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Decompressing

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Today is my day to decompress from the convention. Howard’s post-convention decompression usually consists of him sleeping a lot. For me, the decompression is much more based in sorting through and making sense of everything I hauled home with me.

Naturally there is the physical baggage. We bought things in Canada and I need to find places for them to belong. I need to dump the clothes out where they can be washed. I need to count the inventory that we brought home and stack it back with the other books in the basement. I need to empty the suitcases completely, checking carefully in all the pockets for odd pieces of paper shoved hastily in “safe” places. Then I need to put the suitcases away.

Associated with the physical baggage, particularly the inventory, there is a need to assess the profitability of the convention. I need to double check the math on the sales to make sure that our wonderful dealer got paid enough. I need to figure out how many books we sold, how many we gave away, and how many we brought home. Ditto on posters and pins. I need to file this information where I can access it when deciding how much stuff to mail to the next convention.

Then there is all the contact information that I need to go through. We met lots of people at the convention. Some of them gave us business cards. Some of them just wrote contact info on various pieces of paper. I need to find all of that and sort through it before I forget why I need the contact info in the first place. There are half-bartered deals that I need to finish up. There are books that I’ve promised to send. There are people I promised to talk to further. There are blogs and websites to look at. I don’t want to be left staring at a business card and not remembering who gave it to me or why. Even more important to write down are the people with whom I want to communicate further, who did not give me a business card. Over the next week I need to close the loop on all of these contacts. I need to email people, or send books, or buy things from them.

Last, but definitely not least, is the mental sorting. I crammed my head full of new experiences and thoughts. I must sort through those and record them. I need to see how these new ideas bounce off of my old ideas. I need to blog. This will also take some time. I can’t get it all done in a single day, but I do need to take notes to make sure that my return to regular routine doesn’t cause me to forget the thoughts completely. I’ve had so many cool thoughts. I don’t want to lose them.

There is also sleeping. I need to do more of that.

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Blogging and conventions

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When attending a convention, or just after a convention, there is a tendency for bloggers to put up a long list of names of people they talked to, or events they went to. There is an urgency about these posts, as if the writer needs to get it all down before the information leaks out of her brain. Posts like that are little reminder tags to the person who experienced the convention. The mention of a name triggers the memory of a conversation and an enjoyable dinner. The listing of a nick name reminds the author of the whole series of interconnected events that led to the bestowal of the nick name. The reference to an event refreshes the memory of people seen and met. This is necessary because it is truly impossible to capture everything that happens at a convention without expanding into novel-length exposition. There are so many new people and new thoughts that the experience is overwhelming, and invigorating, and sometimes frightening.

Last night I went up to my room to drop off my bag. I intended to head back out with Howard to roam the room parties. The hotel room door closed behind me and I was alone. For the first time all day, my brain had time to assimilate rather than collecting new input. I realized that my inner introvert was huddled up in the corner of my brain and I needed to spend some time soothing her to prevent a major screaming fit the following day. I have to pace myself to last through the three days of convention. I crawled into bed, wishing it was my own bed, and wishing for my kids. This is part of the convention experience for me.

Another part of the convention experience is sitting on a panel with other intelligent people and comparing experiences about the panel topic. The blogging panel was like that. Most people hate public speaking, but I love it. I love seeing the audience nod at what I say. I’m thrilled to think that my thoughts, my words, are useful to others. This is the same reason I blog, because there is a possibility that my words will be exactly what someone else needs today; the possibility that my thoughts will make someone else’s life better. That reward is worth the risk of putting myself forward or having some troll throw nastiness at me. It is scary blogging. It is scary being on panels. It is scary being here. But if I am not here I lose out on the opportunity to meet and to greet. I miss out on the chance to learn things that make my life better. I miss out on the chance to say something that will help someone else. So I am here, at the convention, blogging online, because the rewards are more that worth the risks.

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Hold on to Your Horses

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I just realized that while I’ve rambled about my project called Hold on to Your Horses, I have not yet linked to the website from here. It is www.holdontoyourhorses.com. On the site you can download a free pdf of the picture book. That will let you can see the beautiful pictures that Angela Call drew for my story. The hardbound copies of the book will be available in early summer. If you want to be notified when ordering opens for those, you can add your address to the mailing list on the site. I will keep all addresses confidential and only use them to notify you when my books become available.

Go have a look and feel free to email me or post comments here to let me know what you think.

