Posts Tagged ‘conventions’

Four Things I learned at World Fantasy Convention 2010

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

1. It is pos­si­ble to cram 600 peo­ple into one hotel bar.

convention

I might be exag­ger­at­ing just a bit, but I have never seen a bar so packed with con­ven­tion goers.  This was a bit early in the evening actu­ally, and there’s con­sid­er­ably more peo­ple than I could get with the iPhone.

2. I can only take the pres­ence of so many peo­ple for so long before I go crazy.

It should prob­a­bly not shock you to know that I’m a bit intro­verted.  However, I don’t get to see SF/​F types in per­son but once every cou­ple of years if that, so when I go to these things, I start out in a manic “must see EVERYONE” phase.  The first day is a flurry of me meet­ing new peo­ple, greet­ing old friends and clients, and gen­er­ally just being very not like me.  Some peo­ple have said that I seem at ease with peo­ple, but it’s REALLY not the case.  I’m scared and anx­ious almost the entire time I’m in these sit­u­a­tions unless I’m with peo­ple I’ve known for a long time.  I don’t like being the first per­son to speak up in a con­ver­sa­tion, and in large crowds, I tend to hide in a cor­ner where no one can sneak up on me.

As the week­end grinds on, I become more and more drained by it all, and I basi­cally strug­gle with mini depres­sive episodes.  The eas­i­est way, I’ve finally learned, of deal­ing with this is to go to my room and spend some time alone. 

This results in me get­ting angry with myself for not tak­ing bet­ter advan­tage of the time I have to soak up all that social won­der­ful­ness while I have a chance.  I spend a lot of time moan­ing to myself about how I don’t have that many friends locally to me, and almost no SF/​F com­mu­nity.   When I’m sit­ting in my room while a huge party is going on 4 sto­ries below me, I start to get angry with myself, which just causes a crazy feed­back loop.

I still need to fig­ure out a way to deal with it.  Accepting that I won’t be able to make use of every sin­gle moment of my time at a con­ven­tion is prob­a­bly the first step.

3. I really need to get my ass in gear.

I’ve strug­gled with whether or not I want to be a writer, and how hard I really want to work at it.  But being around so many suc­cess­ful, amaz­ing peo­ple clar­i­fies my pur­pose.  I really do want to write, and to write well, and to grow my career in that depart­ment.  I often feel like I’m behind my “peer group’ of writ­ers who I started out with because I lost so many years to an absence of pro­duc­tiv­ity after my Dad.  It’s time to buck up, buckle down, and get to work.  I have goals, and it’s going to take reg­u­lar, hard work to meet them.

4.  There are total strangers pay­ing atten­tion to what I say.

It turns out that more peo­ple than just my friends and fam­ily are fol­low­ing my progress.  For that, I am thank­ful.  When strangers come up to me and tell me that they love my tweets or my blog, it almost always shocks me.  There’s a big dif­fer­ence from look­ing at ana­lyt­ics num­bers of fol­lower count, and actu­ally meet­ing some­one who’s read­ing your work. 

And auto­graphs!  I’m still not used to being asked to sign books.  And this year, I signed copies of Way of the Wizard for peo­ple who I didn’t per­son­ally know!

A guy could get used to that kind of attention.

All in all, a great experience

So that’s just a few things I’ve been digest­ing on the long drive back to Kansas.  I’m likely to have more thoughts later as I’ve had more time to mull it all over.  I was going to hold over for a day here in Kansas to recover, but I’m anx­ious to get home and get back to work, so I think Monday will be a dri­ving day and I’ll be back to work on the free­lance and writ­ing full time on Tuesday.  I miss my dual monitors.

Thanks again to each of you who came up to me and chat­ted dur­ing World Con.  I didn’t meet a sin­gle per­son who wasn’t kind and won­der­ful and the kind of per­son I would love hang­ing out with reg­u­larly.  You’re all an amaz­ing bunch and I hope to see you again in the future.

This post is going up on Sunday night, but I’m count­ing it as Monday.  Regularly sched­uled blog­ging will resume Tuesday morning!

Lesson in Progress: How to Balance Travel and Freelancing

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve spent this week get­ting increas­ingly wor­ried and agi­tated about tak­ing this trip to Kansas and then on to Ohio for World Fantasy Convention. In fact, by the time you read this, I should be past Denver and on my way east on I-​​70.

The idea of vaca­tion and travel is some­thing I’ve strug­gled with how to man­age since start­ing my own busi­ness as a web designer for authors and pub­lish­ers.  I have to admit that one of the aspects about the lifestyle that appealed to me most was the abil­ity to set my own sched­ule, not just on a daily basis, but also on a weekly or monthly one.  If I want to take some time to go spend with my fam­ily in Kansas, I can. Theoretically.

