4th Street Fantasy - my extremely long con report

[marydell]

Ok, at long last I'm going to try to get my con experience written up. The detailed notes from the sessions are in progress and will be linked in as I complete them. 

Note to online friends to whom I vaguely refer in these notes:  I much appreciate you spending so much time with me and being so welcoming.  You know who you are.

Day 1 - Friday:

I got on the road from Chicagoland about 6 am, and had mostly a good drive with no road closures, despite the floods. Mercifully, the drive past the Wisconsin Dells didn't bring me within viewing range of the corpse of Lake Delton, because I didn't feel like being horribly sad, and I would have been.

I've never been to Minneapolis before, and the drive to the hotel was a little bit complicated by my tiredness and by the neat trick they have up there of naming streets and highways with the same numbers, so the exit for highway 35, for example, is cozily close to the unrelated exit for 35th street. Even so I made it there in time for the opening ceremonies.

The opening ceremonies weren't very ceremonial--Steven Brust(skzbrust   ) introduced Lydia Nickerson,(lydy   ) the convention chair who made 4th street happen (yay, Lydia!), and then Elise Mattheson(elisem   ) got up to say somethingorother about somethingorother. I was pretty tired at this point, so not much really registered, besides a pleasant euphoria at sitting in a roomful of extremely cool people after 9 hours on the road.

I skipped the first panel (Cool Idea/Story) and instead made a quick run out to pick up Heather Corinna, the photographer for Elise's party. It gave me a chance to decompress, to see a little bit of the city, and to meet yet another extremely cool person. Driving on...hmm, 31st street I think, I was surprised by a mini dust storm, caused by the unusually high wind having its way with road-construction dirt piles. Heather navigated a better route back to the hotel and we were back in time for the second panel of the day, on Message stories.

The panel was pretty cool, what I heard of it anyway. I got a page from the office and had to bail out of the session to get online and do market data stuff--the perils of doing something fun when the office is open. Since the job is why I could afford to be at the conference, I wasn't too upset, though. I was at the panel long enough to hear Elizabeth Bear(

matociquala   ) describe Black Beauty as "Great Expectations, with a pony", and Sarah Monette (truepenny   )promise to supress her academic self "like a guinea pig." It was a nice taste of things to come. [full notes of the first 30 minutes of the session here]

Digression: I came to the con not knowing anyone, except in an online capacity, so I was a bit nervous about meeting people. I didn't want to be That Person--the online hanger-on who thinks they're more important than they are, or the annoying fan who tags along and spoils the party when old friends are meeting up. But the people who knew me from online haunts couldn't have been kinder or more welcoming, and people who didn't know me were just as friendly, with very few exceptions. (Which isn't to say I didn't annoy anyone, because I'm certain I did, but people were nice enough not to hold it against me). By the time I left the con I had cemented online friendships into real world ones, and met a lot of great new people. Practically everyone at the con seems to be on LJ so I've managed to track down and LJ-friend most of the folks I met. Yay! *waves to people*

Okay, so for dinner on the first night I decided to brave the Mall of America to go into the food court, because I didn't want to deal with finding a real restaurant, and I didn't want to try tagging along with anyone to dinner until I'd found my social bearings a bit. Fortunately as I drove up to the place I saw Ikea, so I went in there and got some meatballs and noodles for dinner instead, and I remain a Mall-of-America virgin. Then I took a half-hour walk, all in hopes of exiting the store, because Ikea is designed on the principal of "you can't leave until you look at everything, motherfucker!"

Back at the hotel, I went to Elise's shiny Lioness event. Everyone had their jewelry and finery on and looked awesome. Heather was taking formal portraits of people in the corner, and folks were milling and chatting. I got to play with pretty stuff by looking after Betsy's[kalmn   ] box of treasures while she got her portrait done, clever me!   Then there were a series of readings, including cool earring haikus. Elizabeth Bear read her story "Orm the Beautiful," which was lovely and moving. Eventually the party morphed into a music party, but I was cooked by then and needed to sleep so I could make the morning session, so I called it a night.

Day 2 - Saturday

The first session was on "Writing the Second Draft." I'm a writer who hates writing the first draft and loves writing the second, so this was right up my alley. I took notes (will post those soon) but couldn't tell who was talking most of the time, because I couldn't see. At the end of the panel Ellen Klages said that the room layout was a first draft, and needed revising, so we all moved everything around to use the space better. [full notes here]

The next session was "The Chewy Bits." In the course of the discussion, Emma Bull (coffeeem) used the term "The Loam of Myth" to describe the source of many images and themes that make their way into a writer's work. Everything you know, everything you've absorbed from the culture, creates this loam that new things grow upon. This term was used throughout the rest of the panels.  [full notes here]

After the panels, I had lunch with some new/old friends in the hotel restaurant, which was entirely unprepared for serving something as complicated as lunch. Since half the panelists were in the restaurant, the panels got pushed back 15 minutes for the rest of the day. I had brought my little gadget collection--my Kindle and my Alphasmart Neo, which is that laptop thingy you may have seen me typing on throughout the conference. I handed those around for people to play with while we waited for food, and I tried, and failed, to follow the political conversations flying around the table. I'm not apolitical by any means, but I'm not particularly sophistimacated in my politics either. It was fun and I learned stuff.

