WriterCon UK MidiMeet 2009
[ Last year's ramble.]
Faboo all round, I thought! Though, of course, I won't leave it there because I lack the ability to shut up. Especially at 1:30 in the morning when I'm mildly inebriated, as gillo and bogwitch found out, but more on that within my supermassive recap ramble (heh, she says inserting this at the end; it is rather...).
So on Friday I got all my stuff together and caught a bus to Watford, leaving myself plenty of time to get my train because the buses only come once an hour (and getting the next one would have made it a bit touch-and-go if it was twenty minutes late, which it has been in the past - though on Friday it was only five). The problem was, that meant I had a lot of time to kill. In a shopping centre. And as I was saying to ningloreth et al. earlier today, that meant I ended up buying a lot of random crap (I can 'shop' for hours and buy nothing, but apparently I can't 'browse' without picking up a lot of stuff - ?!). Some of this (toothpaste, hair gel) was handy; some of it was nice (Jelly Belly jelly beans FTW); some was plain sneaky (bookses for me...). I headed to the train station with an extra bag full on my shoulder, mostly of cotton wool that was on two bags for £2 from Boots, but never mind. The train journey was relatively uneventful. I had a bit of luck where I'd forgotten all about Virgin's seat reservation until I'd boarded the train, when I had an 'ah, sod it, I'll just sit in this carriage somewhere' moment. When I saw the ticket man coming round I thought I'd have to go on a rather pathetic quest from Coach B to Coach G or somewhere, but it turned out that I'd not only picked the right carriage, I was only across the aisle from my proper seat anyway. Not to mention that the ticket man didn't even look at my reservation-ticket-thing, so I stayed sat at the table I'd found nicely undisturbed.
Walking to the hotel from the station was easy enough, though I couldn't quite see it to start with (and thought it was a particularly naff looking 60s tower block vaguely in the right direction). It was a very tall, very shiny, blue glass box of a building, with RAMADA across the top, and equally swish inside, where I fudged my way through the check-in with one of the very friendly receptionists (so not used to hotels - would I like to charge things to my room?? You don't get that in hostels...). Apparently there were already people in the lobby/bar, since this was about 3:45, but I couldn't quite see them from the desk and was having a touch of pre-meet-up jitters, so I headed instead to my room. Where I promptly realised I had nothing to do (reading a book seemed too decisively not-scouting-out-downstairs); I ended up watching Flog It! (WHY?? ZOMG that bloke is so patronising to all the people with their great aunty's tea sets etc.) and Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is where a bloke who acts as the 'expert' on one of those buying-houses-as-investment programmes went to buy his own house in Italy. Time passed excruciatingly slowly.
When it had gone five o'clock I decided I would brave it downstairs, naturally finding that practically everyone was already there. I was still a bit nervous, but I shouldn't have been - when people saw me, everyone from last year smiled and waved and I got straight into the (not particularly onerous) task of catching up with everyone and having a bit of a natter before we headed upstairs around six. I'd been keen to ask lilachigh about WriterCon US, so she regaled us for a bit and curiouswombat was as cheerful and happy-to-chat as ever. Our conference room (fantastically negotiated by just_sue) was on the first floor, as part of the general conference suite. We were supposed to be, from what I gathered, in a much smaller room, but the hotel had another large party expected in the restaurant on the Saturday evening, so they let us have a larger room and said we could eat our buffet (hah, just typed buffy) dinner in there. We also had the run of the "break-out area" (I'm not sure whether we were going to have that before), which was somewhere to go while we had tea and coffee with super-comfy chairs. Essentially, we took over the whole first floor, with our cackles of laughter about the odd stains on the chairs and our nudie manips projected on the wall when the wonderful staff brought some glasses in for us.
