The BEAst

A year ago I was staring at twitter with ginormous envy at all the people attending BEA. Envy so large that I, as a Bostonian, fondly named it my Green Monstah. The Green Monstah in my belly thought it sounded like such a great experience. Meeting industry peeps, other writers, getting books!! And I wasn’t there. Living through the tweets of others wasn’t enough. So, Green Monstah started poking at my brain. “Go next year,” it said. “Promise yourself you will go next year!”

And so I did. I promised myself.

I bought my flights and got a room with some of my favorite writerly people.

Together we planned such great adventures such as touring the convention, hanging around the city and best places to eat. As I arrived I was filled with excitement and joy and….TERRIFYING FEAR. In a matter of moments, BEA had gone from the best….to the BEAst!!

Did I bring the right clothes to wear?

What if no one recognized me?

What if I made a fool of myself?

How could I speak words to people I idolized?

Could I locate the nearest table to hide beneath?

But as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do something everyday that scares you.” BEA was definitely intimidating and so was the thought of meeting different agents, editors and writers. But I am SO glad that I took a deep breath (read: one hundred hyperventilating breaths) and put myself out there.

The convention floor was super busy and packed with all sorts of people. I bumped into several awesome writers from twitter, picked up a ton of great ARCs and put actual human faces to the names of several publishing rockstars. For a writing conference noob, it was all about networking and meeting people. So, as fun as the exhibit hall was, my fondest memories take place outside the convention walls.

I ate meals with twitter friends (who are now OMFG BEST FRIENDS FOREVER)

and wandered around the city seeing the sights while we discussed publishing trends, industry news, our querying processes and our current works in progress. We also ocassionally stuffed ourselves into a cab

The entire event felt like twitter came to life Pinohico style and all the tweeting faces I had once seen still on my feed turned to LIFE– or as if twitter was the animated world in Enchanted and we all awoke to be REAL WRITERS. I can’t even express how attending BEA made everything in the writing that much more REAL. I mean, honestly…..look at all these amazing faces!!

By the end of the weekend, I knew 100% that I had made the right decision. BEA was an amazing, stressful, eye-opening event and was probably the best weekend of my life. Without a doubt, you can count me in for next year!