Worldcon 2004, and other stuff too
Sep. 8th, 2004 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperI go clear across the country to Boston, and what do I wind up doing for the most part? Writing. Go fig. This caused me a bit of consternation actually, yesterday, as I wailed to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird that I wasn't sure why I'd bothered to come to this thing if all I wound up doing was sitting around on my duff typing away on my computer. There is one thing I have to make myself keep in mind, though--and that is that I've been writing. I have to remind myself that I should not be ashamed for actually exercising my muse.
Every so often I did emerge to do other things, though.
Dara and I roomed with our friend Rod from Kentucky as per usual, and in addition, we sawcafiorello and Keith and Carl, more friends from Kentucky and the LexFA crowd, and their kid Derek and had dinner with them. (Hi Cathy! By the way--please tell Carl a big congratulations from me, would you, regarding the news he gave us the other night? I don't think I gave him a proper WAY TO GO!)
We bumped intodrglam semi-regularly, which was good. And from her, I learned that scientists who research flies apparently, more often than you would expect, can and do actually get allergic to them.
I sawagrumer occasionally. Hi Avram! I should have actually said hi to you more often.
We saw bothrmd and claudia_, and same notation there, too.
I ran intokirkcudbright a couple of times and also his beloved Francie, with whom I had the unexpected pleasure of writer-geeking, and swapping commiserations about the perils and joys of submitting manuscripts for professional publication.
Dara and I saw two old friends from our old gaming group, surprisingly enough. Beth Moursund was not so much a surprise--we actually do see her semi-regularly at Worldcons. The real shocker was Arun Sannuti, who Dara spotted in the con suite while she and I were hanging out there. We'd had no idea that he was living in the Boston area, and he happily came over and chatted with us. Arun has apparently gone back to school to go into library sciences... yet another tech geek I know who has decided to go into a different field.
And, delightfully, I touched bases more than once with Sarah Avery, who I had met at Writer's Weekend, and we had pleasant conversations about my novels, her novel, and about writing in general.
In fact, most of the conversations I had with folks at this convention were centered around writing--which I suppose was kind of the inevitable result of trying to, if I was going to spend most of my time hammering away on my manuscript, at least doing it in public where I had the possibility of interacting with others. But as a consequence of this, I was rather re-reminded (because I'd known this already, just hadn't thought of it in a while) of the high percentage of SF fandom who are writer hopefuls. Dara and I came up with a dozen people in our social circle between us who have written in some capacity, whether it be just for personal pleasure or in active search of getting published. It all made me think of Jim Butcher's speech back at Writer's Weekend, where he was talking about how a new writer does not have to outrun the proverbial bear, just the new writer next to her--after this con, I find myself reminded, I actually know several of the new writers trying to outrun the bear.
What little programming I attended was also writing-focused, for the most part. I went to a decent panel on how to open one's novel--and while most of it sounded kind of familiar, including the whole idea of having to hook one's reader, the interesting and new thought that came out of this was that you don't necessarily have to do this with a big action scene. One of the authors on the panel described how the point for him is to establish a trust with his reader, a trust that will just make this person want to read more of the book. How that trust is established is going to vary from book to book--and from author to author. Another of the panelists talked about how one of his favorite writers is of the ilk that you start reading, and only after you're engrossed in the story do you realize, "Wow, how did I get sucked so heavily into this?"
I think I would like to be that kind of writer.
A panel on how to develop believable magic systems in novels sounded interesting, but I bailed partway through when it turned out to be mostly a debate between two schools of thought--a heavily rules-driven, almost scientific "this is what your magic system can do and all of the characters should be holding to this" school, and a more relaxed, "if you try to define it you will break it" kind of school. If I hadn't had my muse beating on the inside of my skull I might have stayed, but hey, the muse was loud.
I also bailed in the middle of a panel on "Where Do Elves Come From?" I'd been hoping that they were going to actually get into talking about archetypes in mythos for modern-day fantasy novel elves and why they are so prevalent in fantasy--but mostly, the panelists were almost snarky about elves and describing them as "two-year-olds with all the power". Not interested in the snark, thanks. Bye!
