conventions

The odds and ends of Penguicon thoughts

By / May 7, 2010

A last few thoughts which sprang from my experiences at Penguicon.

***

It was fascinating to me how many of my conversations at Penguicon turned to parenting. At first I was a little concerned. Parenting is huge in my life and a topic about which I feel truly competent to speak at length. I worried that I was somehow unconsciously shifting all conversations in that direction. But then I realized that parenting is huge in many lives. This was confirmed by David Kletcha, who kindly reassured me that writers talk about parenting all the time.

***

I truly enjoy people watching at conventions, because people have given themselves permission to wear things they love just because they love it. I’ll watch the couple wander by with big stuffed bees on their backs and I wonder what those stuffed bees mean to them. If I’m not completely burned out on socializing, I’ll sometimes ask. In every case the person lights up, happy to tell her story. People want to be seen. They want to matter and to be special. Among the fascinating choices in personal dress, I love most to see the ensembles which are aesthetically perfect. I want to say beautiful, but that is not the right word. Sometimes the clothes are meant to challenge. But I am always impressed when the person and the clothes form a harmonious whole. For example, I saw many corseted figures during the convention. Most of them looked somewhat uncomfortable. But there was one woman who passed my booth and she walked like the corset was not even there. She was graceful and proportionate. It was a beauty to behold. Upon inquiry, I learned that she is almost never without her corset. The practice showed beautifully.

***

A girl came by the booth with a hugely wide-eyed expression. She spotted the Schlock Mercenary merchandise and gasped “Oh he’s here?” As I watched she almost melted into a puddle of squee. She apologized to me saying. “I’m sorry this is my first convention.” I could tell she was shell shocked by having so many cool things gathered together in a way she had not previously believed possible. The squee was not so much for Howard as for all of it. I saw her several more times, and she appeared to have settled in to the convention. I’m glad. I hope she had a great time.

***

During the convention I had several good conversations with Jim Hines. He and I have met before and so I was glad to see him in person as well as on the internet. On the last day, when everyone is trying to catch everyone they want to fare well, Jim came up to the booth. We spoke for a moment and then it was time to part. There was the slightest pause and in typical Jim Hines “Let’s drag this thing we’re not saying into the middle of the room where we can look at it” fashion, he said “Do we hug?”
Yes we do. And we did.
I thought about that afterward. There are stages of friendship and acquaintance. Sometimes there are moments when the boundaries are still being defined. You feel close to the other person, but you don’t want to impose a level of intimacy that they may not be ready for. Then there is this careful dance which sometimes goes wrong. Hesitance to impose can be received as a hesitance to grow closer. Then two people, who really want to connect, both end up feeling a little rejected. When I find myself in this careful dance, I need to take a page from Jim’s book. His direct question opened him up to overt rejection, but it also made things clear. And then there was a hug.

***

One of the hazards of a convention is the repetition of stories. I’ll launch into a story and realize that I’ve related it twice before at this event, but I can’t remember whether it was to this group of people. Howard named this feeling Parastorynoia. Which is a pretty good word for it.

***

I was describing to Sal and Caryn the process off pushing myself to the edge of my limits and just beyond.
“When I do that, I discover how strong I am, and I’m less afraid forever.” I paused a moment “And sometimes I push far beyond what I thought my limits were.”
Sal responded, “When you do that, you get new limits.”
I looked at him and knew without a doubt that this he is a person who has gotten new limits repeatedly throughout his life. Extensive military training is designed to do that.
I haven’t been in the military, but it still feels like my life is a long stream of challenges after which I am stronger and less afraid. In some ways I’ve become a challenge junkie. I take on more than I should far too often. The risk is real. It is possible to break rather than become stronger. I have no intention of stopping, but seeing what I’m doing is good.

***

And on that note, I think I’m done sorting my Penguicon thoughts. Time to move on to the next things.

Culture Comparisons

By / May 6, 2010 / 1 Comment

A couple of people we met during the course of Penguicon had also visited Salt Lake City. They talked about the “weird vibe” they felt there. Howard laughingly compared it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and both times the person laughed and said “That’s it exactly.”

