay (a translucent paper repair material). The floor was tile but there were squishy impact mats to stand on. And the books were carefully, precisely mended from use for more use.

I stood in awe. This was the reason I had gone to Simmons, not just to learn the things that were being practiced in the Widener conservation lab, but to get to see places just like the one we toured. Not many people get access to things like that. The people were so nice, so willing to talk about things, to help us learn. It was just amazing.

And I didn't get to stay as long as I would have liked, to keep looking, to keep learning, and to maybe talk with some of the very cool workers who were my age and had this dream of a job. No, I had to leave after just 2 hours of fabulousness because I had to ride the T back over the river, and get ready to pitch my book.

So I left my library world…

…and went into my publishing one. I took off my khakis and button down shirt with sensible shoes and put on my black suit and dress shoes. Up went the hair. Out came the presentation. And when I say presentation for my book pitch, I mean a photo finish cover designed by me and Dust, a promotional bookmark designed and made by me, an entire marketing campaign - everything. The paper attached to this presentation is 40% of the grade. I was confident. I was prepared. I was going to knock 'em dead.

I totally bombed.

Which is highly ironic, because I know I put more time and effort into my presentation than most of the other students. One guy had come up with his concept just before Thanksgiving, only had a photocopied slight idea of what his book would look like, and spent probably 3 hours on the whole damn thing. He got applause. I got criticism. Real strong criticism. I mean, some of it was constructive, but it's so rare that one's ideas are actually reviled right in front of you. Really.

I held it together, but left during the break, which was too bad, because some people I liked I knew had pretty good ideas and I missed their book pitches. But I had to leave. I wanted to stay; I wanted not to be so juvenile as to leave. But after having something trashed that I worked on for two months and then - and this is the worst part - watching someone who was totally bitchy get up after me and pitch the lamest assed thing I've ever seen and get applause for it - I had to go. Some people had things done up on poster board halfsheets with magic marker. Which is great. I think everyone did a good job. And when I say everyone, that includes me, who just got slammed repeatedly. They got accepted, I got dumped, and you know what?

My book is real. I actually went out and wrote the damn thing. All the other book pitches were for things people would like to do. I actually went out and did mine. I didn't play it safe, but did something different and original. And I was totally slammed for it. I can change the things I got slammed on in the paper, which isn't due for a week, and I can still get an A or a B in the class. And hopefully I'll never see some of those people again. That was the worst presentation experience I've ever had in my life. Part of what made it so bad was that the things I was slammed for weren't even part of my original idea - I changed a lot of the pitch because of what people had told me in a focus group meeting, including making changes based on the professor's suggestions.

Once I changed everything on what the teacher suggested, everything went wrong. And once the teacher criticized me in front of the class, everyone else followed suit. I tell you, you haven't known rejection until you've been properly chastised by a room of 20 people over something you've been working on, off and on, for about 5 years.

Once my friend Christi called me up, for no real reason, and said to my voice mail: "Hey, Elizabeth! I just wanted to remind you: TO THY OWN SELF BE TRUE, baby!"

Yeah, I should have done that. If I had just gone with my gut feelings, I would have been okay. Focus groups are fine for academic projects, but publishing is a form of art. Art is about personal expression. Focus Groups are deadly poison to personal expression.

And at the end of a day like that, where my library experience was so lovely and my publishing experience so horrible, I have to ask myself why, now that I have a library science degree, I'm bothering to try to be a writer at all. My MLS will bring me some good money, and I'm reasonably competent at what I do. As an archivist and a librarian, I find my work in the field to be satisfying and rewarding. I get recommendations from those who work with me. As a writer, I get paid nothing, and on most 'zines I lose money - even when the 'zine does very well! I have yet to sell one novel, and when I do it won't bring me much money at all, I'm sure. Add to that the fact that my current work was rejected in my book pitch class before a real live editor, and I have to wonder why I put so much energy and hope into being published anyway.

But I can't stop writing. I'll write, and fight to get published until the day I die. I write like I breathe - it's a part of my life that just happens because I'm alive. Being an archivist fulfills my need to create order in the world, but being a writer fulfills my need to create, period. I learned a lot from my 520 class before I got stomped on, and I learned from them even while that was happening. I'll take what I learned, and I'll still be successful, and my book will get published. And then I'll get to laugh about Wednesday, and the people who hated my real book, while clapping over those that didn't really exist. And even if I never get published by a big house, I'll still keep writing, which is something that a lot of the people pitching books in that class never quite seem to get around to.