Seeds of Change
MINNESOTA is part way through its five-month winter, and I’m looking at a brochure for one of the biggest summer writers conferences in the country. It looks like every other piece of mail arriving through the slot these days, mostly other summer writers conference brochures and seed catalogues. Each is crammed with glossy full-color photos that make promises about what might happen after the snow melts.
I drink a cup of coffee at my kitchen table, flip pages, and dream. Night-blooming vines and writers in sunglasses and sandals at a picnic table laughing. Tomatoes and a young woman on a porch, talking animatedly with a poet whose work I love. Melons and a shot of distant mountains. A man writing alone in a garden. Every page promises blue skies and growth.
What exactly do these photographs in conference brochures promise, and do the actual events live up to such promises? Until I had attended a few conferences myself, I wasn’t sure. Would I learn that my favorite writer is a jerk? Could I find a new mentor or even be discovered? I asked myself these questions in the same way I considered the unfamiliar varieties of flowers I saw in the seed catalogues, equal parts giddy about the prospect of a backyard bower and dubious about whether that plant would grow in my yard. Attending a conference is like taking a chance on some new plants—some experiences won’t match the idyllic scenes in the brochures, but many will take root and enrich your writing life in