Since those conversations I’ve been pondering how I feel about being a participant in a culture which feels like Invasion of the Body Snatchers to those outside it. There is a significant homogeneity to LDS/Mormon culture. It comes from shared religion and shared neighborhoods built into tight knit little communities. In many ways, Utah is like hundreds of small towns all smashed up against each other. You get the in-everyone-else’s-business nosiness of interested neighbors along with the benefits of neighbors who watch out for each other. From the inside, this culture feels very safe and predictable. People raised there are often afraid of what may lay outside. This is unfortunate, because outside are a lot of amazing people worth knowing.

Human brains are wired to pay attention to things that are different from what they normally see. This is why a visitor comes to Salt Lake City and may feel uncomfortable. The locals are acting in near unison according to social norms that are foreign to the visitor. This same discomfort happens to me when I visit elsewhere. At Penguicon I was bombarded by social situations which were just slightly askew of what I am accustomed to. Add to that fact that I moved through several different social circles within the convention, each with it’s own rules. I spent time with writers, with webcartoonists, with Con com staff, and with Aegis. In passing I saw a dozen other social groups. It really was a lot to take in and analyze so that I did not commit any faux pas.

Upon returning home, Howard and I had the opportunity to describe the convention to people here in Utah. I quickly realized that my descriptions were creating a much wilder picture of the convention than was actually true. The truth is that I’ve seen the same sorts of silly/fun/play behaviors here in non-drinking, strict dress-code Utah as I saw at Penguicon. The costumes are different, but the desires to relax and be accepted are the same.

I do not believe that everyone can just get along with everyone else. I know that there are fundamental conflicts of belief which people need to fight for. But I also believe that there is far more common ground to be had that some people are willing to admit. I have to believe in that common ground, because I found comfortable places at Penguicon and I am wonderfully comfortable here at home in Utah. Part of me thinks it is strange that this should be true. But mostly I am just glad of it.

My Conversational Habits

By / May 6, 2010

In the comments to Howard’s recent post about Penguicon, I am called “charmingly quiet.” This description amuses me. I don’t think of myself as a particularly quiet person. I certainly do not feel shy. Inside my head I am actively participating in the conversation, it is just that most of my thoughts don’t get spoken aloud. I tend not to speak up unless I feel like my thoughts are unique or a viewpoint which is otherwise unrepresented. The larger the group, the less likely this is to be true. In smaller groups I feel a greater responsibility to help keep the conversation alive, and I am more active about finding ideas to add.

On Friday night I spent several delightful hours speaking with fellow writers. At first the group was small, only four of us, and the conversation was shared pretty evenly by us all. As people drifted in to join the group, the conversational dynamic shifted. People like Mary Robinette Kowal, Patrick Rothfuss, and Cherie Priest took center stage as they began regaling the rest of us with amusing anecdotes. I felt a brief desire to be able to do that, to fix the attention of 10 people and tell a story that has everyone laughing uproarously. It is a skill I could learn. I could learn it from Howard. He does it all the time.

Then I remembered the time at a party when I was participating in a smaller conversation at the edge of a large group. I began telling a story which fell into one of those random conversational pauses. Suddenly I discovered that I had the full attention of everyone in the room. It was rather alarming. I was telling a story that was two people funny. I didn’t think it was 10 people funny. The consequences had multiplied if my story fell flat. It didn’t, but neither was it a hilarious success.

The truth is that my conversational strength is not in entertaining large groups. My strength is conversations with small groups of people who are talking about things that really matter to them. On the tail of this realization, I also recognize that this is one of the reasons that it is important for Howard and I to spend some of our time separate at conventions. He shines while regaling stories in large groups where I tend to be charmingly quiet. Sometimes I want exactly that. I love listening to Howard tell stories. It is restful to be a semi-anonymous observer in a conversation. But it is also important for me to have identity and friendships separate from him.

Knowing all this about myself has taught me to watch for the quiet people in conversations. They are not quiet because they lack interesting thoughts. Which is one of the reasons I love smaller conversations. I love listening to people who spend a lot of time observing. I’m also very impressed when I’m around people who have a sense of conversational balance. These people will realize when someone has been quiet and try to draw them into the conversation. I am most impressed by people who can story tell for large groups and then turn around to draw out quiet observers. I was in excellent company at Penguicon, those storytellers I listed above. They did it all.

