Writercon 2006: The Best Thing I Ever Did
I’m not a big fan of flying - quite the opposite - but I have to say the nerves I experienced while boarding the first of six flights that I would have to take throughout my entire holiday were not due to a fear of crashing in a Final Destination-style ball of flames. Instead, my tumbly, flippy, feel-a-little-sicky tum tum pains were due to the overwhelming fear of meeting 250 people that might potential hate me, have nothing in common with me and had never ever heard of me. Yep. I was skeeered and wanted nothing better than to get the whole thing over with and jet off to Vegas to swim in a sea of Reeces, M&M’s and the pretty, pretty lights (oooh, ahhhhh).
But you know what? Once I was actually there at the hotel, I felt much better. Dunno why. Must have been a psychological thing. Still, I felt really shy but, hey, that’s nothing unusual.
kitty_poker1, vampirefever, vic_amy_z and I left Gatwick Airport early Wednesday afternoon (I think) and we didn’t arrive in Atlanta until late. We bumped straight into CJ (who is an absolute darling) almost straight away. After that we pretty much crashed.
Thursday consisted of a pre-arranged welcoming meet for everyone from 2.00pm and Registration from 5.00pm. We were given a lovely, tacky string of beads to wear before registration so that we’d be able to recognise fellow ‘con-goers before we received our name badges. I met so many wonderful people, some of who were previously unknown to me who write completely different fic, some who don’t write fic at all and some who I’d been bursting to meet for a very long time.
lunabee34!!!!! I love her!! Kitty recognised her on the way to the bog and then there was much squeeing. She was honestly just the sweetest and prettiest and loveliest person you could ever hope to meet. And her friend trekgirl55 was adorable. I loved them both.
I think that perhaps there was dinner at The Old Mill later that night, but I wouldn’t like to stake my life on it. My brain is a bit fuzzy on the recall of what we did on which night. My bad. And after that there was a screening of Once More with Feeling in the hospitality suite where too many people squeezed into a too-small room. We sung our hearts out and it was fabulous!!!!
Friday was the big day - the official start of Writercon 2006. Very exciting. After the opening ceremonies we had a choice of panels/workshops/lectures we could attend. I chose to go to Calling All Muses: Overcoming Writer’s Block; Go With the Narrative Flow: Pace Rhythm and Flow; Who Are You People? Characterisation; And Drabblemania (Or, Short is Good, too). I enjoyed them all with the exception of the Characterisation one. It really wasn’t the panel for me and I didn’t get anything out of it. However, both the Writers Block and The Narrative panel were very interesting and entertaining and I’ve gained some helpful tricks of the trade. My very own vampirefever was on the panel for Drabblemania - for those of you who may not know her, she almost exclusively writes short works: ficlets and drabbles (make sure you raid her memories and check out her 100 ways to kill Andrew ficlets. Hilarious). Anyway, that was a fun panel and we were challenged at the end to write something with the prompt ‘hungry’. I did Batxan and I shall post it once I’ve cleaned it up and given it to Kitty (sorry, luv) to beta.
During our two hour lunch period we attended lunabee34’s Premier Screening of her Fan Movie: Firefly Unzipped.
With the rest of the crew out of commission, Mal and Jayne embark on what they believe will be a routine drop on Sappho, the mysterious “purple planet” at the edge of space. Little do they know that their cargo - and those that hold it’s secrets - will awaken their deepest darkest desires.
OMG, it was the most amazing thing I ever did see. It was a about an hour long and stared the Jayne and Mal 6 inch figures and numerous Barbie-type dolls, voiced over by Lorraine and her crew. The plot was gripping and funny and so very Firefly. And the thing that amazed me the most was how professional it was. From the soundtrack to the comedy timing to the editing and voices, it was the dog’s bollocks. Afterwards, a few of us tried to convince Lorraine to send the film to Joss. Personally, I think he’d love it. But even if she doesn’t send it, I do hope it’ll be made easily accessible to those not lucky enough to have a copy on DVD complete with artwork ~gloats~ Seriously, lunabee34? Get it out there because it’s wonderful and, quite frankly, the best fan made material I have ever seen and probably ever will see.
So, after all this I declined dinner in favour of relaxing in my room with my notepad, my snacks and the TV. As I may have mentioned before, I’m quite a solitary person, so to break away and get a couple of hours all to myself was very nice indeed.
After that, and yes, we’re still on the first official day, we had the Erotica Breakouts. This consisted of a general talk/laugh/giggle/smutfest and then broke away into smaller groups depending on individual interest. There was a choice of Kink, How to Write Het, How to Write a Lousy Sex Scene, How to Write Slash, How to Write Femslash and Gay Sex for Straights. Kitty and I chose to go to the Lousy Sex Scene one and we really enjoyed it. yin_again was the mod and she was perfect for the job. Very funny. However, I couldn’t help but wish that they’d run the whole thing again so I could have then attended the Kink breakout too. Actually, I’d have liked to attend all of them. I’m just greedy like that.
