Word on the Street

Word on the Street is big. It's really big, and really big things overwhelm me, and then I resent them for overwhelming me. It's a stupid cycle, and it means that I didn't check out any booths at WOTS today. I just wandered around, not even on the paved paths, but on the grassy bits, wondering why there were so many booths that seemed quite unrelated to publishing or books. Like solar panels. Dianetics. Television. Music. Charities (which I'm sure do important work, but I thought this festival was about books and magazines and publishing).

I was reading in the Canadian Magazines Tent. Even now I'm not sure what the organizing principle for our time slot was exactly... after our reading was a panel discussion with litmag editors about how to get your fiction published, presumably in their magazines. I didn't listen to the panel, figuring it best not to know. If I'd been on the panel, I would have just said "Bribery." I guess we were supposed to read from fiction that had been published in magazines, which I didn't do. Were we the "success stories" or something? I don't know. I didn't fully understand what was going on, but that didn't seem to matter.

I didn't feel like a success story, that's for sure. In fact, I didn't even want to go. I was having one of those days (many consecutive days) of thinking that everything I've ever written sucks ass, and can't I just stay in bed instead? But I didn't, I went, I was responsible (and happy to be doing a paid reading, don't get me wrong). I read an old scene from my novel-in-perpetual-unending-progress, and I hope that people liked it. I thought it was sort of funny in a creepy Armageddon-paradise-dogma kind of way, but I didn't hear anyone laugh. One person said they liked it though, so I felt a little better.

Halfway through my reading I saw someone in the back row, someone I really didn't want to see, and I got a surge of adrenaline, and I think that improved my reading. Turned out to be someone else entirely, but hey, I guess it all worked out.

Then I wandered around for a while with Joey Comeau, who had read in our tent too. He read a funny story about exes and megaphones and tourists. We roamed Queen's Park awile, and gossipped, and laughed, and that was fun, and I felt a lot better. He just moved here to Toronto, and seems like a really nice guy, so be nice to him if you see him around.

I'm listening to Zeppelin on Q107. What's up with that? Am I going all classic rock? Am I going to start drinkin' Labatt 50?!

I unpacked my books this weekend. I haven't seen them in their entirety, all together like this, in over a year. I love them all. I want to reread all my favourites immediately. That's going to be tough, since there are so many, but I've started with Miss Pamela's Mercy. Then I thought, should I start a game of Facebook Scrabble with Lynn Crosbie? She'd probably kick my ass.

At WOTS today I overheard people discussing Facebook Scrabble: "Those two-letter words are the key to Scrabble!" and "I hate those two-letter words!"

I'm so overtired I feel like I'm on another planet. That explains my rambly post.

Also, I'm really bad at making decisions. Just so you know.