It's right up Fifth Street

No one at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference handed me a book contract last week, but I still call my trip with Whitney to Seattle an unqualified success.

I didn’t expect AWP to be such a huge conference – over 700 exhibitors, and hundreds and hundreds of sessions. The “overflow” hotel Whitney and I stayed in was huge, too — it boasted 800 rooms.

The conference hall was seven blocks away from my hotel, but without ice or salt to contend with, that walk was a breeze for Whitney. The thing she struggled with most? Threading us through the gigantic hotel lobby. I’m not shy about asking for help, but a lot of the hotel workers spoke English as a second language, and some of my peculiar needs were difficult for them to understand. Here’s one example that happened when I thought I was at the concierge desk but wasn’t quite sure.

• Me: Is this the concierge desk?
• Woman: Concierge desk.
• Me: I need help figuring out the best way to get to the convention center.

When I’m at a hotel alone, I like to ask the doorman to confirm I’m starting off in the right direction any time I go out somewhere. I explain to the woman that I’ve been using an exit over there, and I point over my shoulder to what I hope is the exit I’ve been using. I tell her there never seems to be a doorman there. the Woman is absolutely silent. I try again. “Is there another exit somewhere that has doormen nearby?” The woman remains totally silent. Must be just one more in a series of hotel workers who haven’t been able to understand what I’m asking for.

• Me: I guess you can’t help me then?
• Woman: The yoga center, yes. There’s one a block away from the hotel.
• Me: Yoga center? (I decide to speak slower.) I am looking for the con Venn shun center.
• Woman: Oh, yes, lots of people who stay her use that yoga center, it’s very good.
• Me: (uncharacteristically speechless)
• Woman: Okay, we Look forward to seeing you during your stay here, then.

That’s when it dawns on me. This woman is indeed the concierge, but the reason she was quiet for 15 seconds at a time is that she was on the phone! She was listening to the person on the other line! “Oh, I’m sorry,” I laugh. “I didn’t realize you were on the phone!” The woman is not amused.

• Woman: How can I help you, then?
• Me: I need help figuring out the best way to get to the convention center. I’ve been using that exit over there (once again pointing to what I hope is the exit I mean) but it seems confusing. Is there another entrance to the hotel that might be easier
• Woman, sounding perturbed: Not really. You just go out that door and head up Fifth street.
• Me: So I head out the door and turn left?
• Woman: You just go up Fifth Street.
• Me: So I’d turn right?
• Woman: You’d head north, up Fifth Street.

That’s when another thing dawns on me. “You must not have been able to see my Seeing Eye dog,” I say, pointing to Whitney at my feet. . . “I’m blind.”
The concierge stands up, peeks over her desk, and apologizes. She’s so mortified, in fact, that she leaves her desk to walk Whitney and me all seven blocks to the convention center. After that, we did countless back and forth trips on our own. Not to say we never got lost. Whitney and I got turned around dozens of times, and it wasn’t until our last day there that a Good Samaritan pointed out the hotel I was staying in was round. “They’re two big towers right next to each other, like two giant hair curlers.” She was a poet, of course.

It didn’t take me long to realize that one of the best ways to make connections at a conference is to travel with a Seeing Eye dog who tries oh so hard to do the right thing but can’t always find the right elevator. Or the coffee bar. Or the woman’s bathroom.

I grabbed hold of every elbow offered to me at the conference, and I met as many writers and publishers while looking for elevators as I did going from table to table at the book fair. None of them promised they’d publish my next book, but all of them took interest in my project, and a few asked me to send the rough draft their way for a look. Some journal editors said they might be interested in publishing excerpts, too.

I collected as many business cards as I gave away, and my writer friend Linda Miller read them out loud on my digital recorder during a lunch together at my hotel.

That’s Whit and me and first-graders on a previous visit to Long Island.

I still have to transfer the information from those cards onto my talking computer, but who has time? Whitney and I are busy now preparing for our next trip: we head to the airport again Sunday for three days of school visits on Long Island!