The truth is, though, that travel costs money, which means I need to work more to pay for the trip, but by tak­ing the trip, I’ll be work­ing less.  So I end up with this sit­u­a­tion where I’m try­ing to jug­gle projects and travel, and I haven’t even talked about how the graphic design work isn’t done very eas­ily on a lap­top (writ­ing and writ­ing code, how­ever, goes very smoothly).

So while it seems from the out­side that you can have a lot more free­dom in this area, the truth is, when you have a day job, you may have strictly lim­ited time off, but at least then there’s some­one to cover for you.  When you’re a one man show, you have to either make sure you have some­one in on your project with you, or you have to be pre­pared to drop the daiquiri, pull out the lap­top, log in, and fix the problem.

I’m hop­ing that this trip has a min­i­mum amount of dis­rup­tion of my work. I’ll be dri­ving on Friday/​Saturday, and will be ready to work hard Sunday. I’ll work a reg­u­lar sched­ule Monday through Wednesday, but then Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I will be at World Fantasy Convention and not really work­ing a reg­u­lar set of hours. I’ll drive back early Sunday morn­ing to Kansas, mak­ing the 12 hour trip hope­fully in record time, col­lapse, and get up Monday and work a full day.  Then I will either spend all of Tuesday dri­ving back to Colorado, or I’ll work a half day, drive and stop halfway at a motel, then be home Wednesday mid-​​afternoon to put in some work Wednesday afternoon.

So that’s a lit­tle exam­ple of the plan­ning I have to make for myself.  I try to keep it flex­i­ble, in case I’m in the mid­dle of Kansas and someone’s server explodes, or if Monday morn­ing, there’s a ton of stuff hit­ting the fan, so I need to stay over a cou­ple of days to get things in order.  The key here, as in most things, is main­tain­ing flexibility.

Really?  That flex­i­bil­ity that seems so appeal­ing cuts both ways.  You have to be ready for it.

10 Ways to Have a More “Interesting” Convention Experience

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am not attend­ing WorldCon (AKA Anticipation)  this year.  Last year was great, and I met a lot of really inter­est­ing new peo­ple, and got to meet some peo­ple in the flesh for the first time like John Joseph Adams (whose col­lec­tion The Living Dead was nom­i­nated for a World Fantasy Award this week!  Congratulations are in order).   Why am I not going?  Well, there’s the finan­cial rea­sons of course, but there’s also a lit­tle dis­pute I had with the Canadian Border Control back in 1986 involv­ing the ille­gal impor­ta­tion of furry porn.  I’m not allowed to talk about it, but suf­fice to say, I can only travel to Canada under pseu­do­nyms such as Harrison T. Merriweather.  And now I can’t use that one.  Canada’s agents are everywhere.

It’s rather  too easy for the sea­soned con vet­eran to end up in a bit of a rut when it comes to cons.  “Find a seat in the bar and leave only for your pan­els” seems to be the writer/editor/publisher’s way.  I think they some­times actu­ally take in food in a solid form over the course of the con­ven­tion, but I have no evi­dence of this.

I’ve decided, as a ser­vice to the con­ven­tion goer, to pro­vide this help­ful list of activ­i­ties you can  par­tic­i­pate in to make your convention-​​going expe­ri­ence that much more interesting.

  1. In a very pub­lic space, ask Gord Sellar to imi­tate his Quebec-​​born mother.  (The result­ing mob will give you all the exer­cise you need for the week).
  2. Dress up as a polyp and jump out at Jay Lake every time you see him, yelling “Boo!”
  3. Squeeze Harlan Ellison’s boob.
  4. Walk up to Tempest, and whis­per, in a ner­vous voice.  “I see black people.”
  5. Go to a Gordon van Gelder panel and stand up to ask a ques­tion.  Congratulate him on finally break­ing down and accept­ing elec­tronic sub­mis­sions and start a stand­ing ova­tion.  Then flee. (Also, scratch F&SF off your sub­mis­sions list)
  6. Treat every­one in cos­play as you would treat their actual char­ac­ter.  Run in ter­ror from stormtroop­ers.  Try to res­cue Slave Girl Leia.  Laugh and point at Klingons.
  7. Ask Ted Chiang to tell you about the cover of his col­lec­tion.  (Only do this if you have 4 hours of time you need to kill).
  8. Find Cory Doctorow.  Secretly replace his iPod with a Zune.
  9. Dress up as the ghost of Robert Heinlein and demand roy­al­ties from John Scalzi all weekend.
  10. When they announce the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, race to the podium, snatch the award, and smug­gle it home to ME.

Anyone else have any ideas to make those lucky folks attend­ing WorldCon have a more “fun” time?