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Ad Astra arrival

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I have traveled far today and I’ve already learned some new things. One of these things is that I should always bring my laptop with me when I travel. It was so wonderfully reassuring to open it up and have all my familiar bookmarks in place. It is like a little piece of home that I carry with me. I am going to need that as I spend this weekend outside my comfort zone. The plane flight was boring, which is to be preferred to having an interesting flight. What with all the travel, and the not sleeping well last night I am already very tired and the convention hasn’t even started yet.

We went out to dinner with Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, and Chris Golden. They are all firmly established in the publishing industry. At times I felt intimidated. Fortunately they were all very kind and gracious. It was a wonderful dinner and a delightful conversation.

In the category of not-so-good news, my cell phone has moved from “quirky” to “broken.” I can still convince it to work, but it is not reliable. I’ll need to replace it when I get home.

The convention starts in earnest tomorrow.

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Noisy brain

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My brain is a noisy place today. The organization voice is gibbering about packing. The Mommy voice wants to write even more extensive notes on the proper care and feeding of my kids. The business voice says I should be doing research on convention guests so that I have conversation starters. The business voice is also telling me things I should pack, which makes the organization voice all grouchy and inclined to mumble about boundaries. About this point the Mommy voice remembers that there is cub scout pack meeting tonight and believes that she should get to over ride all other activities in favor of that. All other voices object strenuously. The housekeeping voice keeps whispering about all the cleaning and organization that I intended to do before I left. Then out of the blue an unidentified voice shouts “I’m hungry, you think maybe we should eat sometime today?” Meanwhile the writer voice took advantage of all the confusion to hijack the body and write this entry.

I leave tomorrow and may be internetless for the weekend. Be back Monday.

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Self publishing and hubris

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Jim Hines of the Jig the Goblin trilogy wrote a post today in which he rants about writing “Experts”. Jim’s major complaint is people who take their small experiences with either writing or publishing and extrapolate it into a supposed expertise about the whole industry. Many of Jim’s points single out self published authors. I found myself both agreeing with him and feeling a little defensive at the same time. Withing the next few months I will be releasing a self published book and therefore I’m at risk of annoying people in the same ways that Jim was annoyed.

I think it takes a special sort of arrogance to become a self published author. I look at the traditional publishing paths and I know that the reason they are traditional is that they work. The publishing “rules” are there because they are truly the best way for people to combine forces and create books. It has to be some sort of hubris for me to see those rules, understand why they exist, and still decide that somehow they don’t apply to me.

The one area where I know I will not annoy Jim and other published authors is that I have no intention of advocating self publishing as the wave of the future. It is a hard, lonely, scary path and I would never recommend it lightly. There are no easy paths to publication, but for most people the best choice is to find a publishing house. There have been many times during the Hold on to Your Horses project when I have curled into a little ball of despair because the project was broken and I did not have the expertise to fix it myself. Then I had to go begging among my contacts for help. The only reason it has a chance of working is because of the amazing people I’ve come to know during the past few years. The only reason I am an exception to the rule is because I can piggy back on all the marketing and friendships from Schlock Mercenary.

One thing that may contribute to the “expert” syndrome that Jim noted, is the reactions of non-publishing people to a self published work. When I talk to neighbors about my forthcoming book and I say “I’m self publishing” I get even more respect and approval than I did for just publishing. This baffles me a little because I know that self published works nearly always suffer from quality issues. But America prizes its innovators and trail blazers. Self publishing seems more accessible. People look at my self published project and think that maybe they could do something towards their own dreams. I’m glad of that and I do feel that there is value in self published works, even the ones with quality issues. Perhaps it is to these other newbies that the “experts” are speaking. I don’t think anyone who wants to be a professional in the publishing industry is going to be led astray by newbie experts.

I guess in the end I believe that the path you take should be the one best suited to your goals. Hubris or not, I do believe that this alternate path is going to work for me. I am going to be able to accomplish what I set out to do: create the book that my daughter needed, reward the artist who helped me, and not lose money while doing it.

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Ad Astra this week

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The countdown has begun. I have only four days until I leave for Ad Astra. I have pile of things left to do, but I have triaged them so they should all fit into those four days. One of the tasks for me to start thinking about the topics of the panel discussions in which I’ll be participating. The most intimidating panel is the one about “Making ends meet on an artist’s income.” The subject isn’t intimidating, I could talk about that for an hour all by myself. But that is the panel for which I’m a moderator and one of the guests of honor, Rebecca Moesta, is going to be on the panel as well. Moderating a panel is going to be a new experience for me. Fortunately I have an in-house expert who has already talked me through a lot of the necessary etiquette.

