“This is gonna be totally awesome,” said Harley, as they pulled up to the conference center. “I can’t believe we’re actually going to our first writing conference!”
Harley James was a college junior on a creative writing scholarship. She had recently completed her debut novel and, as a treat to herself, had bought herself and her classmate Tanya tickets to their very first writing convention. They were stoked at the prospect of meeting other real live writers and learning tips and tricks from the experts.
Getting out of the car, she and Tanya looked at the convention center excitedly. It was unmistakable with a huge banner over it that said “4th Annual Writer’s Conference.”
Tanya checked her watch. “I think we’re…40 minutes early,” she said.
“You bet your ass we are,” confirmed Harley. “I have also brought no fewer than four printed copies of my entire manuscript, and three pens in her tote bag in case one dies mid-pitch.”
“Wow,” said Tanya. “Did you also…“
“Print my pitch out on notecards and spend an hour practicing in the mirror?” Harley finished for her. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Ok, crazy,” said Tanya. “Well, we’re here. Let’s go check out the tables.”
The summer Sub-Zero AC hit them dead in the face as they walked through the entrance. Before then stood legions of tables, each one manned by a self-published author desperate for sales. Covers full of canva gradients, stock photos, and little homemade signs reading things like “cash and venmo,” as well as “no refunds,” slapped them in the face.
Ignoring all of this, Harley snookered around and made a beeline for the back hallway, towards the pitch room. The truth was, she and Tanya had come to this conference for one reason, and one reason alone—the chance to meet with internationally-renown literary agent, Matilda N. Wormwood.
Matilda Nell Wormwood was the foremost international authority on writing. Half class-act, half holy terror, writers didn’t submit to Matilda—they chased the privilege of being humiliated by her. Rumor had it, if she gave you two minutes of eye contact, you could consider yourself to have a successful writing career. If she gave you four, you could consider yourself to be among the most talented writers of the day. If she took out her special signing pen in your presence—an act only seen once publicly—you would be an overnight sensation.
Sure enough, as Harley stared at the a placard on the pitch room door, the entrance doors burst open. A woman strode into the room in a razor-sharp charcoal blazer that cost more than any advance she’d ever granted. Her single good eye glared about the room like it had insulted her family. On the other eye sat her trademark black silk eye patch. Rumor had it that she had once read a particularly dull opening paragraph, and the eye had simply refused to ever open again.
In her Mulberry purse sat two of the smallest, meanest Chihuahuas you’d ever seen. They were named Quill and Ink, and they gave a low growl at anyone who approached their mother, but she fawned over them with more attention than she’d afforded her own children.
Whispers emanated from the crowd like a mist as she made her entrance, and headed for the pitch room at the back of the hall.
Behind her, absolute chaos broke out. An unsmall crowd of admirers and agent hopefuls strung along after her like a literary zombie horde, leaving tables and unattended children strewn about in their wake.
Not needing to see them to know they were there, she called over her shoulder, “If you haven’t made an appointment, please see the front desk to get on the wait list!”
The poor woman who had volunteered to work the front desk blanched, and was instantly consumed by the incoming hordes.
Luckily for Harley and Tanya, they had already signed up for their spots, and were also already positioned at the pitch room door. Rooted to the spot, they stared at Matilda with starry eyes as she marched straight up to them, not noticing them for an instant, and pushed past them into her frigid pitch room without so much as a second glance.
Quill and Ink were not so oblivious, however, and gave the girls a perfunctory snarl as they swept right by them in slow motion on their way into the death chamber.
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Harley clutched her query letter to her chest, its corners already softening from her sweaty palms. She knew that when it came her turn, Ms. Wormwood was going to eviscerate her, but she nonetheless held out hope that she might get two seconds of validating eye-contact at some point during her time slot.
Somewhere down the hall, a woman’s voice rose over the microphone: “…and again, please remember that agents are people too—even our dear Ms. Wormwood—so please do not corner them in the bathroom. We have tissues available in the pitch rooms, and a jar full of Xanax in the bathroom cupboards. As always, may the odds be ever in your favor.”
Gulping, shaking, and praying she wouldn’t get laughed out of the room, Harley hesitantly took Tanya’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go sit on that far wall. Maybe we’ll be able to listen in on a few of the pitches, get some pointers, and learn how it’s done.”
Tanya nodded, and the two grabbed seats in folding chairs just inside the door.
Inside, the air smelled like coffee and toner. In one corner, a woman was rehearsing her logline under her breath while flipping through note cards. In another, a man’s hands shook slightly as he checked his business cards for the umpteenth time. The room hummed with nervous energy—equal parts hope and panic.
In the center of the room sat a single wood table with a single golden placard on it that read “Matilda N. Wormwood.” Behind it sat a purple plush chair. On the table sat a bowl of Italian mints, a laptop open to a submission tracker, and a fresh cup of coffee. High above the room, a crystal chandalier completed the feeling of high-brow society, and also cast an intimidating glow over the entire affair.
Harley and Tanya stood there dumb struck for several seconds before Tanya returned to her wits, and pointed to two empty chairs toward the side of the room. They quickly headed over to snag the advantageous spot. Sitting down, they noticed that, the acoustics of the room were such that they could clearly overhear the conversation as they watched.
Thus, there they were sitting, ostensibly reviewing their note cards, when Wormwood finished up with feeding her Chihuahuas kibble, organized her station, picked up her feather pen, and called her first pitch forward.
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The man was not what Harley had expected to meet when she registered for the conference.
