People We Meet

Workshops are always a great place to meet new people.  It’s especially cool to meet people with whom you share common interests.  During the Publish Now workshop, I met several people.  Two were sitting directly behind me during the afternoon sessions.  When the moderator released us, he said, Be back in 15 minutes, but what they must have heard was, Ready, set, go…complain! 

I un-serendipitously "met" them when I made the mistake of turning around to get a look at these tortured souls.  Of course, when I did they locked me into their trance and talked to me as if I had already been a part of the conversation.  The man and woman continued their rundown of everything they didn’t like about the workshop.  They were so in sync with their complaining that I wrongly assumed that they were a couple.  When one paused the other began, quite effortlessly.   

For some reason, I was more amused than annoyed by them.  Maybe it was because I was having such a fabulous time.   Their primary complaint was that the workshop should have only focused on specific steps to getting published.  They approved of topics such as the legal aspects of publishing, marketing techniques or considering whether or not one should self-publish vs traditional publishing.  They were greatly displeased about the breakout sessions focused on genres such as fiction writing, memoirs and photography.  The last speaker before the break focused on the importance of content and determining whether or not you are really ready to publish.  She is an author and an editor.   She once told a writer that there were only 10 good pages that should be kept out of the 80 page document that had been written.  To that, the man said, What does that have to do with getting published?  I'm thinking it had everything to do with publishing but I smiled anyway.  Then the lady strangely followed up with Yeah, and they assume that everyone here is a writer!  Not everyone wants to write a book.    I guess she didn’t read the first sentence of the promo for the workshop: Our popular annual seminar provides writers with the information they need to publish their work in print or e-book format in today's changing digital landscape. 

At some point, I broke in and said to the lady, Oh, so what are you working on and what are you trying to do?   I was really expecting a passionate and elaborate description of a completed work that she had been desperately trying to get out to change the world.  Instead, she said that she wasn’t sure.  A while ago she started a blog and posted 6 times but then she got busy trying to help her husband with his business so she hasn’t been able to get back to it. 

Wow.