The one other panel that I attended almost in its entirety (and from which I bailed early only because it was a standing-room-only panel and my back was protesting VERY LOUDLY about standing around for 45 minutes) was a panel on literary agents and what they do. Most of this, again, I'd already picked up at Writer's Weekend--but Sarah and I both opted to go to this more out of the idea that it would give us an opportunity to see a few other agents present themselves and to look for networking opportunities. One thing that made me go "whoa" was that one of the panelists was actually from the Spectrum Agency--to whom, y'all might recall, I submitted a query letter earlier this year which had gotten rejected. This panelist was not the agent who had sent me the rejection, but I was definitely thinking of the other person when I put my hand up and asked a question to the effect of "so, if a new writer has a specific interest in a particular agent but gets a rejection letter from them, under what circumstances is it appropriate to query that same agent later?"
I was trying to find out whether if, say, an agent just has a whole slate full of clients, is it okay to check back with that same agent later if you have a specific interest in working with that person. But I don't think I got my point across quite clearly enough. The lady from Spectrum looked dubious; I think perhaps she might have thought that I meant querying about a specific book that an agent had turned down, and that wasn't really what I had in mind. Oh well!
I don't generally do the various room parties much at any convention, but Dara and I did pop into an LJ/Blog party that was going on--and that was where I had one of my pleasant conversations with Sarah. The fun thing about that party was that they were handing out stickers with the LJ user symbol on them, so that you could write your LJ user ID in on them. So for the rest of the con, I went around with a sticker on my badge reading "annathepiper". Hee.
Dara and I did Rocky Horror, which was fun. We couldn't make out half of the lines being shouted by the crowd up front, but we did at least wind up sitting behind an enthusiastic little knot of people who had their own lines going, and who snickered when we burst into the "Have no worry, have no fear" cheer for Frankie's seduction of Janet scene. ;> They also made us burst into snickers at "What was his crime?" "Mail fraud!" At first we thought that was actually a new line neither of us had heard before, but I have a niggling little memory that suggests that I had in fact heard it fromamethyst_dancer way back in the days of yore.
We also attended most of a dramatic reading of the Very Secret Diaries bycassieclaire, which was primarily fun in that it turned out to be mostly driven by the people who showed up rather than having had any formal organization by con staff. Several folks with laptops did impromptu runs out onto the Net (since the con did have a wireless network up) to scarf the Diaries, several others scarfed a chair to put the chosen laptop on, and volunteers from the audience wound up leaping up to read the various Diaries. The guy who did Aragorn was too over-the-top for my tastes, and way too emotional and going "grr" as he did the immortal "Still not King" lines--now me, I think that's got to be absolutely deadpan and macho. ;) The guy who did Legolas, however, had a beautiful delivery. And the guy who did Merry gets points for trying to mimic Merry's accent from the movie, even if he didn't quite manage to hold it together.
Speaking of LotR, there were references to Tolkien all over the place in every panel I attended. A little much, actually, though I did definitely agree that the first paragraph of The Hobbit qualified as one of those book openings that has nothing to do with action and yet nevertheless hooks the reader right in on the strength of the beauty of the language alone. There was, apparently, a big ol' LotR exhibition going on locally, and that may well have kept the movies on everyone's mind.
As mentioned in a previous post, Dara and I both wound up missing the Masquerade--she due to working on the newsletter, me due to reading First Rider's Call. However, I was within audible range of what was going on, mostly because in the exhibition hall, they'd set up an impromptu "tavern" called the Mended Drum (which I think is a Terry Pratchett reference I didn't get), and they were broadcasting the event over a TV in there. So I actually heard most of the Masquerade even though I didn't see it. And I heard the half-time act, which was this one-man show involving a condensing of the entire Star Wars trilogy into an hour. And that was kind of funny.
Dara managed to make Opening Ceremonies; I made it to Closing Ceremonies with her, and discovered for the first time that the sound system in the auditorium actually kind of sucked. This detracted some from the coolness factor of a bunch of recorded messages to the attendees of Worldcon from New Zealand fandom; that would have been a lot more fun if we could have actually heard what they were saying. What was still quite cool about the Closing Ceremonies, though, was that they opened with a fife and drum corps--and closed with a bagpipe and drum corps, after the con chairperson handed the gavel off to the gentlemen from Scotland. I think the bagpipes did sound better, though the acoustics in the auditorium sucked along with the sound system, and more than once it sounded like the bagpipes in the corps were actually offbeat with their drums.
