Here I am, at St. Louis Bread Company in Collinsville, IL, just on the Illinois side of St. Louis, about to spend my second day at Archon. My takes on the convention:
1) Few places are as much fun for people-watching as science fiction conventions, with a myriad of people in quirky and somewhat mismatched costumes, women who can talk at length about how medievalist Europe is the basis of many science fiction novels, and many indie authors. ("Indie" = "self-published", and I don't have the time to go that route.)
2) The writer's panels vary in quality, but that may be my observation as a college professor who has gone to many professional conferences. Good example: the highly informative and entertaining panel on writing happy (or at least satisfying) endings. Bad examples: the presentation where everyone gave examples and counter-examples of religion in science fiction and came to no actual points. I would have loved this as a small discussion over coffee. Or homemade hooch.
3) It is NOT a good place to meet publishing representatives and hand them instant queries. At least not if you go about these things the way I do. The friend who told me about it makes it work for him. For someone just breaking into the system, who's Midwestern polite, and who can't tell the publishers from the non-publishers, it's not going to work.
Meeting writers at parties, I believe, is how he makes it work, but this is not a good path for me for several reasons: 1) I can't drink because of medication; 2) I have just enough of a hearing problem that I need someone to yell in my ear, making negotiations difficult; 3) I really am an introvert, although my students would never believe it; and 4) the party setting is problematic for women for a couple reasons, which I will detail next.
Why are party negotiations (aka schmoozing) so difficult for women? First, because men tend to dominate women in conversations through interruptions and changing subjects (both documented by Deborah Tannen and others), making it hard for them to actually talk about their novel. Women end up feeling frustrated and ignored, and may give up too soon.
Second, women avoid alcohol-fueled events alone, because of the volatile mix of alcohol and expressions of sexuality -- i.e. unwanted advances, non-consensual sexual encounters, and subsequent accusations that they slept their way to success (see Anita Sarkeesian and GamerGate.)
In other words, I will not be able to make my friend's method work.
The good news is that there are other venues. One is the one I keep trying for authors and publishers, mailing queries. Just as I work on improving my writing, I work on improving my queries. In fact, I'm attending a session on writing better queries this morning.
Second, I found out there's a conference in St. Louis every year in June called Gateway to Publishing, which gets you in touch with agents and publishers both by phone and in person. One-on-one, the way I work best.
Thank you, friend, for introducing me to Archon. I would never have found my way otherwise.
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