Finding Mr. Write

I attended the Maui Writers Conference last year not because I'd dutifully planned ahead, saved my money and was finally ready to put myself out there after years of hiding behind my fear of being rejected. The reason I decided to attend was simply because I was chasing yet another good-looking-commitment-phobic-he's-just-not-that-into-me man/boy with mother issues with whom I'd had a fling while on vacation in Maui. I wanted to appear to have a legitimate reason to return to the scene of the crime.

I'd known about the conference for years, but always had a reason not to go: I wasn't ready to show my work to anyone, or felt too fat to wear a bikini, or God forbid I might actually have to write something if I attended a writers conference. But upon returning home from my vacation, I sat down at my computer and registered for the conference. Apparently lust trumped fear.

So my motives for attending the conference were a little skewed, but it's not like I was completely unprepared. In the previous 18 months, I'd published two essays in small press anthologies, crafted a book proposal and scored a literary agent. When Labor Day weekend rolled around, I packed a bikini and my worst intentions, and off I went.

Upon my arrival, I was preoccupied with checking for messages from Cliff. We'd planned to meet several days later, and to pass the time until our rendezvous, I wandered around the conference until I stumbled across a banner that said, “Jay Leno's Pitch to America.” A line of would-be-authors were waiting to pitch their story ideas to the cameras in the hopes that they'd be one of the few selected to appear on The Tonight Show. I'd never pitched my story out loud, and the prospect of doing so for the first time in front of a camera was horrifying, but I was looking for distractions.

When it was my turn, I stood trembling at the microphone and blurted out, “Falling into Manholes is a funny, insightful book about how I learned to take the 'me' out of men.” OMG, I thought, did I say that out loud? Before I could stop myself, I told a story about “Brad” that involved “presidential sex” and Christmas shopping, before slinking away, determined to go into denial about what I'd just done. They won't pick me anyway, I thought, proceeding to my next humiliation stop: pitching my story to the publisher and editor-in-chief of Putnam, Neil Nyren.

Sitting across a little table from Neil, I was nervous. He looked serious and bookish—not at all the type of person who I'd envisioned might be interested in my memoir, but I dove in. Anything was better than obsessing about Cliff.

“I don't think this is really your kind of book,” I began, “but you're the biggest publisher here, and you've been around forever and know everyone, so I'd very much appreciate your feedback.” Then I launched into my spiel: “Falling into Manholes is a collection of coming-of-middle-age true stories about looking for love in all the wrong places—food, alcohol, drugs, men—and finding it, in yourself.” (The finding it in myself part was not quite true yet, but I was optimistic that my book would eventually have a happy ending.) Neil maintained his poker face, and after I finished, he told me he liked my idea and asked me to send him the essays I had published.

Two days after Neil returned to New York, he e-mailed that he loved my essays and requested my book proposal. Several days later, he told me that one of his editors read it and came into his office demanding that he “buy this book right now so Wendy will move to Manhattan and be my new best friend!” That comment alone would've won my heart, but in the end Putnam paid me to write my story. Turns out Cliff didn't want me, but Neil did, and so did Jay Leno (I was “bleep job” girl on one of the show's “Pitch to America” episodes).

And so it was that chasing Mr. Wrong led me to Mr. Write.