A lot of ice had been broken, but it hadn't been thoroughly crushed underfoot yet, so after a few opening comments we started off the evening's proceedings by being handed our goody bags, complete with badges (depicting our default icons as well as our names - those sheep get everywhere...), key-rings (mine had a stompy Spike boot on it! With my one of his head from last year I can make a Spike monopod...), mousemats (Spike again! With a rather deep tan for a vampire...), PLOT BUNNY BUBBLE BLOWING THINGS (that doesn't make much sense, but they were AMAZING) and sweeties!! bogwitch completely outdid herself. And then the shiny continued, with hesadevil's bubbly and violet/rose creams. Then the quiz commenced, and I think I had a useful answer for maybe one or two questions, but generally fun was had. Alas, we didn't win (grudging well-dones to The Terrible Twos), so let's move on...
For tea there was a toss-up between food from the bar (apparently very tasty, and considering the next day's lunch I would vouch for that) and going to the Thai restaurant just down the road, which I opted for. bogwitch and I mused that the 'pond' over which a bridge led you to the door was not exactly promising (only about 3-4 fifths full, with more than a smattering of litter), but it was completely unrepresentative, because the restaurant, and the food, was loverly. If perhaps confused conceptually on their wine menu. darkhavens and I, who it turned out shared a love of teh chilli, tried to work out what the no chillies/one chilli/two chillies/three chillies (very rare) scale meant in definite terms. I think she went with the two chillies and I went with the one, but in any case it was extremely tasty (and the coconut rice was TO DIE FOR). I chatted to hab318princess and the rest of the gang on the not-a-semi-circle-cause-it-had-a-rectangle-stuck-on-the-end table (sorry guys, I'm having a mental blank who everyone was), along with bogwitch, mwrgana, booster17 and wildecate at various points, I do believe. Though odd bits of conversation were thrown back and forth between the whole table, which was great.
We went back to the bar afterwards, where pseudo-sobriety was encouraged by extortionate prices (£4.70 for a Jameson's and ginger ale?!), though it possibly wasn't quite attained. bogwitch, vampiegirl and I checked LJ and had a nice chat, before I retired to my extremely well-priced room for nowhere near enough sleep. It possibly didn't help that I put the air conditioning on (it was warm!) and managed to freeze myself overnight... Luckily, the breakfast made up for it more than enough, being as it was a tasty fry-up with tasty juice. (I think it was cranberry juice, but I'm not sure; it was pink and clear.)
The real business of the day was, of course what it was all about (/what added structure to the boozing, dining and general conversing) and mega-informative to boot. We started off with gillo and just_sue's Interview with the Fan: Why Fangeeks Rock the World (or as curiouswombat thought I said when I read it off the programme, Why Pancakes Rock the World, which we decided should be run at BatterCon). We'd all filled in deceptively-simple-looking forms the day before (What fandoms have you been in in the last five years?? My mind imploded with all the vaguely fannish things I've done...) and, despite slight fudging(!), this showed the results, including a discussion of why we get into fandom and what draws us into different fandoms. It was a great start to the day, because it was basically a question of why were we all there - the answer being not only for the shows, but for the people as well - which left you with a rather fuzzy glow. The stand-up comedy didn't hurt either.
ningloreth then took us through Writing Mysteries, a look at classic detective-novel theory (and, really, plotting theory too), taking into account how people have completely inverted it over the years and how rules such as 'have no supernatural elements' works in, well, supernatural-based fandoms. I love learning about theory, so this was wonderfully interesting - in my mind I had my fics ticking over and could see where I'd kind of hit upon the structure (that feels very natural as a reader) instinctively, and moments where possibly my breaking of the rules (in a way that wasn't in tension with them so much as just ignoring them entirely) had led to the fic not working.
