Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen's Blog About Whatever She Feels Like Writing About

So, it’s been promo season again for me, so I’ve been to a lot of conferences. At one recent one, the authors were asked why he or she writes. And, of course, the audience was given the standard crop of feel-good answers:

“I write to create.”

“I write to inspire.”

“I write to explore the depths of my soul.”

Wanna know why I write?

I write for Visa. I’ve got bills to pay.

So you all know that I sliced my foot open. I forgot to tell you, though, about the experience of getting treatment.

I was brought to the emergency room after the whole fainting episode, and after the folks who were around wrapped my foot up in bandages to, you know, keep me from bleeding all over everything. Upon arrival, I was put into a wheelchair and then… I waited.

No one checked to see if I had done real damage, or if I was bleeding uncontrollably. Probably because there was already a bandage on it.

When I finally saw the triage nurse, I figured she would take a look at the foot to, you know, triage it.

WRONG.

She merely took my blood pressure and wheeled me to a separate part of the ER called, “Express Lane.”

You know how there are those signs at amusement parks that say, “You wait from this point is 214 minutes”? If there had been a sign like that I actually would’ve respected it. It would’ve made me smile. I’d have seen the humor in it and found patience.

Instead, I found it incredibly insulting to be take to the “Express Lane” where I waited for 2 hours (again, with no one checking on the status of my bleeding). Really? Express? I’m not sure that word means what this hospital thinks it means.

I always say that since I write fiction for a living, I never let the truth get in the way of a good story. But so often, I find myself in situations that I COULD NOT MAKE UP if I tried. Really.

Sometimes, they are hard to talk about as I don’t want to give away incriminating details. But here’s a story that I believe enough time has elapsed for me to tell (leaving out many specifics, again, to protect the innocent):

A while back, I went to an educator’s conference, and I was asked to stay for the author dinner. Normally, that’s a nice ego boost, people treating you like you are special. Never turn those down.

At this particular dinner, the organizers warned me that they were going to ask each of the authors to speak a little bit on how he or she got on the track he/she is on. I figured this was going to be very casual, low stress. Oh, no.

Each author was asked to speak for 5 to 7 minutes. After dinner. And there were 15 of us.

And I was number 14 on the list.

Does that sound bad? It gets worse.

The first guy is routinely on the NYT Bestseller list. And used to walk a celebrity’s dog while he lived in the YMCA. (Imagine how that feels: he’s on the NYT Bestseller list, and I, you know, published something.)

The next woman has won like 712 awards. The next woman felt honored to be a children’s book author since she didn’t learn to read until she was like 9.

I haven’t won very many awards and I learned to read at a normal time.

Then a guy comes up and has his wife sing the national anthem to the country he created in his novel (she wrote the national anthem).

Then a guy plays the flute and gives us a Native American blessing.

By this point, I am incredibly resentful of being number 14 on the list.

Then a guy gets up and raps his picture book. Which I TOTALLY would’ve done had he not beat me to it. Really.

Then a woman gets up and tells a joke. And I think, Great! I’ll tell a joke! Except then I realize that the only joke I know has a hooker and a crocodile in it. This was not the right audience.

I don’t even remember what else happened, but trust me when I say that it just got worse and worse.

Lesson learned: insist you must leave early so that you are scheduled near the beginning and not second from last. Because there is nothing interesting you can possibly say after 13 other people have talked.

Could’ve been worse — I could’ve been number 15.

My notes are finally on the website for download, as long as you have the magic password….

Those of you who know me know that I am all about the glamour. Substance, pish-posh. Glamour is everything.

Two nights ago, I sliced my foot open. I lost so much blood I passed out. That was bad enough.

Look at what I am forced to wear:

For the curious, that is a hot pink Jimmy Choo on one side, and a crime against humanity on the other.

From exactly one year ago:

I’ve been watching this show. Kind of like you watch a train wreck. I can’t look away. Especially because the show has decided to incorporate a level of irony into it’s title and premise that is almost unmatched in television. Is there any part of these housewives that could be considered real?

I live in New Jersey. I used to be a housewife. I don’t know anyone like those women. Nor would I really want to.

It seems totally lame to tell you now, but that news I wasn’t supposed to tell was that I sold two more PBs, one called CHICKS RUN WILD to S&S (due out January 2011) and one called THE TWELVE WORST DAYS OF CHRISTMAS to Abrams. Yay me. Hard to muster up too much excitement after dropping the ball for so long.

This gem from June 1, 2009

I said when i started this blog that it was a dumb idea. Because I am not very big on the follow through. But after being encouraged (read: harassed) at the various SCBWI conferences I’ve attended as of late, I have decided to give it another go.

But I am incredibly busy. So for a while, I will resurrect some older posts from other blogs I started and never followed through on, just to get some content up. Because I am sneaky like that.