Regulation of Input and Retaining Reserves

By / May 5, 2010 / 2 Comments

Each evening as I returned to my room after a day of conventioning, I looked at my laptop and dreaded opening it. This is unusual. The internet is usually my friend. I like my regular blogs and email. But my brain was so full of new things, that the last thing I wanted to do was add more new things. My caution was wise because I ended the convention over loaded.

I’ve been back for three days now and I am still carefully regulating my input. I’m back to answering email and blog comments. But I still haven’t caught up on my usual internet sites. I’m not reading much that I don’t have to in order to keep our business running. Also I am sleeping more than I would like. It is a necessary reset, which is being hampered by my extensive list of things to do.

I’ve seen this sort of overload in my kids as well. Patch is the most prone to it. He really requires quiet spaces in order to stay his usual happy self. One of my jobs as a parent is to watch my kids and force them to slow down when they’re getting over stimulated. Apparently I need to do a better job of doing this for myself. A couple of friends at the convention told me how they always schedule time mid-con to hide from everyone and everything. This sounds wise.

I am already thinking about how I can put this into practice next August when Howard and I take the two oldest to GenCon. We are all going to be over loaded and I need to think carefully about how I can counter act that and give us quiet spaces. The kids and I may have to ditch the convention for an afternoon and go find a park to sit in. Or perhaps we’ll watch movies in the room. I am going to have to be much more careful to conserve my own energy. I can’t afford to run myself to the edge of my limits when I have two kids to watch out for. I’ll also have Howard who will run himself to the edge of his limits, as is his job. I need to spend energy making sure that the presence of the kids does not interfere with his ability to work the show. It will be an interesting challenge.

Conventions are not the only time when I need to spend energy regulating input. I still remember clearly the day I worked myself to my physical limits assembling two pallets of books, and then had to face a plethora of kid crises with zero emotional or physical reserves. That was the kind of day I vow never to repeat, and I haven’t, but I keep coming close. I think one of the hardest things about being a mother is that I can’t allow myself to run to the edge of my abilities. I have to hold part of my energies in reserve so that I can always answer the needs of the children. It was one of the joys of Penguicon that I could use up my reserves. Mostly. Except for the phone calls. (How exactly did they expect me to help find the eye drops in my brother’s house while I was over 1000 miles away? I don’t know, but they called to ask me anyway.)

Hmm. This post began talking about regulating input and ended with retaining reserves. My thoughts are still rambling and I lack the focus to bring things back around so that they all connect at the end of the post. Also I am still tired. So for today I will apply the lazy solution and add the words “and retaining reserves” to the title of the post. That makes it all relevant. Right?

Anxiety Under Stress

By / May 5, 2010

The first day of Penguicon was fantastic. I spent the entire day having fascinating conversations with amazing people. Then I climbed into bed and my brain kept running for an hour, trying to sort everything. Just as I drifted off to sleep I snapped awake with an overload of mommy guilt. It only lasted for a few minutes, but during those minutes I was shaky and almost in tears. It was focused on being away from the kids, but it was really the result of too much input and not enough down time.

I was similarly shaky at the end of the convention. We were all packed and sitting at the restaurant, waiting for time to depart to the airport. A very perceptive friend asked if I was okay. I wasn’t really. I was holding on to calm and repressing the person in the back of my brain who wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Again it was the result of too much input and too little processing time. But I did not want to miss even a moment of visiting with friends whom I see far too seldom.

Last night I snapped awake at 1 am in a panic because I have not yet shipped things to GenCon. I have three months until GenCon. There is plenty of time to ship books there. But it took me several minutes to claw my way in to sufficient consciousness to remember that fact. The real problem is that I have an overload of things to do and most of them are both urgent and important. So instead of taking a couple of days to unpack and re-organize after Penguicon, I am trying to dive straight into all of the things to do. So far it is not working well. I’m getting things done, but it is all stressy and fragmented. If I can get myself focused I can dig out from under. But it is hard to become focused with so much looming.

The result is a latent anxiety waiting to pounce upon me. It is stress manifesting as fear. Fretting out all the details of what will happen if I fail is not nearly so useful as just getting stuff done so that I won’t fail. Also, the thinking in circles is made of unhelpful.

