9. Lunch/Coffee/Dessert Dates: Lunches with editors and writers are the ideal way for me to work through all the restaurants in Manhattan. (hello, flat iron building and all the great restaurants near you!) Who could pass up Jacques Torres, Sweet Revenge, Magnolia, or Max Brenner?
8. Conferences: Sure, I come home tired, overworked, and with a full inbox and an overflowing desk, but when else would I have gotten to the beach on the gulf coast or learned there is such a thing as bear spray? And of course there's the actual writers, some of whom have become great friends.
7. Networking: People laugh at me when I say this or they just straight up don’t believe me. But once upon a time... I was shy. As many of us bookworms are, I was an introvert. No lie, I made it through most of high school without speaking. To the point that when I actually go into a discussion in Spanish class junior year, my teacher commented on the fact that he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard my voice before. That kind of shyness just isn’t possible when you’re an agent - and while I worked hard to get past it when I was teaching, agenting might just have cured me.
6. The Work: I'm never bored. There's always something to do. As an insomniac, I used to spend my nights watching reruns of Law & Order SVU or B movies on the Sci Fi channel (and yes, that’s right, Sci Fi). Now I can be more productive.
*This is according to the receipts I could find when doing my 2009 taxes.
4. The Community: Writers, agents, editors, booksellers, and everyone else involved in publishing! I love that no matter the side of the industry we all want the same thing - to fall in love with books and share them with the world. And never in my life before, have I been surrounded by so many people who have read the same books I’ve enjoyed, and can talk books endlessly with me and gush about loving them. It’s divine.
2. Editing & My Clients: I love to edit. I love to dissect character motivations and plot lines and world building. I love falling in love with characters and their voices and working with the amazing writers who share their world and introduce me to their characters and make me laugh and even cry as I go through those characters’ experiences right along side of them.
Which brings me to:
1. The Written Word: There is just nothing like staying awake until 4 am to finish a manuscript or a book, then laying awake until the alarm goes off thinking about those characters, then gushing about it and quoting lines from it the next day at work - or to anyone who will listen - then months or even years later, thinking of it again, rereading it again, or just talking about it again and knowing. [This book] Changed. My. Life.