Typewriter Tattoos and Pastel Goth: What I Learned at a Writers’ Convention

The hair colors pop into view like fireworks. Striking peacock blue, the shade you’d get if you amped up the saturation on a photo of a tropical sea. A scarlet bob topped with black and white feathers. Bouncy curls of deep purple and indigo, on a woman wearing a matching dress covered in brilliant stars. She floats by looking like the night sky. When she speaks, even her soft childlike voice seems ethereal.

Next I notice the tattoos: swirling out of shirtsleeves, cascading over clavicles, luring my gaze to shoulders and ankles and edges of clothing where the images disappear into mystery. I see flashing dragon tails, fluttering leaves, marauding crows and enameled typewriter keys. Arms covered in them, end to end, entire tales told on a sleeve.

Moments into this event, I am already captivated. And then, I begin to hear the stories.

***

“I’ve never met a boring writer,” my friend Julie told me, when I shared with her my fears about my weekend plans to attend my first writing conference, hosted by  Willamette Writers in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I was worried nobody there would speak to me. I expected writers to be introverted and quiet—as I can be, often, in a new situation.

Within minutes of walking into the event, I met Claire and Lisa. They are neither shy nor boring. Claire came in search of a literary agent to publish her young adult novel. The story is set in a fantasy world, but the themes are love and friendship and all the things that give meaning to the actual world we live in. Standing in front of an ominous panel of agents, she pitches her story with the same enthusiasm she uses when you sit beside her at the hotel bar and she talks about her one-year-old daughter, the one she has left overnight for the first time ever, to attend this event. Claire’s descriptions of of her novel are filled with warmth and humor. Just like real life. Just like her.

Lisa is writing a memoir about growing up in a cult that was fraught with abuse, light on schooling and plagued with plane crashes because the elders thought God would keep them airborne in spite of their lack of pilot training. She speaks in energetic bursts, like exploding rockets. When she tells her story in rapid-fire shots of information and emotion, she is equally compelled and compelling. Her pitch to the agents is strong, and they tell her it is fascinating. Their words could just as easily describe the woman standing before them.

The conversations at this conference are also fascinating. I’ve never overheard more talk about dragons, and I’ve hung out with a lot of GOT and LOTR and D&D people. I learn that there is such a thing as Pastel Goth, and at least one person writes about it. My favorite newly-acquired term is the genre called Urban Fantasy. Every time someone mentions it, I wonder if there is such a thing as Rural Fantasy. I imagine characters hiding from dragons behind bales of hay. Those are highly combustible, by the way, so using a city as your setting is starting to make more sense. But then again, maybe I just set up the perfect scene. I am learning that anything can become a story, if someone feels the urge to imagine it, and write it.

***

A few days after the conference, my mind keeps flashing back those bright hair colors and clever tattoos. I should have expected these things, because writers are image-makers, creating worlds out of any blank space they can find. Sometimes the worlds come from our imagination, bursting out of our heads to reveal futuristic landscapes with green skies glistening above metallic cityscapes. Other times the worlds squeeze through the cracks of memory, curving into the shape of a dusty road traveled by a rusty pickup truck headed to our childhood home. We see scenes, inside these places. Dad and mom fighting. Wizards confronting warlocks. New lovers meeting for the first time. We hear the words they say to each other, and write those. We hear the silence in between conversations, and write that. We turn nothing into something—and we do it because we hope you will love these places and people and conversations as much as we do.

The writers I met this weekend are as far from boring as any people I have ever met. I am honored that they shared their words with me. I am inspired because they shared their worlds with me.