After ningloreth's talk we had a refreshment break, where we picked our food for lunch (neither thismaz nor I were very hungry, so it seemed sensible to share the almost 3-for-2 offer on the very tasty-sounding tapas menu). wildecate and I also discovered that Twining's White Tea with Pomegranate is pretty disgusting. This didn't stop me having a second cup, which, to be fair, was a lot tastier than the first, but still not exactly wonderful. I wasn't in the mood for proper tea and there weren't any other options that took my fancy. :( I did have some of my jelly beans though. :D
Then, before lunch, miso_no_tsuki took us through Women and Politics in Fiction and Getting It All Wrong - a discussion of female characters (specifically non-bimbo female leaders) in various shows such as Stargate Atlantis (which, heh, I never realised wasn't just a codename and actually led to Atlantis...) and Babylon 5. More than just letting us all get into a communal rant (yeah! grr!), miso_no_tsuki treated us to a really interesting break-down of how things go wrong - what happens when you create a character then systematically chip away at her supposed authority and how you have to be completely on top of who your characters are.
I had lunch with thismaz and hesadevil - the tapas was as tasty-tasting as it had sounded and IIRC we mostly talked about boats, though hesadevil did get out some extremely posh silk-merino yarn (wool? Oh, how I don't do knitting...).
After lunch hils led a discussion of Canon vs. Fanon, where we talked about what we meant when we used those terms, what the pros and cons were of using one and/or the other as a reference point, how important we felt it was to make sure readers were on the same page as us, etc. It was great (especially post-lunch, when I'm sure I would have been at risk from falling asleep if it hadn't been so stimulating) to toss ideas round the room and get drawn through a discussion by hils to somewhere where I really felt I'd learned something - it was all stuff you felt like you knew in the back of your mind somewhere, but actually expressing it made it all the more clear. I mean, it was just a pleasure to be able to talk about these things out loud during a real-time discussion.
darkhavens followed on from this with Modding Communities - an incisive look into why you might set up a community and how you can run it most successfully (ie. get all the people who might want to be in your community in your community). The answers seemed obvious: promoting, tagging extensively, listing all the interests someone, heh, interested, could type in the search box. And yet, I'm not sure I've ever really followed them (being as I am rather lazy) - most definitely something to think about in the future (especially when I get the next round of plot_wout_porn going). It gave me a lot of food for thought, this talk, though I couldn't help but grin when being able to trust your co-mods came up, because spiralleds has been brilliant from day one of stop_plagiarism and only became more brilliant when I stepped back from being a proper mod - and that's not to mention the rest of the gang. That was at least one box I could tick.
We had another refreshment break after this and IIRC this was when I finally got the chance to chat to bruttimabuoni (yay, another flist face!) and we had our conversation about travelling, but that might have been later. It was certainly a really interesting conversation, whenever it happened!
After these refreshments curiouswombat took us onto What Makes You Go WTF?: Breaking the Flow, an investigation of what will throw a reader out of a story and, more seriously, what effect that has on the writer-reader relationship, especially in fandom. We looked at summaries for a starter (with an interesting tangential discussion about the difference between between the farcical and the mistakes of the not-so-experienced and when it's appropriate to mock), then moved onto issues of language and content. We had a good laugh about unfortunate misspellings, but it was really worthwhile thinking about how much of a shame this can be and thus the importance of beta-ing (not to mention words that make no sense in the sentence). Similarly for critical OOCness and flawed research. I think the most interesting point that curiouswombat brought up, though, was how it can completely break a reader's trust in the author, especially if it's compounded upon by any sort of superior attitude from the author about something the reader knows to be true. How can you suspend your disbelief when you're reading something that basically feels like a lie?
Last, but most definitely not least, was kazzy_cee, talking about Getting It Right: Readability, which, like all the talks, covered something fascinating and different - that is, thinking about who might be reading your story, how they might be reading it, and things to keep in mind when writing. How might you go about reaching a range of people from those reading on a flickering, non-flat-screen monitor to a handheld e-reader? How can you help out those with reading difficulties (I always feel bad about my clutching to serif fonts and justified text, but those are what I personally find easiest to read)? What is your target-audience's reading level and how can you try and achieve that? The final question was something I've never given much thought to before, and it was definitely something to think about; from my perspective it was a question of working out how necessary your style is. No one wants to "dumb down" their work, but if, like me, you tend towards something that can get overblown, the question is why. Is it adding something to the story? If it's not adding something, then what's the point of potentially losing readers by making things over-complicated?