The good news is that my head is getting steadily clearer. I’m actually being able to blog some of the Penguicon stuff to get it out of my head. The luggage has been unpacked and stowed. I’m starting to wrap my head around the at home things. As I do, the anxiety subsides and I see that I really can do this.

Finance for Freelancers

By / March 26, 2011

While at Penguicon I moderated a panel called “Finance for Freelancers” with co-panelists Tobias Buckell and Catherine Shaffer. I wasn’t intending to moderate, but I was foolish enough to be the first one to ask who would be the moderator. Having everyone introduce themselves and tell why they became freelancers gave me just enough time to scribble a few notes so I could direct the discussion.

I feel like the whole thing went very well, due in large part to the wealth of experience that Toby and Catherine were able to share. It is a joy to moderate a panel of competent people who know how to make their points concisely. I learned some things and I felt like we shared useful information with the audience. I wish I had a transcript to post, but I can remember a few highlights. What follows is loosely connected notes from the panel:

The insecurity of not having a paycheck: All three of us agreed that the idea of freelancing sounded really scary when we were at the beginning of it, but that after doing it for a few years we all feel more secure in our incomes than we did before. This security comes as the result of having many different sources for income. When one contract dries up, the others carry you until you can pick up another contract to fill the financial gap. Both Catherine and Toby talked about having the ability to stop working for people who are difficult and how that contributes to contentment.

Health insurance: Toby gets insurance through his wife. Catherine has been getting it through her husband, but is considering cutting free of that. Like freelancing, the idea of searching for health insurance is scary, but once you get into it the fear goes away and it is merely expensive. Toby made the point that the price of health care needs to be calculated on top of what you need to pay your bills. This is part of the calculation you make to figure out how much money you need to bring in as a freelancer to make ends meet.

Organization: I spoke a little about organizing time. I have an assigned accounting day once per week where I look at my accounts. During the early years there were some weeks when I merely glanced because there wasn’t anything else to do, but I still kept the accounting appointment. We all talked about how it is important to keep the business accounts separate from the personal accounts. There was some variance about when a freelancer should incorporate, but Catherine quoted a $40,000 per year figure after which it is really to your financial advantage to be incorporated. Catherine uses a free financial management program to track her money (I can’t remember the name.) I use Quicken/Quickbooks. Toby uses Excel. All of us stated the importance of being able to do reports based on the financial numbers so that the freelancer can see where money is coming from and make good predictions for the next few months or years.

An additional note on organization: I think this point was made in a different panel, but it fits here. Creative people often have a learned helplessness when it comes to business organization. They don’t like thinking about numbers and they tell themselves that they can’t do it. Business thinking and financial organization can be learned. I taught it to myself. Over years of practice I got pretty good at it. Organization can be learned. Good financial record keeping can be learned. These things can be just as much a habit as putting on pants in the morning.

I know there was other good information in the panel. I may add it as I think about it. I’ll reiterate what I said in the panel, if you’re considering being a freelancer, you should check out Toby’s blog. He talks about this stuff and does seriously useful number crunching.

Post-Con Crash Day

By / May 4, 2010

Prior to Penguicon I wrote tasks on my to do list for today. This was foolish. Apparently pushing myself to the point of shaky fatigue at the con, followed by hours of plane travel, followed by a short night’s sleep, followed by six hours of driving split into two pieces, followed by a poor night’s sleep, all of it turns today into a crash day instead of a productive one. I know I’m in a crash day when I’m walking up the stairs and part of my brain tells me that we should just lay down on them instead.

I did have a brief spurt of energy for one hour. During that time I went through all my indexed notes and assembled a massive list of things to do. I’m reasonably certain I’ve now collected all of it into one place. This is important because many of those things have deadlines this week. All those things I did not have to worry about until May are now looming large.

I want to drift and relax and recover, but I’m not sure I’ll get to do any of that between now and July when we ship out books.

