What I did on my holidays
Don't laugh, a weekend away in Coventry is as close as I'll get to a holiday this summer. I felt that I might be a bit of a fraud and an interloper as I've never been a writer, artist, vidder, meta writer, and these days I do very little reading in fandom either - the main thing I wanted to do was meet up with friends I hadn't seen for some time, and to finally put faces and voices to people I've read online but never met in person. But the great thing about fandom is that it doesn't matter! kazzy_cee reposted a great definition of fandom at the writerconuk community as well as on her own LJ, and I felt I just fit right back in where I'd left off four years ago.
There was chat in the bar for the early arrivals, and then an icebreaker quiz (though who needed icebreaking after we'd all been buzzed by the balloons in our goody bags!) which my team almost won - just one more point and we'd have been the winners by half a point and not the other way round. So many questions about so many fandoms that I hadn't a clue about, thank goodness I knew the answers to the one's I'd submitted. *g*
I hadn't know what I'd get from the presentations, not being a writer, artist etc, and I had a dread of being asked to actually produce something creative. After attending kazzy_cee's 'Make an Icon with Photofiltre' workshop I found I could be a bit creative after all :)
The presentations were varied and interesting. brutti_ma_buoni spoke about different styles of prompt and how they can get an author thinking in ways they might not have before, and found that this related to me as a reader in a similar way to the summary of a fic. One prompt in particular - from a kinkmeme! - got me thinking:
'buffy/faith, fisting' vs 'buffy shows faith that vanilla's not the right word'
The first fic I'd have no interest in reading, but the second I'd probably try and see if it caught my attention. Her talk also gave us the motto of the weekend, often repeated though originally coined by sueworld2003 of 'yank yank, poke poke' (the prompt requested 'frantic, hair-pulling, desperate sex' and Sue summed it up beautifully).
I learned the importance of doing your homework from speakr2customrs - in this day and age of easy access to data of all sorts it could be so easy to check basic facts before writing a story. Being S2C the talk was full of groanworthy puns and humour, and great suggestions of places to look for information - including football team sheets and the CIA. And wildecate transported me to great heights with her informative and enthusiastic talk on how music permeates and enhances fandom. She played some beautiful extracts of music and great video examples - as soon as I get hold of the podcast of her talk I'm going to track them down (ha - take that S2C!). As I was lucky enough to win some Supernatural dvds from the 'bring your own' raffle I shall be paying special attention to the soundtrack when I watch them.
Making a songvid is something I'd never considered doing - and after watching audio_n_video's talk on the subject I now know it's something I'll never even attempt to do! However I shall appreciate even more the hard work that the vidders put into their end product, and be able to identify why something doesn't quite work rather than just knowing there was something wrong but not why. A_n_V was also responsible for all the techy stuff that enabled hesadevil to be with us despite being too poorly to attend in person - seeing her waving on a screen in the corner of the room whenever she wanted to join in with the discussion was fab.
quinara - she of the youthful appearance and cutest shoes - then put us to work writing Blackadder poetry! Luckily this was done as a group effort and not individually as I'd have been hard pressed to come up with even a limerick about Amy the Highwayman let alone a sonnet (though I probably could have got the -uck ending in there somewhere). After that I learned that there is a good way to use scent in writing (as opposed to Buffy always smelling of Vanilla) and how certain locations and situations can vividly bring up certain smells for us, making scenes in the story much more vivid and personal. Some people seem to smell rotting fish wherever they go though, be it the beach, a New York side street or in an Arthurian castle!
Due to my eagerness to learn how to make a more exciting icon than my current 'crop a photo and leave it method' I missed most of sueworld2003's talk on how she uses light in her art, but the little bit I did see was informative and beautiful. And unfortunately I may never learn how to create a wallpaper using Powerpoint, unless of course bogwitch is kind enough to do her tutorial again next time.
In addition to all this mental stimulation, there was food! Warm mini danish pastries, warm just baked biscuits, delicious curry for most of us on Friday night at The Mint restaurant across from the hotel. Poor lilachigh was rather disappointed with her adventurous sweet and sour choice, though the fluffy bread was interesting, and kazzy_cee was just disappointed that she couldn't finish all of her delicious salmon dish. Breakfast and lunch were made joyful by the presence of the many consonanted R who was most diligent in offering refils of coffee and tea, or dances with the waiter. And there was home-made broccoli soup and salmon in some sort of sauce and delicious pasta with goats cheese and spinach for Saturday night's buffet dinner. Me, on a diet? Not that weekend mate.
I'd been lured to the conference with the promise of unreasonably comfortable, sexily drapeable chairs. I now know that this was a false promise as said chairs had been removed from the break out area into the downstairs bar. :( Still that didn't deter us from not singing along to Once More With Feeling with great gusto - though I believe I was so caught up in not missing my Henchman entrance I interruped Eyeore!Spike halfway through his line. I might have even done some dancing at one stage, despite never getting up from my seat. There was talking and laughing and drinking and chocolate ..... into the wee small hours for some (though I wimped out and went to bed at about midnight).
Sunday morning saw a leisurely start to the final proceedings which ended with the AGM. Before that though there was a raffle with fabulous prizes - Doctor Who scarves, mini Doctor Who lego figures, books, dvds, food parcels, wine, italian biscuits and mugs were just some of the things on offer. We also had the inaugaral Sparkly Umbrella Awards, presented by the committee to deserving souls in a wide variety of categories - I was the recipient of the 'Best Comeback' award and hopefully performed a creditable curtsey to gillo - though it was nothing compared with thismaz's beautiful use of her shawl to swish.
Serious business ensued at the AGM, with the decision being made that next year's Event would possibly have to take place at a different time of year, due to the inconveniently timed London Olympics, and there will be a poll (or most likely a series of polls) forthcoming to finalise the dates - watch this space for details!!
Then it was goodbye time, and after a very good journey (45 minutes door to door, despite some torrential rain) home to convince the children that this time I hadn't been 'stalking my man', and no I hadn't brought them back a present (though they did manage to eat most of my goody bag sweeties), and surely Coventry wasn't too far to go on a Saturday night for a curry, and that I'd had a wonderful time. And yes, I'd be doing it again next year, dates permitting. You should too!