My Thoughts: No big deal. It’s one person, just one young agent. I’ve given briefings to rooms full of people,
to colonels and generals. I’ve sat in
front of firing squad panels, fielding questions flung at me in rapid
succession, questions meant to judge my abilities. I certainly could have a coherent conversation
about my book. It is my world after
all. Who knows it better than me,
right? It’s not like I’d have a
deer-in-the-headlights moment caused by some question for which I wasn’t
prepared. I’d just picture myself
presenting something—it didn’t matter what—in our conference room at work,
briefing charts displayed on the wall over my right shoulder, stern faces
following my production. Not a problem.
My Reality: I walk
in. Greetings are exchanged and I start
talking about this alien. Alien? Really? Suddenly my briefing-in-the-conference-room image turns to security
police escorting me to the funny farm and I realize, I’m not in Kansas
anymore. I’m not presenting some mind-numbing
information, cheat sheet within glancing distance on the screen behind me, to a
room full of people paid to be there. I’m
sitting in front of the gate keeper of my dream. At that moment, about 5 seconds into my
pitch, my brain spins around within my skull and lands up-side-down, crushing
its speech center and machine-gunning words out of my mouth in some
not-so-coherent fashion. My shaky hands
flail wildly as I tried to use their power to coax out the proper words. At
that point my goal has turned from land
an agent to make it out of the room
with some dignity.
By the end my brain had managed to somewhat right itself and my alien world didn’t seem so crazy after all.
I’m very grateful to Antioch Writer’s Workshop and the lovely agents of
FinePrint Literary Management who allowed us to pitch.