After this we had a break until dinner, mainly so people could go and put on shiny clothes (in kazzy_cee's and my (and other people's?) case literally). The thing was, I knew it would only take me a couple of minutes to get changed (and wasn't really intending to until I saw everybody else's shiny clothes). But! Luckily there was a gillo who wasn't going to go home for half an hour, as well as a bogwitch, who was in the same situation as me as far as necessary time went, and so the bar was promptly invaded for maybe an hour and half. We had a couple of ze drinks and enjoyed ourselves immensely until dinner. (With the aid of the internet as well as our wonderful selves.)
Dinner was one of the more expensive buffets I've had, but that was mostly because I clearly didn't eat enough. If I'd wanted my money's worth I could have had it, so there was no problem there as far as I could see. The hotel, we all reckoned, had got a bit of an inkling about how bloody noisy we'd be as a party and the atmosphere in our dinnerified conference room was flipping wonderful. I would say that was matched and improved upon, though, when we went back to the break-out areas and the comfy (if slightly oddly-stained) chairs. The whole post-dinner-to-2AM period (though on our side of the room only bogwitch, gillo and I were left at 2AM, while, impressively, hils, darkhavens and someone-whose-head-I-only-saw-the-back-of lasted even longer on the other side [ETA: sleuthing reveals it was kitty_poker1! Much respect.]) that pretty much summed up what fandom is about for me. All of us were such different, interesting and varied people (well, everybody else was anyway - I can't really vouch for myself...), so there was so much to hear and learn about - while at the same time we had something in common that was big and fluid enough to let us all relate to each other. We were talking about how a disservice is always done to Africa in the way it's referred to as a single place and we actually had between us speakr2customrs with his experience of Malawi and apartheid South Africa, bogwitch with her knowledge of South Africa years on and gillo with her stories from people on school trips to Zimbabwe. It was like at dinner, where we had both curiouswombat and hab318princess with NHS/medical experience.
Basically, if we hadn't had to be up for breakfast before our AGM at 9:30 the next day I could happily still be in that comfy chair now. But we did, so eventually we dispersed. 7:30 was too early the next morning, but never mind, the tasty breakfast was still there with added scrambled eggs and I had a great chat with hils and bogwitch (dunno where she kept popping up from...) and mwrgana. The AGM went nice and smoothly, with the committee staying the same and the general consensus being that this hotel had been absolutely stellar in all areas and if we could come back next year we would (come to Coventry, it's great!). I brought up my feelings that having it in Reading last year (ie. moving around the country) was what meant I felt secure in coming for the first time, because I didn't have to stay in the hotel and actually went home in-between days. At the same time, it was really, really good this year, and Coventry is still very easy for me to get to, and I was making up hypothetical people anyway, so I wasn't about to vote against having it there next year if poss.
More tea was consumed and I discovered yet again how bad the White Tea with Pomegranate was (Speaker's comments about the definition of insanity the day before were coming back to haunt me...). Then we had a raffle, in which I won not one, but two bottles of Marks and Sparks' mulled wine (get in!), but was the last thing before we slowly had to disperse. :( A group of us went to Kenilworth Castle with gillo as our super-well-informed tour-guide (pics possibly soon; I'm a bit tired now, what with it being several hours after I started this... Though be sure to watch out for curiouswombat's one of the woman with the amazing hat), before ningloreth, who had been very kind in giving miso_no_tsuki and me a lift to the castle was even kinder and took us along with vampiegirl back to the station in time to catch our trains. And so I came home, very neatly finishing a read of Seneca's Medea (that I'd begun when I'd first sat down at the bus stop on Friday) as the train pulled back into Watford Junction station.
.
Well, blimey, did anyone get to the end of that? I should really have gone with COME TO WRITERCONUK, FANDOM PEEPS, IT'S ACE. just_sue, thismaz and kitty_poker1 did an amazingly wonderful job. In any case, apologies for all the typos etc. that will almost certainly have crept in during my brain dump. To use a phrase of the weekend, I quite possibly need a beta...
