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jpskewedthroneThat line courtesy of John Scalzi. I met him at Philcon when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clarkesworld dragged him up to sign books (after running into him briefly in the dealer's room) and then again at the SFWA party that night. I think it's appropriate.
Philcon was a blast. The first night was uninteresting, except for the fact that the bar won and the exams were shoved out of sight so I could enjoy myself. I did manage to get one of the four sets graded while I was there, but not on Friday. I stayed out WAY too late on Friday, and then couldn't sleep once I returned to my room, so I operated on about 3 hours of sleep when Saturday hit.
I woke up too late to hit the LJ meet and greet, but I did manage to make my reading. This was a disaster. The readings were not assigned ahead of time and even though I was the second person to request a reading, I was one of the last to be asked what timeslot I wanted when they got around to making the schedule. So all of my requested timeslots were filled. This, plus the fact that the reading board was put up approximately an hour before my reading, made it no surprise at all when no one showed up for my reading except Barbara Campbell andclarkesworld, both of whom have heard all of my readings already. So we talked shop for that time period. My next thing was a panel at 4. So I hit the dealers room and signed copies of my books, then took a break and graded a few of those papers.
The panel at 4 was on "Bad Writing Habits and How To Avoid Them". It started off well, bring up the usual internet distractions, research distractions, basically the idea that distractions needed to be avoided altogether. My solution was to put on music and earbuds, thus cutting myself off from all distraction. This seems to kick my brain into writing mode. Peter Heck was moderating and he set up the panel to follow Heilein's 5 step method to getting published (1. Write; 2. Finish what you write; 3. Send out what you finish; 4. and 5. were a little iffy because the panel devolved at that point). So we got through the first 3 steps with some well-organized comments from the panelists and solutions for breaking those habits. But after that the panel broke down and became more of a "what to do to get published" kind of Q&A. In the end, a very good panel. Active, interesting, and good audience participation.
I went to dinner with Barbara and Neil at a place called Tir Na Nog where I got fish and chips. Neil got a cheeseburger, being the venturing Irish soul that he is. *grin* Good food, I thought. We hit the bar after this and had a long, long discussion about pretty much everything. What came out of this was a title for my next trilogy: The Stool Trilogy, which went bad in so many ways I can't recount them. I'm sure you can imagine. Also, we came up with what I think is a really good panel idea for the future, possibly for WFC (since the topic is ghosts): From the Trunk: Stories authors wrote BEFORE they were published, preferrably from the ages of 9-12. You know, dig out that long, long buried story and read it aloud to the audience so they can see that we all started at the same point: with bad stories that involved all of your friends being transported to another world where they instantly knew how to fight with swords and use latent magical abilities and somehow survived even when they couldn't find a grocery store to buy food at. Those kinds of stories. I think the fan base would eat this up, and everyone could get a good laugh. Although it does require a high embarrassment level for the authors . . .
After a few drinks, Neil and I hit the SFWA party. While I'd vowed to go to bed early due to lack of sleep, I ended up staying up late AGAIN on Saturday. The party was just too good. Scalzi scarred my books forever with his brief summary of stressed furniture, I met a few new people, including some up-and-coming writers, etc. All good.
After this, I crashed. Heavily.
Sunday I had 2 more panels to do, the first on networking. This panel went really well, even though the moderator didn't show. The usual discussion here: be polite and personable when meeting editors, agents, and authors at cons. Don't immediately thrust the book under the bathroom stall, read their blogs so you realize they are real people with cats and dogs and painting issues, which gives you some insight in to how to talk to them without talking shop, etc. I brought up that networking isn't necessary, pointing out I got an agent without any networking there at all. And we discussed the snail mail networking as well. You don't HAVE to meet these people face-to-face to make connections. And of course we mentioned to never burn bridges because everyone knows everyone else in the industry and we all talk to each other.
I hung around for my last panel about creating religions in SF and fantasy. I thought this would be the best panel of all, but it wasn't. We never really discussed how we created our religions (I tried, I really, really tried to steer the panel to this) but the moderator wanted us to discuss our books and our religions, then the religions we'd seen developed for other books, etc. It was not the panel I thought it would be.
In the end, I bailed on this panel as soon as possible, jumped in the car, and sped home, with a quick stop at IKEA. A long weekend. Not much grading done. Alot of drinking done. Without appropriate supervision, I also managed to skip most of my meals. A good con. I think I may have picked up a few new readers, which is good. And I had the HUGE ego boost of walking down the hall and hearing a group of 5 or 6 people discussing "this cool idea about a throne where the personalities are stored in it" as I meandered by. If hearing people talking about your book in the hallway, unprompted in any way by you, isn't a good feeling . . .