The next panel was "Advice from New Writers." This one wasn't quite what I hoped for--it was more focused on what new writers dislike about the industry and the genre, rather than advice about writing.  At one point someone in the audience disagreed  with a panelist and was told, basically, that he should leave if he didn't like what he was hearing. (To be fair, the comment from the audience member was fairly provocative). The whole thing made me pretty uncomfortable, but eventually it turned into a reasonably civil discussion of ways the genre should improve, cliches people are tired of, and so forth. What's interesting is that I had some really fascinating and productive discussions with three of the panelists during downtime at the con  (gryphynshadow, todfox, and eposia), and got some great advice from them. And they & other panelists shared a lot of insights during other sessions that were helpful to me as a learning writer--particularly (mrissa). But during the panel itself, I felt like most of what was said was addressed to the editors and established writers in the audience, rather than to other new writers such as myself.  Yeah, I know, waah, waah, pity party for me because I didn't get the tutorial I was hoping for.  It wasn't a bad session, other than the uncomfortable bits at the beginning, and the cliche discussion was fun.  [full notes will be linked here soonish] [This section has been edited to clarify a couple of things--I'm not trying to say any panelists were bad, or that the panel sucked, but that it seemed to have some kind of bad mojo at the beginning.  There was a new-wave vs. old-school vibe which came off as kinda hostile (in both directions, panel/audience).  A moderated new v. old argument would probably be fun, with this group of new writers and a group of old-guard writers really trying to hash out what the genre should be.]

Next was the Playing with Structure panel, which was a slice of heaven for me since I'm a complete structure fiend (I do a lot of outlining and I also generally draw my plots out as visual structures to make sure events are composed properly). [full notes soonish]

I decided to skip the 21st Century storytelling panel, partly because I needed to give my brain a break, partly because I haven't read much of Shadow Unit yet and would need to leave after the spoiler-free part, and partly because my energies are strongly focused on 19th & 20th Century storytelling at the moment. Also because I needed to get to the dealers' room to buy stuff! 

I got two pairs of named earrings from Elise in the dealers' room--"The Sea Keeps her Secrets...and Mine" and "One Drop Will Let You Cross Over" (which became part of the journey I took the next week--more about that at the end of the post). Then I got a stack of books from Dreamhaven Books including a hardback of Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, woo! I phoned my best friend and left her a message about the magic earrings that make stories happen, and then I promptly went back and bought the pair called "More Than You Knew..." for her, because I realized she would, after hearing my message raving about them, totally kill me if I didn't bring her a pair.

For dinner I picked out a friendly stranger,(abracanabra) and we went out and talked about writing for an hour over hamburgers...she was very cool and I came away from the conversation with a lot of new ideas. How great is that? This, to me, was the essence of my 4th street experience, even more than getting to hang out with writers whose work I know. So many interesting, talented people who all share the same enthusiasm for writing. Our waitress at dinner was named "Lolly," presumably as in "pop." Outstanding.

The Food, Fashion, and Fornication panel was terrific--I love reading about sex, both fictional and historical, so there was no way I was going to fail to like this. But my day was utterly made when an audience member stood up to make a comment and turned out to be a professional sex historian from England (oursin   ). She was promoted to join the panel and was a great addition. [full notes soonish]

After this I wandered around socializing and collecting author signatures, and ended up squeezing into doorway of the room where the music party was underway. My bad little videos here give a tiny sense of the feel of it. It soon spilled into the hall and subsequently split into the smoking party and the non-smoking party, which moved to the bigger suite on the first floor. It's been 20 years since I really sang or participated in a music circle, and I had a really good time singing along where I could, even though I didn't know a lot of the songs (in ye olden days when I sang, I hung around with celtic folkie types; this crowd was more on the american-folk, richard-thompson side of the fence). An interesting fact, which I already knew thanks to Johnnie Ray, is that being hearing impaired doesn't prevent a person from singing beautifully. Also interesting: a good guitar player can play something he's never heard before and, by the second verse, be breaking it down as if he composed it. Patrick Nielsen Hayden (pnh   ) was doing this and it was really fun to watch/hear. Elizabeth Bear has a similar ability with lyrics, in that she can sing large portions of a song that she's never heard before, by being able to predict the likely textual outcomes. She has the textual equivalent of the Gun Kata!  Awesome.  Other folks were talented and fabulous as well, and I have a girl crush on Emma Bull now, because she is a total rock star.