Faboo all round, I thought! Though, of course, I won't leave it there because I lack the ability to shut up. Especially at 1:30 in the morning when I'm mildly inebriated, as gillo and bogwitch found out, but more on that within my supermassive recap ramble (heh, she says inserting this at the end; it is rather...).
So on Friday I got all my stuff together and caught a bus to Watford, leaving myself plenty of time to get my train because the buses only come once an hour (and getting the next one would have made it a bit touch-and-go if it was twenty minutes late, which it has been in the past - though on Friday it was only five). The problem was, that meant I had a lot of time to kill. In a shopping centre. And as I was saying to ningloreth et al. earlier today, that meant I ended up buying a lot of random crap (I can 'shop' for hours and buy nothing, but apparently I can't 'browse' without picking up a lot of stuff - ?!). Some of this (toothpaste, hair gel) was handy; some of it was nice (Jelly Belly jelly beans FTW); some was plain sneaky (bookses for me...). I headed to the train station with an extra bag full on my shoulder, mostly of cotton wool that was on two bags for £2 from Boots, but never mind. The train journey was relatively uneventful. I had a bit of luck where I'd forgotten all about Virgin's seat reservation until I'd boarded the train, when I had an 'ah, sod it, I'll just sit in this carriage somewhere' moment. When I saw the ticket man coming round I thought I'd have to go on a rather pathetic quest from Coach B to Coach G or somewhere, but it turned out that I'd not only picked the right carriage, I was only across the aisle from my proper seat anyway. Not to mention that the ticket man didn't even look at my reservation-ticket-thing, so I stayed sat at the table I'd found nicely undisturbed.
Walking to the hotel from the station was easy enough, though I couldn't quite see it to start with (and thought it was a particularly naff looking 60s tower block vaguely in the right direction). It was a very tall, very shiny, blue glass box of a building, with RAMADA across the top, and equally swish inside, where I fudged my way through the check-in with one of the very friendly receptionists (so not used to hotels - would I like to charge things to my room?? You don't get that in hostels...). Apparently there were already people in the lobby/bar, since this was about 3:45, but I couldn't quite see them from the desk and was having a touch of pre-meet-up jitters, so I headed instead to my room. Where I promptly realised I had nothing to do (reading a book seemed too decisively not-scouting-out-downstairs); I ended up watching Flog It! (WHY?? ZOMG that bloke is so patronising to all the people with their great aunty's tea sets etc.) and Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is where a bloke who acts as the 'expert' on one of those buying-houses-as-investment programmes went to buy his own house in Italy. Time passed excruciatingly slowly.
When it had gone five o'clock I decided I would brave it downstairs, naturally finding that practically everyone was already there. I was still a bit nervous, but I shouldn't have been - when people saw me, everyone from last year smiled and waved and I got straight into the (not particularly onerous) task of catching up with everyone and having a bit of a natter before we headed upstairs around six. I'd been keen to ask lilachigh about WriterCon US, so she regaled us for a bit and curiouswombat was as cheerful and happy-to-chat as ever. Our conference room (fantastically negotiated by just_sue) was on the first floor, as part of the general conference suite. We were supposed to be, from what I gathered, in a much smaller room, but the hotel had another large party expected in the restaurant on the Saturday evening, so they let us have a larger room and said we could eat our buffet (hah, just typed buffy) dinner in there. We also had the run of the "break-out area" (I'm not sure whether we were going to have that before), which was somewhere to go while we had tea and coffee with super-comfy chairs. Essentially, we took over the whole first floor, with our cackles of laughter about the odd stains on the chairs and our nudie manips projected on the wall when the wonderful staff brought some glasses in for us.