And now, I must focus on stressing out the furniture in new and bizarre ways. And some sleep would be nice as well.
clarkesworld dragged him up to sign books (after running into him briefly in the dealer's room) and then again at the SFWA party that night. I think it's appropriate.Philcon was a blast. The first night was uninteresting, except for the fact that the bar won and the exams were shoved out of sight so I could enjoy myself. I did manage to get one of the four sets graded while I was there, but not on Friday. I stayed out WAY too late on Friday, and then couldn't sleep once I returned to my room, so I operated on about 3 hours of sleep when Saturday hit.
I woke up too late to hit the LJ meet and greet, but I did manage to make my reading. This was a disaster. The readings were not assigned ahead of time and even though I was the second person to request a reading, I was one of the last to be asked what timeslot I wanted when they got around to making the schedule. So all of my requested timeslots were filled. This, plus the fact that the reading board was put up approximately an hour before my reading, made it no surprise at all when no one showed up for my reading except Barbara Campbell and
clarkesworld, both of whom have heard all of my readings already. So we talked shop for that time period. My next thing was a panel at 4. So I hit the dealers room and signed copies of my books, then took a break and graded a few of those papers.The panel at 4 was on "Bad Writing Habits and How To Avoid Them". It started off well, bring up the usual internet distractions, research distractions, basically the idea that distractions needed to be avoided altogether. My solution was to put on music and earbuds, thus cutting myself off from all distraction. This seems to kick my brain into writing mode. Peter Heck was moderating and he set up the panel to follow Heilein's 5 step method to getting published (1. Write; 2. Finish what you write; 3. Send out what you finish; 4. and 5. were a little iffy because the panel devolved at that point). So we got through the first 3 steps with some well-organized comments from the panelists and solutions for breaking those habits. But after that the panel broke down and became more of a "what to do to get published" kind of Q&A. In the end, a very good panel. Active, interesting, and good audience participation.
I went to dinner with Barbara and Neil at a place called Tir Na Nog where I got fish and chips. Neil got a cheeseburger, being the venturing Irish soul that he is. *grin* Good food, I thought. We hit the bar after this and had a long, long discussion about pretty much everything. What came out of this was a title for my next trilogy: The Stool Trilogy, which went bad in so many ways I can't recount them. I'm sure you can imagine. Also, we came up with what I think is a really good panel idea for the future, possibly for WFC (since the topic is ghosts): From the Trunk: Stories authors wrote BEFORE they were published, preferrably from the ages of 9-12. You know, dig out that long, long buried story and read it aloud to the audience so they can see that we all started at the same point: with bad stories that involved all of your friends being transported to another world where they instantly knew how to fight with swords and use latent magical abilities and somehow survived even when they couldn't find a grocery store to buy food at. Those kinds of stories. I think the fan base would eat this up, and everyone could get a good laugh. Although it does require a high embarrassment level for the authors . . .
After a few drinks, Neil and I hit the SFWA party. While I'd vowed to go to bed early due to lack of sleep, I ended up staying up late AGAIN on Saturday. The party was just too good. Scalzi scarred my books forever with his brief summary of stressed furniture, I met a few new people, including some up-and-coming writers, etc. All good.
After this, I crashed. Heavily.
Sunday I had 2 more panels to do, the first on networking. This panel went really well, even though the moderator didn't show. The usual discussion here: be polite and personable when meeting editors, agents, and authors at cons. Don't immediately thrust the book under the bathroom stall, read their blogs so you realize they are real people with cats and dogs and painting issues, which gives you some insight in to how to talk to them without talking shop, etc. I brought up that networking isn't necessary, pointing out I got an agent without any networking there at all. And we discussed the snail mail networking as well. You don't HAVE to meet these people face-to-face to make connections. And of course we mentioned to never burn bridges because everyone knows everyone else in the industry and we all talk to each other.
I hung around for my last panel about creating religions in SF and fantasy. I thought this would be the best panel of all, but it wasn't. We never really discussed how we created our religions (I tried, I really, really tried to steer the panel to this) but the moderator wanted us to discuss our books and our religions, then the religions we'd seen developed for other books, etc. It was not the panel I thought it would be.
In the end, I bailed on this panel as soon as possible, jumped in the car, and sped home, with a quick stop at IKEA. A long weekend. Not much grading done. Alot of drinking done. Without appropriate supervision, I also managed to skip most of my meals. A good con. I think I may have picked up a few new readers, which is good. And I had the HUGE ego boost of walking down the hall and hearing a group of 5 or 6 people discussing "this cool idea about a throne where the personalities are stored in it" as I meandered by. If hearing people talking about your book in the hallway, unprompted in any way by you, isn't a good feeling . . .
And now, I must focus on stressing out the furniture in new and bizarre ways. And some sleep would be nice as well.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-21 03:56 pm (UTC)Hee, that's never a problem when I'm around. Next con we'll make sure you're properly supervised.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-21 06:34 pm (UTC)you mean.... I'm NOT the only one who wrote those???
From the Trunk...
Date: 2006-11-21 10:25 pm (UTC)Yes... you had a fabulous sense of fashion even then!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 12:12 am (UTC)