8 Things NOT To Do When You Meet Your Favorite Author

Literary festivals and writing conferences are a time for shoulder-rubbing and chatting up your favorite authors. You love their books and they love their fans but keep things respectable with our lit fest etiquette guide.

1. Get Overly Passionate

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Crying is for babies, funerals, and the ending to Old Yeller. Excessive emotional overtures are not the best way to bond with an author. Instead of impressing her with your deep connection to her work, you'll end up inspiring her to get a restraining order. Emily Raboteau tells us that she had to change her phone number after her first novel The Professor's Daughter . "A man from Chicago who'd seen my author photo in a magazine kept calling to tell me I looked exactly like his mother and that he'd fallen in love with me. I'm pretty sure he didn't read my book."

2. Persuade Them To Dash A Few Words Off For You

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Just because writers do it for a living does not mean it's acceptable to make requests. "A woman came up to me at an elegant hotel where we both happened to be staying. She asked to speak with me privately, then burst into tears, and told me that her daughter was in the midst of writing an essay as a college transfer student, and would I write it for her? She offered to fly me anywhere and pay me anything." Asking Dani Shapiro to write your entrance essay is like asking Usain Bolt to run your 400 meter dash in next week's meet. He could, but he won't. The same rule applies for asking authors you met two seconds before to write your MFA or residency references.

3. Ask For A Publishing Hook-Up

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This is a common request and one that is usually unwelcome. "Once, after a reading, a gentlemen handed me a manuscript so heavy it could be used as a weapon if needed, with the hope with I would be able to read the book and help secure publication," says The Isle of Youth author Laura van den Berg. "I must have looked a little stricken, as he hastily reassured me that this was only the first installment. There was plenty more where that came from." If you've got a story or trilogy only a mother could love, do your author a favor and refrain from sharing.

4. Try To Make, uh Force, Plans

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You're at the festival or conference to network, but overeagerness can be unbecoming. Much like a cornered animal, your favorite author may lapse into feral gut-reaction mode upon hearing your unwelcome invitations to "grab coffee" or "hang out sometime." There's no polite way for them to refuse you, so do everyone a favor and don't ask--unless of course, you're sure the interest is requited, which we're not saying is never the case.

5. Tell Them You Haven't Read Their Book

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There's no better way to incite immediate discomfort in an author than to go out of your way to tell her you haven't read her book. So if you don't have anything complimentary and/or thoughtful to say, try and fake it convincingly. Otherwise, shut your trap and smile.

6. Bring them DIY Tokens of Your Fandom

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Your mother may love that macaroni necklace you brought home from Pre-K arts & crafts, but your favorite author is unlikely to share the sentiment. The Devil in Silver author Victor LaValle shares a particularly eerie experience he had while doing a reading in New York. "An older man approached me with an envelope. Inside was a collage he'd made, with pictures of me from a number of different events I'd done over the past few weeks. Then he handed me a second collage, but this time the multiple shots of me were from readings I'd done when my first book came out - three years ago. I thanked him for both and slipped them into my bag for safekeeping (also known as evidence)." Keep the homemade gifts to yourself, unless you want to be the reason for your author's new security detail.

7. Offer Constructive Criticism

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Trust us. If it's unsolicited, it's never constructive.

8. Make Indecent Proposals

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We crush on the literary types too but please don't act* on your feelings, as one lady did to author of the novel Long Division, Kiese Laymon. "The first person who actually called themselves a 'fangirl' sent me a thousand dollar gift card and a key to her apartment with a blue bow that said, 'Let's do long division' on it." You might think this sort of sexy cleverness will snare your man or lady of letters, but really you'll just become an anecdote. Better just keep it (and the key) in your pants.

* Unless you feel there's a real good reason to act. We do know what happens when writers get together. Even then, please remember gorgeous plays hard to forget in the best possible meaning of the phrase.

You know how to act now so come hear Kiese Laymon, Victor LaValle, Emily Raboteau, Dani Shapiro, Laura van den Berg, and many others at #TWF14 in New Orleans.