A lot of ice had been broken, but it hadn't been thoroughly crushed underfoot yet, so after a few opening comments we started off the evening's proceedings by being handed our goody bags, complete with badges (depicting our default icons as well as our names - those sheep get everywhere...), key-rings (mine had a stompy Spike boot on it! With my one of his head from last year I can make a Spike monopod...), mousemats (Spike again! With a rather deep tan for a vampire...), PLOT BUNNY BUBBLE BLOWING THINGS (that doesn't make much sense, but they were AMAZING) and sweeties!! bogwitch completely outdid herself. And then the shiny continued, with hesadevil's bubbly and violet/rose creams. Then the quiz commenced, and I think I had a useful answer for maybe one or two questions, but generally fun was had. Alas, we didn't win (grudging well-dones to The Terrible Twos), so let's move on...
For tea there was a toss-up between food from the bar (apparently very tasty, and considering the next day's lunch I would vouch for that) and going to the Thai restaurant just down the road, which I opted for. bogwitch and I mused that the 'pond' over which a bridge led you to the door was not exactly promising (only about 3-4 fifths full, with more than a smattering of litter), but it was completely unrepresentative, because the restaurant, and the food, was loverly. If perhaps confused conceptually on their wine menu. darkhavens and I, who it turned out shared a love of teh chilli, tried to work out what the no chillies/one chilli/two chillies/three chillies (very rare) scale meant in definite terms. I think she went with the two chillies and I went with the one, but in any case it was extremely tasty (and the coconut rice was TO DIE FOR). I chatted to hab318princess and the rest of the gang on the not-a-semi-circle-cause-it-had-a-rectangle-stuck-on-the-end table (sorry guys, I'm having a mental blank who everyone was), along with bogwitch, mwrgana, booster17 and wildecate at various points, I do believe. Though odd bits of conversation were thrown back and forth between the whole table, which was great.
We went back to the bar afterwards, where pseudo-sobriety was encouraged by extortionate prices (£4.70 for a Jameson's and ginger ale?!), though it possibly wasn't quite attained. bogwitch, vampiegirl and I checked LJ and had a nice chat, before I retired to my extremely well-priced room for nowhere near enough sleep. It possibly didn't help that I put the air conditioning on (it was warm!) and managed to freeze myself overnight... Luckily, the breakfast made up for it more than enough, being as it was a tasty fry-up with tasty juice. (I think it was cranberry juice, but I'm not sure; it was pink and clear.)
The real business of the day was, of course what it was all about (/what added structure to the boozing, dining and general conversing) and mega-informative to boot. We started off with gillo and just_sue's Interview with the Fan: Why Fangeeks Rock the World (or as curiouswombat thought I said when I read it off the programme, Why Pancakes Rock the World, which we decided should be run at BatterCon). We'd all filled in deceptively-simple-looking forms the day before (What fandoms have you been in in the last five years?? My mind imploded with all the vaguely fannish things I've done...) and, despite slight fudging(!), this showed the results, including a discussion of why we get into fandom and what draws us into different fandoms. It was a great start to the day, because it was basically a question of why were we all there - the answer being not only for the shows, but for the people as well - which left you with a rather fuzzy glow. The stand-up comedy didn't hurt either.
ningloreth then took us through Writing Mysteries, a look at classic detective-novel theory (and, really, plotting theory too), taking into account how people have completely inverted it over the years and how rules such as 'have no supernatural elements' works in, well, supernatural-based fandoms. I love learning about theory, so this was wonderfully interesting - in my mind I had my fics ticking over and could see where I'd kind of hit upon the structure (that feels very natural as a reader) instinctively, and moments where possibly my breaking of the rules (in a way that wasn't in tension with them so much as just ignoring them entirely) had led to the fic not working.
After ningloreth's talk we had a refreshment break, where we picked our food for lunch (neither thismaz nor I were very hungry, so it seemed sensible to share the almost 3-for-2 offer on the very tasty-sounding tapas menu). wildecate and I also discovered that Twining's White Tea with Pomegranate is pretty disgusting. This didn't stop me having a second cup, which, to be fair, was a lot tastier than the first, but still not exactly wonderful. I wasn't in the mood for proper tea and there weren't any other options that took my fancy. :( I did have some of my jelly beans though. :D
Then, before lunch, miso_no_tsuki took us through Women and Politics in Fiction and Getting It All Wrong - a discussion of female characters (specifically non-bimbo female leaders) in various shows such as Stargate Atlantis (which, heh, I never realised wasn't just a codename and actually led to Atlantis...) and Babylon 5. More than just letting us all get into a communal rant (yeah! grr!), miso_no_tsuki treated us to a really interesting break-down of how things go wrong - what happens when you create a character then systematically chip away at her supposed authority and how you have to be completely on top of who your characters are.