At 2 am I said goodnight to the other folks at the music party and went back to my room. But then I thought "I'll just run up to the con suite and grab a soda before I go to bed." So of course I ended up sitting in the con suite talking with more cool people until 4 in the morning...I could have stayed all night but I really wanted to be somewhat functional for the first panel of the next day. I managed to finally wind myself down to sleep around 5:30.

Day 3 - Sunday

The Negative Space panel was an eye-opener for me (it was an eye-opener for some of the panelists, too, in the hung-over/need-coffee sense, but they all were on the ball despite that). My background is in academic writing, and I'm naturally wordy (although this herenow post is a record-breaker even for me) so the notion of communicating information without up and saying it is kind of a new one. I came away from the panel with a new approach to some problems I've been having in my writing, and also with a renewed appreciation of HBO's Rome miniseries. Steven Brust pointed out that the first season takes place in the negative space of Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar and the second season takes place in the negative space of Antony and Cleopatra. There's a bit of overlap so it's not quite a Rosencrantz & Guildenstern thing, but it's an interesting observation. The thing in Rome where they don't show Antony's speech, but only show reactions to it, struck me as brilliant at the time, since who's really going to write a better version of that speech than W.S.? But now it seems that much more brilliant. [Full notes later]

The Writer's Lies panel was fun, but didn't blow the top of my head off like some of the other panels...it was interesting to hear different writers talk about their process, but my process is so inflexible that there wasn't a lot I could take from that, other than just enjoying the conversation.  [full notes later]

The Stuff panel turned out to focus mainly on the uses and forms of criticism.  Sarah Monette talked about academic lit crit, and that was contrasted with Ye Internet.  Sturgeon's law was invoked several times. Also discussed: when is a work finished, and what are people's thoughts about revising works that have already been published.  Patrick made a memorable comment about sardines.  [full notes later]

The closing ceremonies were appropriately unceremonial, but they did announce that the con will happen again next year and that Cory Doctorow has confirmed as the GOH. Also there was a round of applause for Lydia for making the con happen. There was a nice moment afterwards where everyone in the room was sitting and talking; that feeling of conversation going on. I took a quick video.

For dinner I joined up with a couple of folks who knew the area, and headed to a yummy Malasian restaurant. Shortly after we arrived two other groups from the con came in as well. Driving back we took a bit of a scenic route so I got to see more of the city, which was nice...Mike and I have pipe dreams about living in Minneapolis, although I don't think I'd like the cold. But it seems like a cool city, full of creative people.

Sunday night there was the Dead Dog party in a pair of rooms, and a music party downstairs. I stopped by the Dead Dog to say hello and to talk about Phillip Pullman for a bit, then headed down to the music party. This one was a bit more disjointed than the previous night, but yielded many nice moments, including Elise leading us in a round of "apple maggot quarantine area, do not transport home-grown fruit," based on a sign seen at a campsite. This has been, appropriately, an earworm for me ever since. Also took a break from the music to sit in the hall with Teresa (tnh   ) and carbonel and swap stories, including a great unrepeatable one from Teresa's vault about mayhem at a past (not 4th street) con.  Another musical note (as it were): we sang "Hallelujah" a lot of times in the course of the weekend, and it always had an extra verse in there about heaven or god or something...blah blah blah "Lord of Song." What's up with that? I guess I mainly know the Rufus Wainwright version, or the various shortened versions they play on any TV show with a sad event to underscore.

Eventually I wandered up to the smoking room to dorkily thank Steven Brust for the con, because it was a life-altering experience for me on many levels, and getting that much writing instruction for 40 bucks is just absurd. Sometime in the course of the weekend I also thanked Lydia, but I'll thank her here too: Lydia, thank you so much for organizing this. I left on Monday as a much better writer than the one I arrived as--more conscious, smarter, more confident, and with a fuller toolbox. Thank you, thank you, thank you.  And thank you to everyone who participated.

I rounded off the evening by hanging out with people in the Dead Dog suite for a while, talking about relationships and fen culture. About halfway through the con it occurred to me that flirting and sublimation of attraction probably works differently in an environment where a lot of people are poly than it does in my usual environment, where people are assumed to be mono even if they actually are not (and where "not mono" doesn't mean "poly," it means either "swinger" or "cheater"). So it was fun to kick story ideas around with people who know stuff about and/or practice poly relationships. I'm sure it's annoying to answer dumb questions from mundanes but if so, they didn't show it. And since I am endlessly curious, this was a lot of fun for me.

