Making Good Things: PANK @AWP14

 

~by Colin Winnette

 

I was at the airport earlier, flying back from AWP, and thinking about what it means to make a good thing. Or what a good thing even is. I came to no solid conclusions, and think to call something “good” or “bad” does more harm than good. But I still spend a lot of time wondering if what I’m doing is worthwhile, whether I should try to sell more books and if I would sell more books if I could figure out what a “better” book might be like, because then I could try as hard as I could to make it, this “better” thing. I have these thoughts, knowing full well that they’re worse than unproductive—they’re entertaining a notion based on something that does not exist, and therefore can never be satisfied because I can perpetually shift the nature of its demands. Which means all I’m doing is sitting around undoing possibilities.

AWP is and was fun for me. I like seeing the people and the things they make. Feeling the excitement, getting more excited than I probably should, talking too fast and bouncing around on my heels, swinging my arms around, sticking my nose in things and trying to be helpful. I like feeling sort of pathetic but also sort of vaguely celebrated in these little pockets of an enormous hub of various kinds of energy and success. Everyone’s making something and some of the things are some of the most special things I’ve ever encountered. And somehow along the way, I got involved with some of the most special things (to me) and we made special things together. I leaned against Drew Burk and he told me about how he was going to change the future of publishing and how he wanted me to be a part of it because we love each other in a lot of ways and we made a special book together, him and me and the amazing crew. I don’t know about changing the future of publishing. I don’t know about the tomorrow of publishing, or much of the earlier today of publishing. I think we drink and we talk and we feel things and we’re all excited and it feels right. I know that when I look at the thing Drew and the crew made with me, I have no questions about it. No hesitations or self-doubt. I have no regrets and no sense of what I might have done or what I might try to do in the future. I just look at it and I’m excited by what it is. I’m just happy to be in its presence, and be in the presence of those who helped make it happen.

I came away from the conference with projects to finish and a lot to read. I felt like a partner to some and less than noticeable to many. I felt like a notch on a belt or two, and a proud little prince to others. I felt amateur and established and desperate and comfortable. I felt both successful and like a complete failure. All around me, people were having conversations about the future of publishing, and they were showing off some amazing objects/programs/business cards/high-fives/kindnesses, and others were waving their hearts around, held together with nothing but a big fat black paper clip. It was a sloppy L-shape of a conference hall, with no center, or obvious organizational strategy to its layout, but scattered throughout there were a few things I’d made, the people who made them, or who helped make them what they ultimately became, a few things I’d helped make, a few things I’m going to make, a few things I hadn’t known about, a lot of things I still don’t know about, a few good friends, a few new friends, a dinner reservation with no table, a change of venue with no notice, a Car2Go, a parking ticket, 10-piece sushis rolls with the ones I’ve missed too long already, a WinterLife, some signatures, some awkward hugs, some lengthy ones, some discomfort, hand soap instead of bar soap, some Chicken N Waffle flavored potato chips. And now I’m home, and the cat is thrilled, and I’ll start a new job tomorrow, after I walk my wife to work.

 

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Colin Winnette is the author of three books: Revelation, Animal Collection, and Fondly, one of Salon.com’s “Best Books of 2013.” He is an Associate Editor at PANK, and he lives in San Francisco.