Far from looking like he spent his life behind a computer screen, he was gaunt, with a weathered face, and an Abraham Lincoln beard. He had a rolled-up chart under one arm, and when he unrolled it across Matilda Wormwood’s table, Harley saw it was hand-drawn—a nautical map with waters marked in a spiky, private handwriting, notes crowding the margins like the map had grown mold.
“Welcome,” said Wormwood, pulling out the feather quill with which she took notes. “Tell me about your book.”
“It’s a book about a whale,” the man said, almost offhandedly, before chuckling to himself. “But if I’m honest, it’s not really about the whale.”
Harley and Tanya leaned in slightly, and realized they should probably take notes. This was, Harley thought, an excellent hook—ambiguity. Subversion of expectation. She got out a pen.
Wormwood resisted the urge to ask him why, if he had written such a book, he had made the choice to pitch her, but instead simply said, dryly. “Okay. So what is it about?”
“Everything,” he said simply.
Wormwood sighed—the first of many for the day.
“Obsession,” he continued, after an unnaturally long pause, “God. The commodification of nature under industrial capitalism.” He paused, like he was deciding whether to mention the next part. “In fact, there’s an entire chapter that’s just a legal argument about whether or not a whale is a fish.”
Wormwood tilted her head to the side, and breathed in to the count of four, and back out to the count of six.
“So where’s the whale in chapter one?”
“It’s not.”
“Ok,” said Wormwood, looking like she wanted to fling herself into the sea. “When does the whale show up?”
“Structurally, or emotionally?”
“Either.”
“Page two hundred, roughly. But he’s been thematically present the entire—”
“Page two hundred.”
“He’s a presence, Matilda,” the man said, waving away her disbelief like a salmon jumping up a waterfall. “An absence that is itself a presence.”
Harley wrote this down verbatim. She wasn’t sure yet whether it was insane, or the smartest thing she’d ever heard. “Can you believe the balls on this guy?” she whispered to Tanya.
“Nah, man—he’s nuts.”
“Ok,” said Wormwood. “Do you have a one-sentence pitch?”
The author sat back, entered a somewhat dreamlike state, and smiled as he said, “Call me Ishmael.”
Wormwood’s pen stopped. “I said a pitch, not a phrase. What does that even mean?”
“It means nothing,” said the man, “and yet it means everything.”
An unfettered smile blossomed across his face. “It’s the best goddamned sentence I’ve ever written.”
One of the Chihuahuas began to growl, and Wormwood leaned down to scratch him on the head. “Now now pooky,” she cooed. “What have I said about growling when someone has written a terrible book? That’s mommy’s job, eh?” She gave him a little treat. “There’s a good boy!” She sat back up and straightened her suit. “Well, do you have any comp titles?”
“Greatness has no comps,” he stated simply, making Wormwood regret taking her focus off her dog. He didn’t say this arrogantly, which somehow made it worse. “I actually invented several structural techniques specifically for this book.”
“No, I mean,” Wormwood tapped her fingers together, trying her best to hold it together, “Who else writes like this?”
“Madam, no one writes like this. That is the entire — " he stopped himself, visibly deciding not to finish the sentence.
Wormwood herself looked resigned and bored. “Genre?”
The author gesticulated like a man fly fishing. “Adventure—tragedy—natural history—sermon.”
“You’re going to have to pick one.”
“I have picked four,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “That is the book.”
“Fine,” said Wormwood, “Word count?”
“215,000.”
In a brief moment of insanity, Wormwood actually laughed—once—a strange, short noise, that sounded more yip than chuckle. Covering it with a cough, she excused herself, and dabbed at her non-patched eye for a moment.
“Target reader?”
He stared into the middle distance as he said, “Anyone who has ever stared at the sea and felt it staring back.”
Wormwood wrote something on her form. Harley, craning, caught two words before Wormwood angled the clipboard away: PASS — great ideas; no book.
“Well, thanks for sharing,” she finally said. “Should whale-based legal theory ever trend, we’ll be in touch.”
The man rolled his chart back up with the unhurried care of someone who had recently harpooned a whale.
He didn’t look devastated—he looked like a man who had expected exactly this but had committed to chasing it long before the conference began.
He stood, nodded once to Wormwood, and walked toward the exit, chart under his arm like a rolled-up flag from a war that hadn’t been fought yet.
Harley and Tanya watched him go, faces amuck with befuddlement.
“That was so weird!” whispered Harley.
“So weird!” echoed Tanya. “Why did he bother to pitch her? Who would ever read a 200,000 page book about a whale?”
“I have no idea,” said Harley. “Some people are really out of touch.”
Tanya nudged her. “Hey, I’m hungry. You wanna go grab some snacks?”
“Actually, I’d like to watch a few more pitches first,” said Harley.
Wormwood called the next pitch.
A strange-looking elderly gentleman stepped forward. His face was like weathered driftwood—worn down to its essentials. His hands were thick and scarred from a line he still carried coiled over one forearm, and his eyes held the color of the sea.
“Whoa—Is that guy carrying a fishing line?” asked Tanya.
“Man, he is old,” said Harley, in shock. “My grandpa is in his 80s, but this guy looks way older.” They looked at each other in disbelief.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Wormwood. “Another ‘brilliant’ man who wants to pitch some perfectly dull book about water.”
Harley and Tanya looked on, bewildered, as Wormwood pulled her crooked pointer finger with its polished pink nails up to her face, and called the man forward.
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