Joe Konrath has a post over on his blog questioning his time at Bouchercon and the feedback he received about what went on there. (Some folks thought Joe was a little out of control and came on a little too strong.)
I’m not going to address his specific case, but I do think this is an interesting touching-off point for a more general discussion.
One piece of advice that I would give to any author is to remember that, when you’re at a conference like Bouchercon, a lot of people are watching you and how you behave, and that you should always be aware of how your behavior is influencing them.
Once you go beyond the point of being “John Doe” so that attendees might actually know who you are, you don’t have the freedom of behaving as carefree as perhaps you once did. You have to be conscious of what your “image” is and how you are affecting that with your actions.
I know that I now have to watch how I handle myself at conferences (be careful of what I say, don’t drink too much, etc.) because I have built up a certain amount of credibility as a critic and journalist and I don’t want to blow that.
The same is true for authors. When you’re at a conference, you’re interacting with a lot of people who can potentially impact your career one way or another: fans, reviewers, publicists, booksellers, other writers, etc.
It’s important to be aware of how acting in a particular fashion affects those groups. It’s one thing to consciously decide that you don’t care, for example, what fellow writers think. It’s quite another to alienate them without even knowing it. (And I would suggest that either one is a bad idea.)
None of this is to say that you can’t be yourself. But you need to be the appropriate version of yourself for the situation. We all act differently in different social and business situations, and it’s important to chose the right one for the given circumstance.
When you’re a writer and you go to Bouchercon, you’re at your place of business. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, but you always have to have an eye towards business while you’re there.
If, for example, you get drunk and make a fool of yourself, you’re going to risk alienating people, and they might just be people you can’t afford to lose. The same thing goes for being loud and obnoxious, delivering political diatribes, or otherwise behaving in such a way as to turn people off.
The mystery community is such that most people are genuinely friendly to each other and get along very well. But if you squander that reservoir of good feelings, you’re likely to do serious damage to your career.
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