After we got out of there, though, and they started playing over in the exhibition hall next door, they sounded way cooler. And that was Good. Well-played bagpipes make Anna Happy. ^_^
The last night of the con we hung out for a well-populated Dead Dog party, during which they were also running Return of the King across the way, on a full screen with proper film stock. So although I didn't watch the whole movie, I did pop in long enough to see the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and that, too, made Anna Happy. ^_^
Mostly, however, I did writing stuff during the Dead Dog as well, hanging out just outside the con suite where I could still hear myself think rather than inside the con suite itself. That got me occasionally interesting bits of conversation with passers-by, such as this one guy who staggered up to me quite thoroughly hammered and struck up a conversation. He apologized occasionally for his incoherence and asked me at one point if he sounded drunk. I told him that he did. ;) He was perfectly amiable and didn't do anything stupid; he was just very, very toasty. Heh.
The day after the convention--yesterday, as of this writing--Dara and I hooked up withtabithaclayton and we went to the Museum of Fine Arts. That turned out to be quite enjoyable. The coolest thing they had was a ticketed exhibition on the Art Deco movement, which was full of lots of paintings, furniture, clothing, and other items from the era, and lots of informative blurbs about the various styles of art and architecture from around the world that influenced Art Deco design. Of the items present, the stuff that stood out the most for me included a painting of a girl in a white hat and green dress (I saw the artist's name but damned if I can remember it now), a small sleek sculpture of a polar bear, assorted vanity and cigarette cases which (which simultaneously appalled and impressed me) contained fragments of actual archaeological finds out of Egypt, and the various household items that were designed from plastics made to resemble much costlier materials.
After we made it through that exhibition we wandered through much of the rest of the second floor, looking at assorted paintings out of Europe: some Picasso, some Monet, some Renoir, some Van Gogh. I saw one or two paintings I actually recognized, at least in the gallery where the Impressionist works were hanging. Some of the works from older centuries also stood out for me; one, of a woman with black hair and a sort of silvery-white gown, looked particularly vivid. I thought she might step out of the canvas. And I spotted two different paintings of people with lutes, which immediately impressed me--just because I hadn't had a visual conception before of how big a lute actually was. Definitely a bigger body than, say, my bouzouki. And a curved neck, similar to the oud. I find myself wondering what sort of a voice a lute would have, and whether it would have a long, sustaining sort of ring to it like I've got with my bouzouki and my big mandolin.
There were several paintings of Dutch burghers dating from, I believe, the 1600's--back in the era where people wore a lot of black with those high ruffled, circular collars. Dara and I both were boggled by the collars, because neither of us can really figure out what the HELL people were thinking when they came up with those collars.
We barely touched upon things besides paintings in the museum, though. There was a room full of some ancient Chinese stonework which was pretty cool, and Dara pointed out how some of the statuary was set in basins full of smooth stones, which she noted was culturally appropriate. And we walked through an exhibit of items from India, but that was en route to trying to find Mary in the gift shop, so we didn't have time to actually look at anything. I did get one giggle, though, by mis-reading a card that went along with one item, and thinking it read "Krishna Wordwrapped".
We may or may not head back over there this afternoon, just for the sake of something to do, but much will depend on whether we can conquer the Lameness Beast. There is much temptation to just take it easy this afternoon. Not to mention, it keeps raining, and it's really muggy out there.
As I write, Dara and I are actually staying over atlyonesse's house. It's a huge, sprawling house, and pretty cool. I am getting to see, for the first time, the lovely murals painted by mamishka on the stairs. And I have met Vicka's cats and dog, and have smiled at the bright purple hue of the house, which makes it stand out noticeably from the surrounding, more restrained blues and greens and yellows around it.
Tonight there will be Aikido; Dara plans to join in on the class at Vicka's dojo. I do not know yet whether I will as well. My muse is still hammering on the inside of my head, rather more loudly now that I have officially started in on the third draft of Faerie Blood.
