WFC 2010
I've been away for a week. First stop was at the grandparents house, which was fun and social and exhausting. Four kids ranging from 2 to 13 meant a ton of Wii, talking, Angry Birds, eating of pancakes (and more pancakes) and bacon (more BACON).
Then it was grownup time and a drive south to Columbus and the con. I missed half the folks I wanted to see because they didn't attend, but the ones I did see were awesome. I met a ton of new people, which I'm always happy to see, and said Hi to a bunch of old friends. The common theme was "OMG, so great to see you! You haven't changed a bit!" which is flattering on the one hand, but it just made me think I was perpetually 23 in their eyes (yes, some of these people I have known since the early 90s. Scary) or that everyone pretty much forgot I was at Saratoga, which wasn't that long ago. Or maybe it was.
I suppose I ought to just be thankful for the compliments.
As usual, I didn't really go to any panels. Programming was super light this year although I'd heard that there had been a decision to make a single track of programming so that panels didn't compete for audience attendance. I can see the point, but it still felt super airy this year. I ended up going to only one reading (missed Kelly Swails' cuz we didn't get in until Friday afternoon) and generally ended up moving between the bar and restaurants on High Street, which were surprisingly tasty.
Drove up to Cover to Cover, a local indie YA and kids' bookstore to see Charlie Finlay, Sarah Prineas, and Paulo Bacigalupi talk. Love that kind of store where there are dedicated owners who clearly know their stuff. Plus the wall of famous signatures was impressive. There were a couple of really excited kids in the audience who seemed truly interested in the writing/creative process and were jazzed to read, so that's always smile-worthy. Oh, and the writers were all very good, too.
Had a fun dinner with a handful of people, although the choice of restaurant was a lot fancier than I had anticipated (felt totally underdressed in tee and jeans knowing I had nicer clothes back in the hotel in anticipation of going to something like this fancy-schmancy place). Yakked about my book and had a good convo with Paul Genesse (whose biz cards have gone missing, but who is easily found via the evil Facebook--lordy, you really can stalkfind EVERYONE on FB). Also tried to think of the next spec-fic writer to come up with a cult ala L. Ron, and thought that perhaps Frank Herbert might have had some success if he'd put his mind to it (this included some good choices from Patrick ___ whose last name I have forgotten, sorry Patrick!).
Had other fun dinner off-site and it made me realize that this was the first con I'd been to where having a car really made a difference. It felt so unusual to be DRIVING places to see writers and chat. Rae Carson had a fabulous new coffee maker, which was really impressive. Coffee-house style yumminess for a fraction of the cost. How can you beat that?! Everyone's kids have gotten bigger, as has mine, and lots of photos were viewed on iPhones, which really is an awesome thing (and reminded me that I fubarred my photo uploads cos none of the photos I'd intended to be on my phone got on my phone. This is me. This is me with tech. Sometimes, we're not even on the same floor). Word-on-the-Street game was loads of fun even though it took me a couple of rounds to realize how it was played. My brain needed to catch up to my mouth which kept blurting things out at random as if that would help. Mouth and brain needed to coordinate and get their signals straight. I also kept thinking of really big words like "cephalopod", which didn't help my team, or words with a lot of vowels, which also don't help. But then, how can you compete against "backgammon" and "vivisection" and "flagellation"/"flatulation" (which I agreed with Ken was what I thought the rest of my team had been saying all along).
Wish we could have stayed longer and seen more people and spent longer hanging out (probably would have had a lot more energy if we hadn't preloaded this trip with staying up late and being active three days before). I did get a lot of practice pitching my book to friends, so the pressure was off, but it made me realize how eager I am to finish the final draft. I'm having fun writing it, and even though I feel excited in having finished a draft (I know! Me finishing something!), I'm even more pumped to get the revisions done--and I have a really good idea how to do it, so it's only a matter of me getting off the durn internet and getting back to writing. I also realized that all my instincts were correct, so it's a good thing I used Scrivener and saved all the original opening chapters, cos that, in the end, is the way to go. I mean, seriously, I should stop second-guessing myself and just go where my brain tells me to go. It's apparently a lot smarter.
So, all in all, happy to see more people than I can list even though most of them were a quickie hug and hi. I expect more will go to San Diego next year and I think I ought to start saving my pennies for Toronto in 2012 because some people, who shall not be named (ahem SKSPerry and Derek and Amber and Karin) are sure to be there because they have NO excuse otherwise.