The other three panels are: “Running a creative business out of your home”, “The experience of blogging”, and “The educational benefits of video games.” These are all good topics for me. I just need to write down some notes to help trigger my thoughts when I’m in front of a crowd and surrounded by other panelists who will probably be more qualified than me.

So in short, I’ve reached the part where I’m nervous. I’m nervous about flying, about leaving the kids, about presenting. But the next few days are going to fly by and then I’ll be having too much fun to be nervous anymore.

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A change in family policy on allowances

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We’ve always given our kids allowance money. I feel that teaching my kids to handle money is a crucial part of my responsibility as a parent. They can’t learn to handle money if they never have any. Some families choose to link allowances to chores around the house. I have always resisted doing this. I felt that it was better for the chores to be just a requirement of being in our family and the allowances to be a benefit for being in our family. This seemed right and fair to me. It is possible that this seemed fair because for years I got the benefit of being dependent upon Howard’s comfortable Novell income.

I’ve recently changed my opinion on allowances. In the past two years I’ve had to work hard to help the money come in. The workload has steadily increased for me as I picked up new tasks; accounting, shipping, book layout, etc. It frustrates me to see the house become a disaster while the kids don’t care enough to help. These same kids would rather wait a few extra weeks for money to arrive than do chores to earn the money. I’m doing too much and it would really help if the kids would just pick up their toys once in awhile. Howard has long been of the opinion that kids who don’t work should not get allowance, but since I was the one running the allowance system, he did not argue about the way we’ve been doing it.

So I have now shifted camps. Yesterday I announced to the kids that they’d received their last free allowance. From now on they must work if they want to get paid. They must also mark the chart to keep track of when they worked or else they won’t get paid. The kids took the news with hardly a comment. I expect there will be moaning and groaning some time in the future. Maybe this will get me more help around the house, which I desperately need. If not, then at least I’ll get to keep more of the family’s hard earned money instead of watching it get spent on candy and dollar store toys.

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The Lurking Fear

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Howard and I are extremely fortunate. We manage to pay all our bills on the income from a creative endeavor. This is joyful for us, and inspiring for others. I can not count the number of times that people have spoken with Howard or I to tell us that our success gives them hope for their own dreams. I’m glad that we are cause for hope. I love feeling like we are adding something good to the world. But each of these conversations has a hidden accompaniment. Inside my head is a voice that whispers “What if you don’t get to keep it? What if your endeavors crash and burn? What will that do to all these people who have looked to your success with hope in their eyes?”

Howard hears this voice too. We talk about it sometimes. These conversations come when the lurking fear has been particularly loud, when money is running low, when visits to the Schlock site are down. Then Howard and I stand in the kitchen, afraid. We are afraid because our success is not completely in our control. No matter how hard we work, all of our income is dependent upon the goodwill and interest of others. Usually Howard and I take turns being afraid. One fears, while the other comforts and reassures. The days when the lurking fear runs rampant in both of us, are very dark days.

I think this is one of the reasons that Howard and I work so hard. We keep trying to build a structure strong enough to banish the lurking fear forever. I don’t know if it can be done. And if it can, I have another voice that wonders if the comfort will cause us to lose the edge. If, in the end, we will discover that the lurking fear is our greatest asset rather than our biggest enemy. If our reactions to the lurking fear are part of what defines who we are. Or perhaps that is just the lurking fear speaking, trying not to be banished forever by making me afraid of succeeding too well. I fully intend to take my chances with succeeding too well if I can get there.

Until then we just have to go on working hard, and hoping, and trying not to listen to lurking fear.

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First day of Spring

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Spring sunlight streams hope through my kitchen window. I used to love all seasons equally. That is no longer true. I no longer like Winter. I like some winterish things, but the season as a whole weighs me down. The harder the Winter, the more I delight in the coming of Spring. This Spring is still colder than I’d like, we still freeze almost every night, but the sun carries some warmth now. Even better, my Spring bulbs have emerged and some are even starting to bloom. It makes me want to get outside.

Unfortunately while the advent of Spring lifts my spirits, it doesn’t make my schedule any less busy. So I look wistfully out my windows as I pass. I did get outside one day this week, but then I remembered that next week is my trip to Ad Astra in Toronto Canada and there are approximately a million things I want to get done before I go. About half of those things have to do with actually cleaning up my house so that it will be nice to come back to. Fortunately Kiki has panned a sleep over with friends for this evening. The festivities are contingent upon her helping me get everything clean and ready. Kiki is an excellent worker when she is motivated.

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