On Saturday I attended Bringing the Funny: Writing Humour, My Eyes! Read and Fix the Badfic, The Gateway for Lost Souls: Fanthropology and Cold Dead What? A Lecture of Vampire Physiology.
Writing Humour was good fun, the Badfic one was side splitting and commenced what was to become a running holiday theme of Kitty!Spike . Fanthropology was really fascinating, and Vampire Physiology was a giggle and even had amusing drawings on an overhead screen that resembled Giles’ depictions in Hush.
Kitty and I also discovered The Magic Box shop where we spent too much money on books. We both bought Seven Seasons of Buffy and Five Seasons of Angel which are collections of essays. (I’ve started the Buffy one and it’s very good indeed) I think Kitty also bought a Joss Wheden one, and I got Stepping Through the Stargate, also a collection of essays, which should prove useful as I delve deeper into the Stargate fandom (You can all blame darkhavens for the Atlantis obsession and it’s coming mutation into SG-1. Although I have to say, I d/l and watched the latest SG-1 ep - a crossover with SGA - and was appalled to see the characters bordering on bullying my poor Rodney. Not happy and it’s kinda put me off SG-1. I’m sure I’ll bounce back, though.)
Saturday was also the night of the Shindig/Cocktail party. We all got dressed up in our best gear and prepared to party the night away. I had some trouble getting my dress on due to the fact that Kitty and I had recently discovered the joy of Blimpie and their meatball subs. We won’t mention the Oreo and Reece’s pie we ate after. And after all that I kinda missed most of it. The problem was, you see, we had to go outside to smoke and it was there that I kept bumping into more new and interesting people. bellatemple was very nice and very interesting. I’m not sure how long we chatted for but somehow I blinked and the evening was over. I fell into bed - from the tiredness, not from drinking cos I don’t - and Kitty fell in about half an hour later. We slept well.
On Sunday, the last day, Kitty and I attended the Proper Comma placement Saves Lives! panel. It was fantastic. I learned stuff! Yay!! And Kitty got some of her questions answered! Yay! It was a really well put together panel and to be honest I could have sat there all day and listened. I even participated! Yessireee, I put my hand up and asked things. It was the fist time I’d felt comfortable enough to do so. entrenous88 was the mod and she was a damn good one. Excellent job.
At some point we also went back to The Magic Box and bought badges and Puppet!Angel shits…Yes, I actually typed that. I just went over everything I’d written here and discovered that, yes, Kitty and I had apparently purchased puppet poop. I of course meant t-shirts, not shits. Sorry, I had to leave that in because I just died laughing and I wanted to share. Could you imagine anyone selling shit from a famous puppet? I bet if we put some on eBay it would sell in a flash. In fact, what an excrement idea. Sorry, that one was deliberate.
Next we attended Rabbit Stew: How to turn Your Plot Bunnies into Something Tasty. It was hosted by itsabigrock and was very entertaining. She really would make a great stand-up comic.
I have a feeling that we missed the next panel. Kitty and I got lunch from the hospitality suite and took it back to our room where we were soon joined by Ali and Vic who had been turned out of their room by the maid. We got to talking and that was that. A couple of hours later we chose the last panel and attended The Problem of Evil: Why We Love the Bad Boys/Girls. The closing ceremonies were next which saddened me because after all the fretting and worrying and near-shitting of pants it was all over.
Meeeep.
Vic, Ali, Kitty and I got the hotel shuttle to a nearby Mexican restaurant where we ate heartily and cheaply. As it turns out the restaurant was literally seconds away so that was quite embarrassing (whoops). We obviously decided to walk back, and we did some chocolate shopping at Kroger’s on the way. I also bought Fortune Snookies for my beloved doggy.
And that was basically it. People had been drifting home and away for much of the day and by the time we got back to the hotel everything had gone very quiet which was a pity because it would have been nice to say goodbye to people. But we were all very tired and we had an early flight in the morning, so we decided to call it a day.
And that was all, folks. I’m sure I’m missing a lot out and I know I’m missing people out, but my internet connection has been down for most of the evening and I can’t remember names because I’m pretty crap at that.
Lastly I would like to say a great big thanks to everybody that made Writercon 2006 happen. That includes the mods and panellists and the wonderful people that ran the hospitality suite and The Magic Box. And most of all I want to thank everyone that attended because you were all wonderful and I had the most amazing time. I dearly hope that I’ll be able to attend the next con. I would love to see you all again.
Gimme a couple of days and I’ll give you a report on the second part of my trip, LAS VEGAS, BABY!!!!