Wiscon 29, Day Three

Since I slept in again, I missed an early-morning WisCon panel I'd been interested in: "Back to Basics: Character". Wonder if it was any good? Characterization is a tricky thing for me in my writing.

I did make it to the back half of "The Business of Publishing", which featured two editors and two agents, as I recall. One of the editors is a friend of mine, whose panels I often try to get to because he's knowledgeable and witty. My prospective writing career is still in the "trying to polish some stories enough to submit to magazines" stage. Submitting a novel or getting an agent or whatnot is pretty far from my mind at this point. But I still find the SF publishing world fascinating. Maybe I should have become an editor.

I didn't run into anyone to go to lunch with, so I went to the nearby noodles restaurant by myself. This is a pretty clear example of one of my failings at conventions: I'm not outgoing, and I don't like to bother people. And I tend not to know enough people that I'm tripping over people to go to lunch with. I really am that basically quiet guy who sits in the corner and reads. (Sometimes I'm really obnoxious and I sit listening to my iPod, which is pretty much the "don't bother me, I'm an introverted freak" signal. Although the only time I did so this weekend was because I just had to listen to Iluvatar's "In The Eye".) Every time I go to a con I tell myself I'm going to go up to a few people and say hi and not be such a snail-in-his-shell. Hasn't happened yet, though.

I think I like going to panels in part because I can contribute based on the merits of my knowledge and opinions and not worrying about whether I'm going to be judged a schlub. I guess I'm more confident in my knowledge and opinions then in my personality.

(Why yes, I have whined about this stuff before.)

I came back to attend "Is The SF Detective Story Dead?" A friend of mine attended too, and we both left early. As she put it, the panel asked the question, the answer is "no", and then it turned into a lengthy list of books demonstrating that. Not very edifying. An in-depth look at what constitutes an SF detective story and how the sub-genre has changed over the years would have been more interesting. For instance, I think both Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair are not detective stories. In both stories you know whodunit pretty much up front, and there's not much real detecting going on. I don't think "how is the hero going to capture the villain?" makes a detective story; it's an adventure story, or maybe a suspense story. My friend, though, disagrees. But this would have made for a livelier panel, I think.

The next panel was "Are We Ready for the Next Pandemic?", which was an interesting discussion of how humanity is going to be ravaged by influenza or some other illness in the near future. Well, okay, not for sure, but those-in-the-know are worried. I know there are good books on the subject (most often mentioned: Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague), but a shorter discussion with actual people is valuable too, especially for us laymen.

(I am pleased with a zinger I got in during the panel: One panelist is an author working on a novel in which most of humanity is going to be wiped out. Someone asked what the title is going to be, and I interjected, "You're Not Reading This Because You're Dead".)

And yes, I did three panels in a row: "'Rewrite' is a Four-Letter Word" was a moderately interesting panel about the difficulties of rewriting. Several authors say they actually hate working on the original draft and enjoy rewriting quite a bit, getting everything to fall together cleanly. I felt the panel was a little short on techniques for rewriters, especially on the small scale. For instance, I'm having trouble rewriting on the page level: Pulling apart paragraphs, adding new ones, and generally getting the story to flow smoothly while still hitting the key points. Maybe this sort of thing is something which experienced writers really do handle in the first draft, because they have a better idea of how to structure paragraphs and dialogue. I dunno.

I went to dinner with my friend who, well, I won't mention by name because I don't think she'd want me to. (She's a rather private person.) She went on an exciting around-the-world adventure a couple of years ago and seems pretty happy with her life as a result of it. I don't hear much from her since she's only recently spent much time on e-mail. It was good to see her.

We went to the guest of honor speeches afterwards. The guests of honor were Gwyneth Jones and Robin McKinley. I often try to read books by a con's guests of honor before I attend - especially if it's a smaller con - but I've been pretty bad about reading this year, so I didn't get to it. Truthfully, I'm not at all familiar with their work. As for the speeches, Jones is the more polished presenter of the two (McKinley from what I understand is a very private person and seemed not very comfortable with speaking - I can relate). I think Jones charmed the crowd out of the gate when she said she'd decided to start her speech with "a few words about insanity". Both speeches were entertaining, though.

Sunday evening featured the LiveJournal party, put together by Julie with help from KB (who made stickers with LJ icons for each person - there were scores, maybe hundreds!). This was a huge party - the number of LJ users at WisCon surely numbered at least a sixth of the attendees. I made a list of LJ users I talked with or saw at WisCon, and I'm pretty sure it's incomplete. Lots of people, people with privacy concerns, and people whose name or LJ handle I either didn't catch or can't remember.

The party definitely tripped my "too many people, too small a space, too much noise, and too many people I don't know" alarms. (C.f. my whining above.) I didn't talk to many people other than the folks I already knew (albeit a few of whom I didn't know had LiveJournals). I ended up sitting in chairs from time to time to avoid feeling like an idiot walking around the room not talking to anyone. As a result, I ended up chatting with Agent Xpndble for a while, whom I had seen at WisCon from time to time in years past but had never talked to before.

Oh, and Julie wore a cheese fez. It was a sight.

I also went down to Tracy and Bill's film noir party. Tracy was wearing a pretty amazing femme fatale/dragon lady outfit, complete with gold nails, deep black wig, and cigarette holder. I first glanced her at the LJ party and would not have recognized her had Bill not been there. I mostly talked with the two of them at their party, but it seemed to be going great guns with several people in costume and many more in "black and white". (You'd think it would have been perfect for only-black-wearing Dick Russell. Dunno if he showed up, though.)

I looked at my watch at one point and eeped when I saw that it was already after midnight.

But I had a good time. I left around 1 am.

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