Retrieve the kids day

By / May 3, 2010

Four hours of plane travel and three hours of solo driving was almost enough time for me to index all the thoughts and experiences I had at Penguicon. Throughout the convention my brain kept grabbing things and storing them for examination later. In my regular life this system works very well. But one of the few things the convention lacked was contemplative time. As a result my thought storage buffer was packed too tightly for me to see anything. I had to sit staring at nothing, listening to nothing, waiting for things to drift across the middle, then I’d scribble them down in my notebook. I call it stalking my brain. It is interesting for me to flip through the book and see how the early pages are all fragments, but the last pages are coherent thoughts with the beginnings of analysis. It is all indexed and noted. Over the next week I’ll be either putting things into use or long term storage.

The kids pile-hugged me as soon as they realized I had arrived. I can’t think of a happier place than the middle of that hug, no matter where that hug may takes place. The only thing it lacked was a Howard. He stayed home to sleep off the convention so he can get back to work tomorrow. I’ll be sleeping off convention slowly over the course of the week, while also trying to wrap my head around May’s list of things.

After the first hug, the kids went back to their movie while I visited with my sister-in-law. Occasionally they would come for more hugs. I watched them. They were glad to see me, glad to be going home, but there were no signs of stress. My trip away was actually beneficial rather than the reverse. The bonds between them are stronger and they have a little more confidence in their eyes. This was really good to see, because I received a couple of mid-convention phone calls from tired kids which had me concerned. They definitely had some child sized crises while I was gone, but they banded together and managed them without Howard or me there.

The trip home was uneventful. Howard had dinner waiting for us, which was another reason we left him home. Now I have a front room full of luggage to sort and put away. In a short while I will need to gather the children and attempt to restore a normal bedtime so that we can get back into the swing of school tomorrow.

The morning of the third day at Penguicon

By / May 2, 2010

I think it is a sign of a very good convention when I am so busy that I do not have time to blog. It means I am fully occupied with the present and not narrating it. But the absence of meta-examination in my life can only be a short term thing. It cuts me adrift from the things which center me. Just a moment ago I realized that today is Sunday and suddenly I longed to be at home attending church.

This convention has contained everything I hoped for and then some. I now have tucked away in my memory exactly the kinds of conversations that I used to covet when Howard would come home from conventions and describe them to me. They are mine and I shall treasure them because it will be a long time before I have a similar experience. The home conventions are like family reunions, comfortably and energizing. This one challenges me, makes me think, and lets me come to know people I’ve long admired.

I’m going to have a lot to unpack when I get home, and I’m not talking about luggage. I’m filling the edges of my brain without a chance to process anything. Time to get back to it, I have a panel soon.

Penguicon arrival day

By / April 29, 2010

It turns out that last night’s chipper mood was not caffeine induced, because it continued into today. When Howard commented on it, I replied that I was just floating from the removal of crushing responsibility. That’s what vacations are for, right? The fact that this vacation is going to be exhausting does not change the fact that it still represents a large sideways step from my regular life.

It was blowing snow at the Salt Lake Airport. This delayed our flight by 45 minutes. We sat next to a guy who was headed to Detroit to be part of a film crew. He’d come from LA and was very nervous about taking off in the snow. Howard and I had a great conversation with him for about half the trip. I love it when we meet cool people by chance. He and Howard got to talk audio engineering. We all got to talk movies. It made the flight much more enjoyable.

So now I’m here at Penguicon. The convention does not open until tomorrow, but the first guests are here along with much of the convention staff. The first official event was a dinner. Howard and I deliberately sat at different tables. This was in part as an effort for the pair of us to visit with more people. It also forced me to speak up and make my own connections. And it was fun.

One of the things I like most about conventions is that I can sit beside someone for an hour and then suddenly it clicks and I realize exactly who they are. Cherie Priest of Boneshaker sat next to me at dinner, telling funny stories on an ex-boyfriend. Patrick Rothfuss sat across from me and told stories about funny interactions on the internet. The table was rounded out by Yanni Kuznia (head of the literary track), Aaron Thul (registration), Dave Kletcha (writer and fellow codexian) and me.

It is easy to feel insecure at conventions. I sat at the table listening to story after story, and I realized that I’d not said a word in at least thirty minutes. This is fairly normal for me. I’m a conversational lurker, but silence doesn’t help me build connections. New friends are one of the joys of conventions. Fortunately the conversations drifted into topics where I had some stories to tell, so I was able to contribute to the amusement of all.

I’m afraid my posts are going to be a little fragmented over the next few days. That happens with conventions.