I had lunch with thismaz and hesadevil - the tapas was as tasty-tasting as it had sounded and IIRC we mostly talked about boats, though hesadevil did get out some extremely posh silk-merino yarn (wool? Oh, how I don't do knitting...).
After lunch hils led a discussion of Canon vs. Fanon, where we talked about what we meant when we used those terms, what the pros and cons were of using one and/or the other as a reference point, how important we felt it was to make sure readers were on the same page as us, etc. It was great (especially post-lunch, when I'm sure I would have been at risk from falling asleep if it hadn't been so stimulating) to toss ideas round the room and get drawn through a discussion by hils to somewhere where I really felt I'd learned something - it was all stuff you felt like you knew in the back of your mind somewhere, but actually expressing it made it all the more clear. I mean, it was just a pleasure to be able to talk about these things out loud during a real-time discussion.
darkhavens followed on from this with Modding Communities - an incisive look into why you might set up a community and how you can run it most successfully (ie. get all the people who might want to be in your community in your community). The answers seemed obvious: promoting, tagging extensively, listing all the interests someone, heh, interested, could type in the search box. And yet, I'm not sure I've ever really followed them (being as I am rather lazy) - most definitely something to think about in the future (especially when I get the next round of plot_wout_porn going). It gave me a lot of food for thought, this talk, though I couldn't help but grin when being able to trust your co-mods came up, because spiralleds has been brilliant from day one of stop_plagiarism and only became more brilliant when I stepped back from being a proper mod - and that's not to mention the rest of the gang. That was at least one box I could tick.
We had another refreshment break after this and IIRC this was when I finally got the chance to chat to bruttimabuoni (yay, another flist face!) and we had our conversation about travelling, but that might have been later. It was certainly a really interesting conversation, whenever it happened!
After these refreshments curiouswombat took us onto What Makes You Go WTF?: Breaking the Flow, an investigation of what will throw a reader out of a story and, more seriously, what effect that has on the writer-reader relationship, especially in fandom. We looked at summaries for a starter (with an interesting tangential discussion about the difference between between the farcical and the mistakes of the not-so-experienced and when it's appropriate to mock), then moved onto issues of language and content. We had a good laugh about unfortunate misspellings, but it was really worthwhile thinking about how much of a shame this can be and thus the importance of beta-ing (not to mention words that make no sense in the sentence). Similarly for critical OOCness and flawed research. I think the most interesting point that curiouswombat brought up, though, was how it can completely break a reader's trust in the author, especially if it's compounded upon by any sort of superior attitude from the author about something the reader knows to be true. How can you suspend your disbelief when you're reading something that basically feels like a lie?
Last, but most definitely not least, was kazzy_cee, talking about Getting It Right: Readability, which, like all the talks, covered something fascinating and different - that is, thinking about who might be reading your story, how they might be reading it, and things to keep in mind when writing. How might you go about reaching a range of people from those reading on a flickering, non-flat-screen monitor to a handheld e-reader? How can you help out those with reading difficulties (I always feel bad about my clutching to serif fonts and justified text, but those are what I personally find easiest to read)? What is your target-audience's reading level and how can you try and achieve that? The final question was something I've never given much thought to before, and it was definitely something to think about; from my perspective it was a question of working out how necessary your style is. No one wants to "dumb down" their work, but if, like me, you tend towards something that can get overblown, the question is why. Is it adding something to the story? If it's not adding something, then what's the point of potentially losing readers by making things over-complicated?