Tomorrow, home.
solarbird that I wasn't sure why I'd bothered to come to this thing if all I wound up doing was sitting around on my duff typing away on my computer. There is one thing I have to make myself keep in mind, though--and that is that I've been writing. I have to remind myself that I should not be ashamed for actually exercising my muse. Every so often I did emerge to do other things, though.
Dara and I roomed with our friend Rod from Kentucky as per usual, and in addition, we saw
cafiorello and Keith and Carl, more friends from Kentucky and the LexFA crowd, and their kid Derek and had dinner with them. (Hi Cathy! By the way--please tell Carl a big congratulations from me, would you, regarding the news he gave us the other night? I don't think I gave him a proper WAY TO GO!)We bumped into
drglam semi-regularly, which was good. And from her, I learned that scientists who research flies apparently, more often than you would expect, can and do actually get allergic to them. I saw
agrumer occasionally. Hi Avram! I should have actually said hi to you more often.We saw both
rmd and claudia_, and same notation there, too.I ran into
kirkcudbright a couple of times and also his beloved Francie, with whom I had the unexpected pleasure of writer-geeking, and swapping commiserations about the perils and joys of submitting manuscripts for professional publication.Dara and I saw two old friends from our old gaming group, surprisingly enough. Beth Moursund was not so much a surprise--we actually do see her semi-regularly at Worldcons. The real shocker was Arun Sannuti, who Dara spotted in the con suite while she and I were hanging out there. We'd had no idea that he was living in the Boston area, and he happily came over and chatted with us. Arun has apparently gone back to school to go into library sciences... yet another tech geek I know who has decided to go into a different field.
And, delightfully, I touched bases more than once with Sarah Avery, who I had met at Writer's Weekend, and we had pleasant conversations about my novels, her novel, and about writing in general.
In fact, most of the conversations I had with folks at this convention were centered around writing--which I suppose was kind of the inevitable result of trying to, if I was going to spend most of my time hammering away on my manuscript, at least doing it in public where I had the possibility of interacting with others. But as a consequence of this, I was rather re-reminded (because I'd known this already, just hadn't thought of it in a while) of the high percentage of SF fandom who are writer hopefuls. Dara and I came up with a dozen people in our social circle between us who have written in some capacity, whether it be just for personal pleasure or in active search of getting published. It all made me think of Jim Butcher's speech back at Writer's Weekend, where he was talking about how a new writer does not have to outrun the proverbial bear, just the new writer next to her--after this con, I find myself reminded, I actually know several of the new writers trying to outrun the bear.
What little programming I attended was also writing-focused, for the most part. I went to a decent panel on how to open one's novel--and while most of it sounded kind of familiar, including the whole idea of having to hook one's reader, the interesting and new thought that came out of this was that you don't necessarily have to do this with a big action scene. One of the authors on the panel described how the point for him is to establish a trust with his reader, a trust that will just make this person want to read more of the book. How that trust is established is going to vary from book to book--and from author to author. Another of the panelists talked about how one of his favorite writers is of the ilk that you start reading, and only after you're engrossed in the story do you realize, "Wow, how did I get sucked so heavily into this?"
I think I would like to be that kind of writer.
A panel on how to develop believable magic systems in novels sounded interesting, but I bailed partway through when it turned out to be mostly a debate between two schools of thought--a heavily rules-driven, almost scientific "this is what your magic system can do and all of the characters should be holding to this" school, and a more relaxed, "if you try to define it you will break it" kind of school. If I hadn't had my muse beating on the inside of my skull I might have stayed, but hey, the muse was loud.
I also bailed in the middle of a panel on "Where Do Elves Come From?" I'd been hoping that they were going to actually get into talking about archetypes in mythos for modern-day fantasy novel elves and why they are so prevalent in fantasy--but mostly, the panelists were almost snarky about elves and describing them as "two-year-olds with all the power". Not interested in the snark, thanks. Bye!
