WriterCon Report

[desoto_hia873]

Well, this has been a long time in coming. WriterCon was a great experience and a fun weekend, but also a very tiring one. I was pretty much flattened for the first half of the week and then, of course, I had to get back to the cod.



In any event, I flew to Atlanta last Thursday afternoon. I had a stopover in Toronto and met up with shadowscast and autobadgirl while waiting at the gate for plane #2. The Toronto-Atlanta flight was very turbulent near the end--autobadgirl and I are both nervous fliers and shadowscast sometimes gets motion sickness, so we were all very relieved and slightly queasy when we finally touched down. Fortunately, we were on a newer plane that had individual TVs in the back of the headrest of every seat, so that at least made for a distraction. You could choose to listen to music or pick from a list of movies or TV shows. I watched Kinky Boots (Chiwetel Ejiofor--the Operative from Serenity--dresses up surprisingly well as a woman) and quite enjoyed it, despite the feeling that I might lose my lunch at any second.

Once safely on the ground, we began the insanely long trek to retrieve our luggage. We'd walked about half the length of the airport when autobadgirl finally asked me if I thought we were supposed to use the trains that had been passing us every couple of minutes. Duh! While studying the airport map to figure out if that was the appropriate thing to do, we discovered that defibrillators were available for use about every 50 feet along the length of the airport. I don't know which they thought might do us in first--the heat, the long walk, or the terror in the air--but my heart felt safe.

We met up with nwhepcat near the baggage claim and then headed out to tackle MARTA. After a long ride on the train, during which time someone asked if shadowscast and I were sisters, we called for the hotel shuttle and finally made it to our destination: WriterCon! The many squeeing fangirls by the front door and in the lobby of the hotel told us that we were in the right place. :-)

Booker, our shuttle driver, recommended a nearby steak house for dinner, so, after hooking up with sunnyd_lite (who, having just returned from her Coca Cola tour, was totally stoked on sugar and caffeine), redeem147, liz_marcs (who went Coca Colaing with sunnyd_lite, but apparently didn't ingest as much--her feet were still touching the floor), ponders_life, and several others, off we went. I had bourbon salmon, which was really good. Then it was back to the hotel for volunteer orientation and, finally, bed.

I went to as many panels as I could over the weekend--the only session I missed was on Saturday afternoon when I volunteered for a couple of hours in the Magic Box. Friday's first panel was The Good Stuff: Selected Authors Read from Their Fic--besides wanting to hear the stories, I also wanted to see how it worked as I had to do a reading on Sunday afternoon. Other panels I attended that day were Go With the Narrative Flow, Who Are You People?, and Drabblemania. Several of us took off for a quick dinner at Eatsis and got back in time for the erotica panel and (for me) the het breakout session, both of which were hilarious. There's nothing like putting 200 fanfic authors in a room and asking them to talk about porn. :-D

Saturday's panels were Bringing the Funny, My Eyes! Read and Fix the Badfic, and I'll Just Be Over Here, Twiddling My Thumbs: Writing Ensemble. We were assigned a writing exercise in the latter, and I wrote half of a silly fic centering around a cursed football. I finished it on the plane on the way home, so go me for finally writing something again. After having been completely unable to write a drabble on command the day before, it was kind of a relief to know that my neurons were still firing. Anyway, I scooted out of the last panel a few minutes early to get a tarot reading done by carmen_sandiego and then I sold t-shirts in the Magic Box for a couple of hours. While I was there, I bought a copy of Mapping the World of Harry Potter, a collection of essays published by BenBella Books. I highly recommend the essay "To Sir, With Love"--a review of (smutty) Snape fanfiction--it'll have you in stitches. After grabbing a quick dinner from the hospitality suite, it was time for the cocktail party. I was only there for about an hour as I had scheduled an interview with yourlibrarian for 9 pm. I spent a couple of very pleasant hours talking about LJ, fanfic, and fandom with her. I wish I'd done a thesis on fandom--what fun!

Sunday's panels included Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: The Challenge of Longer Forms, Mean Girls vs. the Cult of Nice: Concrit in Action, and What's the worst that could happen? Plot. I found the first and last of those particularly helpful. I've had an idea fermenting in my brain for a longish fic, but, never having written anything longer than 3500 words, I wasn't sure how to tackle it. The incomparable rahirah was on both panels and said something (I can't remember exactly what now) that finally made things click: I have a plot now and, even more amazingly, a theme! Woot!

The last panel of the con for me was The Good Stuff II. I was sort of hoping that not too many people would come, so I had a mild panic attack when I walked into the relatively crowded room and then also discovered that they'd set up a podium for us to read from. Ack! I was scheduled to read about halfway through the session, so I spent the next half hour or so vibrating in my chair and telling myself that it was just five minutes, only five minutes of reading, how bad could five minutes be? Stop being such a wuss, it's just five minutes! Etc. I'd practiced reading in front of sunnyd_lite earlier in the afternoon and confirmed that, yes, I still talk too fast when I'm nervous. However, I survived. Afterwards, a couple of people came up to me and said they were intrigued by the snippet of All Set Down that I'd read and wanted to read the rest of it. autobadgirl even had the grace to say that I hadn't looked terribly nervous. So it was terror followed by gratification, which is not such a bad feeling at all.

A big group of us headed off to a Mexican restaurant for dinner after all was said and done, and then to the hospitality suite for the Dead Plot Bunny Party. sunnyd_lite and I discovered that someone(s) had hijacked our contributions to the fic library, so we were both very pleased by that. On Monday morning, the very kind scribbles1977 took me, sunnyd_lite, and redeem147 to the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial and then it was time to go home. There was much less turbulence this time around, thank heavens. And we knew to use the train in the airport, so saved ourselves a lot of hoofing around.

I think I met up at least once with everyone from my flist who was there, but, sadly, there wasn't nearly enough time to have a good sit-down talk with most of them. I only crossed paths with some people (e.g., ezagaaikwe, poshcat, mireille719, beadtific, romanyg, cindermom, st_salieri, and eyesthatslay) once or twice. :-( I'm not very good at mingling at big gatherings--by the time I got brave enough to push my inherent shyness aside, it was Sunday and people were already starting to leave. I think the next WriterCon should be at least a week long!

Anyway, I'm ever so glad that I went and that I got to meet so many friends. Y'all are a wonderful and talented bunch of people.

Comments

[eyesthatslay.livejournal.com]

Sweetie, it was so lovely to meet you...and you're right! We need more time, don't we?

You're just as cute as a button, btw, even if you like to blink in pictures! LOL! :D

[cindergal.livejournal.com]

I wish we'd gotten to spend more time together - next time, for sure! :-)

[scribbles1977.livejournal.com]

I agree. We should definetly make writercon a week. Only, if we do that, can we make the panels start at like noon? I was exhausted by Sunday and ready to join the ranks of the undead myself. :)