Writer's Weekend--Day 1
Jul. 23rd, 2004 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperWell, I appear to have confused PocketLJ by putting too much stuff onto my frob--so last time I tried to sync it up it timed out, so I am unfortunately getting a "connection to server has timed out" sort of error page when I try to run the PocketLJ client right now. And since I have no Internet connection in the room, I am just going to have to write this as a draft in Semagic and post it later. Good thing I brought my laptop. ;)
I had a bit of confusion to start with as to when the heck I was supposed to be down here; this is doubtless due to the force of habit of not coming down until Friday sometimes for Norwescon, so I had it in my brain that I was supposed to come down on Friday. Since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird had arranged to have a new microwave dropped off and installed for us, and since they told her to have a three-hour window of time available, this made it rather difficult for her to be able to commit to giving me a ride down to the hotel.
So then I thought I'd askchrysoula, but it turned out that Soula was doing the Commuter Con thing, and was going to come down way earlier in the morning than I'm ever sentient. DOH. And then I was reminded that there was in fact programming TONIGHT, and that jesshartley was coming up from her own locale by three this afternoon. I hastily apologized to Soula for the confusion and sold Dara on the notion of giving me a lift down today.
But Dara wanted to get out of the house by three, since driving up or down I-5 during rush hour is a major pain in the ass--and registration was due to open at six, which was right smack in the middle of rush hour. Leaving by three was a good plan, but was alas not meant to be. Between having to mail off the package I'd gotten ready formikekn, depositing my unemployment check, doing a hasty load of laundry because not a single stitch of my semi-decent clothing was clean, taking a shower, packing, firing off the inevitable flurry of last-minute emails, providing of instructions for how the heck to feed and medicate the cat, calling the vet to ask them if they had in fact ordered a refill for the cat's medication, changing out the cat's litter box, and in general doing all the stuff that would have been a lot more constructive to do over the previous few days instead of in the final few hours before leaving, I was doing well to get ready to get out of the house by four.
The Sleep Inn Hotel, the locale of the conference, is a scant few blocks down the very same street where the Doubletree, the usual Norwescon hotel, is located. So I got this weird feeling of deja vu coming here, even though we took the exit after the usual one we take to go to Norwescon.
Getting into the place and getting registered, though, no problem. It's a much smaller sort of place than the Doubletree, and indeed, smaller than most hotels I'm used to being in for science fiction conventions. Very much more the Hampton Inn/cheap but not too cheap flavor of inn, but not bad.
Once I got registered, I ran into Jess, Soula,mizkit and her husband Ted, shadowhwk, and aberdeen all in comparatively short order. Lots of lively conversation ensued, the high points of which were Kit telling everybody in earshot how mortally terrified she'd been of me way back in the days when we were both starting out on Two Moons, and the speculation as to whether the Amish could make decent Men in Black. (Quotes: "You'd have to disguise the buggy." "Cloaking device!" "Hello, TECHNOLOGY?") Ted also spotted Rebecca York's husband wandering around, and remarked wryly that he needed a copy of that gentleman's "Ask me about my wife's book" button for himself.
So far, from what I've seen, most of the attendees are in fact women. There also seems to be a heavy emphasis on romance, mystery, and suspense in the bios of the various speakers, but that won't, I think, necessarily be a bad thing.
Marcie, the woman who was scheduled to deliver opening remarks around 7pm, was unfortunately frazzled by having discovered some of the attendees apparently did not have badges--so she had to make up her remarks on the fly. But that was quite okay.
Around 7:15 we had a few confused moments as folks tried to discover how to pull out the wall in the middle of the room to divide it in half, and once that was done, the first pair of programs for the evening got underway. I went over to listen to Liz Wolfe talk about how to write a pitch, a query letter, and a synopsis for a book, and got two gratifying things out of the experience: 1) I'd already heard much of this information from Kit, and 2) the "snowflake" system Liz told us about let me start to flesh out the basic concept for the Kai and Benja novel I'll be doing for this year's Nanowrimo. I really liked the whole idea of going through a slowly more detailed process: crystallizing your idea in one sentence, then expanding that out to a single paragraph of five sentences or so, then taking each sentence and expanding that out to a paragraph, then taking each of those paragraphs and expanding it out to a page... and suddenly, WHOA HEY, you have a synopsis.
Already this has let me get the single-sentence and single-paragraph forms of the idea of the Kai and Benja novel, and I think I'll see about expanding on that further as I get time over the week.