Monday morning I dragged my sorry exhausted ass out of bed and packed up to get on the road. I chatted with various people and was tempted to stick around a little longer to socialize, but I needed to get on the road or else I'd end up driving sleepy in the dark at the end of the day, so home I went. The drive home was great, just listening to my ipod and thinking over the thousand ideas of the con.

The day after I got home, we got the call to come to Indy to probably adopt a baby.  Since it wouldn't be a done deal until the next day, I wore my new Lioness earrings "One Drop Will Let You Cross Over" for luck, and ended up wearing them for the entire journey--I superstitiously refused to wear any other earrings until we came home with our son, 10 days later, having definitely crossed over into a new life.

A few concluding observations:

- There are a lot of fiber artists in SF/F fandom.  Knitters, spinners, embroiderers, were industriously doing their thing during the panels.
- SF/F folk are very, very nice.
- People from the internet are generally shorter than I expect them to be. 
- If you made it this far, you deserve a cookie!  Here is Robot Chicken's brilliant take on Law & Order.   It's kind of a TV-writing lesson, actually.

Thanks for reading!  I'll update the panel notes links as I get them finished and posted.

Comments

[willshetterly.livejournal.com]

Yep, netizens and movie stars are all smaller in the real world.

Also, we're all nicer offline. In the case of the nicest people online, they're even really nicer offline, but shy.

Excellent write-ups! Hope to see you at the next 4th St.!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Apparently people in net-land expected me to be shorter :) Glad you like the write ups! And I hope I make it next year too...as long as it doesn't fall on the baby's birthday, I should be able to manage it.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting all this!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

my pleasure, thanks for reading all this!

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

It was great getting to see you in person after reading many of your posts on ML.

If you currently live in Chicago, Minneapolis would not be much colder, temperature-wise. And you may find it less expensive and more child friendly.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

It was great to meet you in RL too!

The main difficulty with leaving Chicago is the roots one. We both have a lot of family and friends hereabouts, and wouldn't want to leave them. 20 years down the road, though, anything's possible...

[aedifica]

I'm confused that this post hasn't shown up on my friends page yet, but your other posts do. Huh. Anyway, the link you posted in the 4th Street community did show up, which is how I ended up here anyway. Thanks for posting, it's nice to read others' views of the convention!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I had the post marked private for the several days it was in draft mode; then I changed the date to make it current and made it public. So that might have caused an oddity. Glad you saw it anyway - it was great hanging out with you at the con! Oh and, by the way, I'm in the same line of work as you...stick with it and you'll get to where you're trying to be, I'm sure of it.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Note: fixed the Law & Order Chickens link, sorry about that!

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to poke fun at you for not liking the panel I was on. But I won't, since you gave me such great feedback on my story. :P

Thanks for the huge writeup! It's reminding me that I need to go through all my notes and make them readable, and then post them. Sigh. But I don't wanna go through ten thousand words and edit them! waugh!

Jennifer

[marydell.livejournal.com]

LOL, poke away! You gave me such useful advice *after* the panel, including this awesome link (http://duotrope.com/index.aspx)...I just wish there had been more of that kind of thing on the panel.

Going thru 10k words and editing them is good for the soul! At least, that's what I've been telling myself as I polish my notes. Isn't it fun when you're touch-typing and you don't realize one of your hands is in the wrong "home" position? Ugh.

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

Doh!

I've done that a few times. You look at the screen to see how far you've gotten and see a bunch of gobbledygook. So disheartening. They really need to find a way to translate that.

Hey, if you want a bunch of awesome links, look at the stuff I've been del.icio.us - ing lately. Some very nifty stuff about blogs, and I've found all sorts of cool ways to increase your 'net presence. It's very interesting, very strange, and very nifty to me.

Oh, and I've found lots of stuff on freelance writing markets. Most of them seem to be non-fiction type stuff, but, hey, they pay.

And, yeah. Duotrope Rocks!!!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I've been looking at the links you've sent, thanks, and I've sent you a few, I think. I went ahead and subbed both my sub-able stories to markets I looked up in Duotrope, so thanks!

Fixed a couple of things

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Edited to correctly attribute Elizabeth Bear's comment about Black Beauty. Then edited some more to put back the giant chunk of text that somehow got eaten in the previous edit, and to fix the cut so it actually cuts to the whole thing. Am not going to attempt to fix up the ugly meta-tags that got in there when I put the text back. GAH

Edited to clarify some stuff about the new writers session

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I've updated the section about the new writers session to clarify my thoughts a bit and to give a more even-handed account...

[cloudscudding.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that Lolly kept on calling us "Girls." Ngggg.