After this we had a break until dinner, mainly so people could go and put on shiny clothes (in kazzy_cee's and my (and other people's?) case literally). The thing was, I knew it would only take me a couple of minutes to get changed (and wasn't really intending to until I saw everybody else's shiny clothes). But! Luckily there was a gillo who wasn't going to go home for half an hour, as well as a bogwitch, who was in the same situation as me as far as necessary time went, and so the bar was promptly invaded for maybe an hour and half. We had a couple of ze drinks and enjoyed ourselves immensely until dinner. (With the aid of the internet as well as our wonderful selves.)
Dinner was one of the more expensive buffets I've had, but that was mostly because I clearly didn't eat enough. If I'd wanted my money's worth I could have had it, so there was no problem there as far as I could see. The hotel, we all reckoned, had got a bit of an inkling about how bloody noisy we'd be as a party and the atmosphere in our dinnerified conference room was flipping wonderful. I would say that was matched and improved upon, though, when we went back to the break-out areas and the comfy (if slightly oddly-stained) chairs. The whole post-dinner-to-2AM period (though on our side of the room only bogwitch, gillo and I were left at 2AM, while, impressively, hils, darkhavens and someone-whose-head-I-only-saw-the-back-of lasted even longer on the other side [ETA: sleuthing reveals it was kitty_poker1! Much respect.]) that pretty much summed up what fandom is about for me. All of us were such different, interesting and varied people (well, everybody else was anyway - I can't really vouch for myself...), so there was so much to hear and learn about - while at the same time we had something in common that was big and fluid enough to let us all relate to each other. We were talking about how a disservice is always done to Africa in the way it's referred to as a single place and we actually had between us speakr2customrs with his experience of Malawi and apartheid South Africa, bogwitch with her knowledge of South Africa years on and gillo with her stories from people on school trips to Zimbabwe. It was like at dinner, where we had both curiouswombat and hab318princess with NHS/medical experience.
Basically, if we hadn't had to be up for breakfast before our AGM at 9:30 the next day I could happily still be in that comfy chair now. But we did, so eventually we dispersed. 7:30 was too early the next morning, but never mind, the tasty breakfast was still there with added scrambled eggs and I had a great chat with hils and bogwitch (dunno where she kept popping up from...) and mwrgana. The AGM went nice and smoothly, with the committee staying the same and the general consensus being that this hotel had been absolutely stellar in all areas and if we could come back next year we would (come to Coventry, it's great!). I brought up my feelings that having it in Reading last year (ie. moving around the country) was what meant I felt secure in coming for the first time, because I didn't have to stay in the hotel and actually went home in-between days. At the same time, it was really, really good this year, and Coventry is still very easy for me to get to, and I was making up hypothetical people anyway, so I wasn't about to vote against having it there next year if poss.
More tea was consumed and I discovered yet again how bad the White Tea with Pomegranate was (Speaker's comments about the definition of insanity the day before were coming back to haunt me...). Then we had a raffle, in which I won not one, but two bottles of Marks and Sparks' mulled wine (get in!), but was the last thing before we slowly had to disperse. :( A group of us went to Kenilworth Castle with gillo as our super-well-informed tour-guide (pics possibly soon; I'm a bit tired now, what with it being several hours after I started this... Though be sure to watch out for curiouswombat's one of the woman with the amazing hat), before ningloreth, who had been very kind in giving miso_no_tsuki and me a lift to the castle was even kinder and took us along with vampiegirl back to the station in time to catch our trains. And so I came home, very neatly finishing a read of Seneca's Medea (that I'd begun when I'd first sat down at the bus stop on Friday) as the train pulled back into Watford Junction station.
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Well, blimey, did anyone get to the end of that? I should really have gone with COME TO WRITERCONUK, FANDOM PEEPS, IT'S ACE. just_sue, thismaz and kitty_poker1 did an amazingly wonderful job. In any case, apologies for all the typos etc. that will almost certainly have crept in during my brain dump. To use a phrase of the weekend, I quite possibly need a beta...