The one other panel that I attended almost in its entirety (and from which I bailed early only because it was a standing-room-only panel and my back was protesting VERY LOUDLY about standing around for 45 minutes) was a panel on literary agents and what they do. Most of this, again, I'd already picked up at Writer's Weekend--but Sarah and I both opted to go to this more out of the idea that it would give us an opportunity to see a few other agents present themselves and to look for networking opportunities. One thing that made me go "whoa" was that one of the panelists was actually from the Spectrum Agency--to whom, y'all might recall, I submitted a query letter earlier this year which had gotten rejected. This panelist was not the agent who had sent me the rejection, but I was definitely thinking of the other person when I put my hand up and asked a question to the effect of "so, if a new writer has a specific interest in a particular agent but gets a rejection letter from them, under what circumstances is it appropriate to query that same agent later?"
I was trying to find out whether if, say, an agent just has a whole slate full of clients, is it okay to check back with that same agent later if you have a specific interest in working with that person. But I don't think I got my point across quite clearly enough. The lady from Spectrum looked dubious; I think perhaps she might have thought that I meant querying about a specific book that an agent had turned down, and that wasn't really what I had in mind. Oh well!
I don't generally do the various room parties much at any convention, but Dara and I did pop into an LJ/Blog party that was going on--and that was where I had one of my pleasant conversations with Sarah. The fun thing about that party was that they were handing out stickers with the LJ user symbol on them, so that you could write your LJ user ID in on them. So for the rest of the con, I went around with a sticker on my badge reading "annathepiper". Hee.
Dara and I did Rocky Horror, which was fun. We couldn't make out half of the lines being shouted by the crowd up front, but we did at least wind up sitting behind an enthusiastic little knot of people who had their own lines going, and who snickered when we burst into the "Have no worry, have no fear" cheer for Frankie's seduction of Janet scene. ;> They also made us burst into snickers at "What was his crime?" "Mail fraud!" At first we thought that was actually a new line neither of us had heard before, but I have a niggling little memory that suggests that I had in fact heard it from
amethyst_dancer way back in the days of yore.We also attended most of a dramatic reading of the Very Secret Diaries by
cassieclaire, which was primarily fun in that it turned out to be mostly driven by the people who showed up rather than having had any formal organization by con staff. Several folks with laptops did impromptu runs out onto the Net (since the con did have a wireless network up) to scarf the Diaries, several others scarfed a chair to put the chosen laptop on, and volunteers from the audience wound up leaping up to read the various Diaries. The guy who did Aragorn was too over-the-top for my tastes, and way too emotional and going "grr" as he did the immortal "Still not King" lines--now me, I think that's got to be absolutely deadpan and macho. ;) The guy who did Legolas, however, had a beautiful delivery. And the guy who did Merry gets points for trying to mimic Merry's accent from the movie, even if he didn't quite manage to hold it together.Speaking of LotR, there were references to Tolkien all over the place in every panel I attended. A little much, actually, though I did definitely agree that the first paragraph of The Hobbit qualified as one of those book openings that has nothing to do with action and yet nevertheless hooks the reader right in on the strength of the beauty of the language alone. There was, apparently, a big ol' LotR exhibition going on locally, and that may well have kept the movies on everyone's mind.
As mentioned in a previous post, Dara and I both wound up missing the Masquerade--she due to working on the newsletter, me due to reading First Rider's Call. However, I was within audible range of what was going on, mostly because in the exhibition hall, they'd set up an impromptu "tavern" called the Mended Drum (which I think is a Terry Pratchett reference I didn't get), and they were broadcasting the event over a TV in there. So I actually heard most of the Masquerade even though I didn't see it. And I heard the half-time act, which was this one-man show involving a condensing of the entire Star Wars trilogy into an hour. And that was kind of funny.
Dara managed to make Opening Ceremonies; I made it to Closing Ceremonies with her, and discovered for the first time that the sound system in the auditorium actually kind of sucked. This detracted some from the coolness factor of a bunch of recorded messages to the attendees of Worldcon from New Zealand fandom; that would have been a lot more fun if we could have actually heard what they were saying. What was still quite cool about the Closing Ceremonies, though, was that they opened with a fife and drum corps--and closed with a bagpipe and drum corps, after the con chairperson handed the gavel off to the gentlemen from Scotland. I think the bagpipes did sound better, though the acoustics in the auditorium sucked along with the sound system, and more than once it sounded like the bagpipes in the corps were actually offbeat with their drums.