After that, I had about an hour of time during which I just hung out; the scheduled event was on finding your niche in writing. And I think I've kinda got that part covered. :) During this block of time I got a bit of a Chardonnay from the young (and rather darkly cute) young fellow at the bar, and determined that as white wines go, I still prefer Rieslings. And I listened to some general writing geeking going on between Liz and Kit and another woman named Sarah Avery; when Sarah asked Liz for tips on how to do a query for a multi-volume work, I jumped in on that conversation as well since that's something I'm going to want to be thinking about once I get Lament of the Dove ready for queries. What I learned from that conversation is that it will probably serve me well to have ready not only the four-page synopsis of Lament, but also some one-page synopses for the other two books that'll go with it, Shadow of the Rook and Lone Hawk's Flight.
I also learned that Kit thinks Lament of the Dove is a Really Good Title. :D *preen* She said she'd pick up a book and maybe even buy it just on the strength of that title alone. Here's hoping I can hook an editor or an agent with it, too--and then keep them hooked with the actual story.
At 9, we had a panel that wasn't particularly immediately relevant to me but which was still entertaining to listen to: pitching your book to Hollywood to get it made into a movie. The interesting parts of this had to do with the differences between pitching your novel to a publishing company and then pitching the novel to a movie studio--because you have to be on the lookout for the different things a publisher and a studio will be wanting. The former wants to be convinced that you have a good book; the latter, that your book will actually make a good movie.
That was it for the evening. Desperately in need of something dinnerish--I'd only had a single sandwich at home, and despite foraging through the goodies the caterer had out for us in the meeting room, I was still very hungry--I wandered over to the IHOP next door and had a very tasty French dip sandwich. My waitress's name was Lisa. I mention this because she was very friendly and polite, and that made this IHOP a rather nice place to be in. :)
That'll be it for now. Jess is still awake in the other bed, though I think she and I will both be drowsing off soon. It's 12:35am as I close this, and the first bit of programming is at 8am tomorrow: a presentation from a member of the local law enforcement community on forensics. Again, this might not necessarily be immediately relevant to the stories I want to tell--but hey, I might get the bug to write a mystery/suspense novel, and who knows? I might even be able to use it in SF or fantasy.
I had a bit of confusion to start with as to when the heck I was supposed to be down here; this is doubtless due to the force of habit of not coming down until Friday sometimes for Norwescon, so I had it in my brain that I was supposed to come down on Friday. Since
solarbird had arranged to have a new microwave dropped off and installed for us, and since they told her to have a three-hour window of time available, this made it rather difficult for her to be able to commit to giving me a ride down to the hotel.So then I thought I'd ask
chrysoula, but it turned out that Soula was doing the Commuter Con thing, and was going to come down way earlier in the morning than I'm ever sentient. DOH. And then I was reminded that there was in fact programming TONIGHT, and that jesshartley was coming up from her own locale by three this afternoon. I hastily apologized to Soula for the confusion and sold Dara on the notion of giving me a lift down today.But Dara wanted to get out of the house by three, since driving up or down I-5 during rush hour is a major pain in the ass--and registration was due to open at six, which was right smack in the middle of rush hour. Leaving by three was a good plan, but was alas not meant to be. Between having to mail off the package I'd gotten ready for
mikekn, depositing my unemployment check, doing a hasty load of laundry because not a single stitch of my semi-decent clothing was clean, taking a shower, packing, firing off the inevitable flurry of last-minute emails, providing of instructions for how the heck to feed and medicate the cat, calling the vet to ask them if they had in fact ordered a refill for the cat's medication, changing out the cat's litter box, and in general doing all the stuff that would have been a lot more constructive to do over the previous few days instead of in the final few hours before leaving, I was doing well to get ready to get out of the house by four.The Sleep Inn Hotel, the locale of the conference, is a scant few blocks down the very same street where the Doubletree, the usual Norwescon hotel, is located. So I got this weird feeling of deja vu coming here, even though we took the exit after the usual one we take to go to Norwescon.
Getting into the place and getting registered, though, no problem. It's a much smaller sort of place than the Doubletree, and indeed, smaller than most hotels I'm used to being in for science fiction conventions. Very much more the Hampton Inn/cheap but not too cheap flavor of inn, but not bad.
Once I got registered, I ran into Jess, Soula,
mizkit and her husband Ted, shadowhwk, and aberdeen all in comparatively short order. Lots of lively conversation ensued, the high points of which were Kit telling everybody in earshot how mortally terrified she'd been of me way back in the days when we were both starting out on Two Moons, and the speculation as to whether the Amish could make decent Men in Black. (Quotes: "You'd have to disguise the buggy." "Cloaking device!" "Hello, TECHNOLOGY?") Ted also spotted Rebecca York's husband wandering around, and remarked wryly that he needed a copy of that gentleman's "Ask me about my wife's book" button for himself.So far, from what I've seen, most of the attendees are in fact women. There also seems to be a heavy emphasis on romance, mystery, and suspense in the bios of the various speakers, but that won't, I think, necessarily be a bad thing.
Marcie, the woman who was scheduled to deliver opening remarks around 7pm, was unfortunately frazzled by having discovered some of the attendees apparently did not have badges--so she had to make up her remarks on the fly. But that was quite okay.
Around 7:15 we had a few confused moments as folks tried to discover how to pull out the wall in the middle of the room to divide it in half, and once that was done, the first pair of programs for the evening got underway. I went over to listen to Liz Wolfe talk about how to write a pitch, a query letter, and a synopsis for a book, and got two gratifying things out of the experience: 1) I'd already heard much of this information from Kit, and 2) the "snowflake" system Liz told us about let me start to flesh out the basic concept for the Kai and Benja novel I'll be doing for this year's Nanowrimo. I really liked the whole idea of going through a slowly more detailed process: crystallizing your idea in one sentence, then expanding that out to a single paragraph of five sentences or so, then taking each sentence and expanding that out to a paragraph, then taking each of those paragraphs and expanding it out to a page... and suddenly, WHOA HEY, you have a synopsis.
Already this has let me get the single-sentence and single-paragraph forms of the idea of the Kai and Benja novel, and I think I'll see about expanding on that further as I get time over the week.
After that, I had about an hour of time during which I just hung out; the scheduled event was on finding your niche in writing. And I think I've kinda got that part covered. :) During this block of time I got a bit of a Chardonnay from the young (and rather darkly cute) young fellow at the bar, and determined that as white wines go, I still prefer Rieslings. And I listened to some general writing geeking going on between Liz and Kit and another woman named Sarah Avery; when Sarah asked Liz for tips on how to do a query for a multi-volume work, I jumped in on that conversation as well since that's something I'm going to want to be thinking about once I get Lament of the Dove ready for queries. What I learned from that conversation is that it will probably serve me well to have ready not only the four-page synopsis of Lament, but also some one-page synopses for the other two books that'll go with it, Shadow of the Rook and Lone Hawk's Flight.
I also learned that Kit thinks Lament of the Dove is a Really Good Title. :D *preen* She said she'd pick up a book and maybe even buy it just on the strength of that title alone. Here's hoping I can hook an editor or an agent with it, too--and then keep them hooked with the actual story.
At 9, we had a panel that wasn't particularly immediately relevant to me but which was still entertaining to listen to: pitching your book to Hollywood to get it made into a movie. The interesting parts of this had to do with the differences between pitching your novel to a publishing company and then pitching the novel to a movie studio--because you have to be on the lookout for the different things a publisher and a studio will be wanting. The former wants to be convinced that you have a good book; the latter, that your book will actually make a good movie.
That was it for the evening. Desperately in need of something dinnerish--I'd only had a single sandwich at home, and despite foraging through the goodies the caterer had out for us in the meeting room, I was still very hungry--I wandered over to the IHOP next door and had a very tasty French dip sandwich. My waitress's name was Lisa. I mention this because she was very friendly and polite, and that made this IHOP a rather nice place to be in. :)
That'll be it for now. Jess is still awake in the other bed, though I think she and I will both be drowsing off soon. It's 12:35am as I close this, and the first bit of programming is at 8am tomorrow: a presentation from a member of the local law enforcement community on forensics. Again, this might not necessarily be immediately relevant to the stories I want to tell--but hey, I might get the bug to write a mystery/suspense novel, and who knows? I might even be able to use it in SF or fantasy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-26 03:41 pm (UTC)I should make a Spidersilk LJ icon. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-26 10:02 pm (UTC)Do you HAVE a picture of Spidersilk? I forget!
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Date: 2004-07-27 12:16 pm (UTC)'course I do. It's here: http://art.mizkit.com/comicstyle/silk_revisited
no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 02:34 pm (UTC)"Fatal error: session_start(): Failed to initialize storage module: user (path: /tmp) in /home/mizkit/public_html/art/session.php on line 59"
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Date: 2004-07-27 02:35 pm (UTC)