After we got out of there, though, and they started playing over in the exhibition hall next door, they sounded way cooler. And that was Good. Well-played bagpipes make Anna Happy. ^_^
The last night of the con we hung out for a well-populated Dead Dog party, during which they were also running Return of the King across the way, on a full screen with proper film stock. So although I didn't watch the whole movie, I did pop in long enough to see the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and that, too, made Anna Happy. ^_^
Mostly, however, I did writing stuff during the Dead Dog as well, hanging out just outside the con suite where I could still hear myself think rather than inside the con suite itself. That got me occasionally interesting bits of conversation with passers-by, such as this one guy who staggered up to me quite thoroughly hammered and struck up a conversation. He apologized occasionally for his incoherence and asked me at one point if he sounded drunk. I told him that he did. ;) He was perfectly amiable and didn't do anything stupid; he was just very, very toasty. Heh.
The day after the convention--yesterday, as of this writing--Dara and I hooked up with
tabithaclayton and we went to the Museum of Fine Arts. That turned out to be quite enjoyable. The coolest thing they had was a ticketed exhibition on the Art Deco movement, which was full of lots of paintings, furniture, clothing, and other items from the era, and lots of informative blurbs about the various styles of art and architecture from around the world that influenced Art Deco design. Of the items present, the stuff that stood out the most for me included a painting of a girl in a white hat and green dress (I saw the artist's name but damned if I can remember it now), a small sleek sculpture of a polar bear, assorted vanity and cigarette cases which (which simultaneously appalled and impressed me) contained fragments of actual archaeological finds out of Egypt, and the various household items that were designed from plastics made to resemble much costlier materials.After we made it through that exhibition we wandered through much of the rest of the second floor, looking at assorted paintings out of Europe: some Picasso, some Monet, some Renoir, some Van Gogh. I saw one or two paintings I actually recognized, at least in the gallery where the Impressionist works were hanging. Some of the works from older centuries also stood out for me; one, of a woman with black hair and a sort of silvery-white gown, looked particularly vivid. I thought she might step out of the canvas. And I spotted two different paintings of people with lutes, which immediately impressed me--just because I hadn't had a visual conception before of how big a lute actually was. Definitely a bigger body than, say, my bouzouki. And a curved neck, similar to the oud. I find myself wondering what sort of a voice a lute would have, and whether it would have a long, sustaining sort of ring to it like I've got with my bouzouki and my big mandolin.
There were several paintings of Dutch burghers dating from, I believe, the 1600's--back in the era where people wore a lot of black with those high ruffled, circular collars. Dara and I both were boggled by the collars, because neither of us can really figure out what the HELL people were thinking when they came up with those collars.
We barely touched upon things besides paintings in the museum, though. There was a room full of some ancient Chinese stonework which was pretty cool, and Dara pointed out how some of the statuary was set in basins full of smooth stones, which she noted was culturally appropriate. And we walked through an exhibit of items from India, but that was en route to trying to find Mary in the gift shop, so we didn't have time to actually look at anything. I did get one giggle, though, by mis-reading a card that went along with one item, and thinking it read "Krishna Wordwrapped".
We may or may not head back over there this afternoon, just for the sake of something to do, but much will depend on whether we can conquer the Lameness Beast. There is much temptation to just take it easy this afternoon. Not to mention, it keeps raining, and it's really muggy out there.
As I write, Dara and I are actually staying over at
lyonesse's house. It's a huge, sprawling house, and pretty cool. I am getting to see, for the first time, the lovely murals painted by mamishka on the stairs. And I have met Vicka's cats and dog, and have smiled at the bright purple hue of the house, which makes it stand out noticeably from the surrounding, more restrained blues and greens and yellows around it.Tonight there will be Aikido; Dara plans to join in on the class at Vicka's dojo. I do not know yet whether I will as well. My muse is still hammering on the inside of my head, rather more loudly now that I have officially started in on the third draft of Faerie Blood.
Tomorrow, home.