My Humble Musings post-World Fantasy Con

I know it's been around 3 weeks since I went to World Fantasy Con in Brighton, but I'm still benefiting from its effects.
I'm not going to give you a run down of the Con itself, not the sessions I attended; my friend Selina has done an amazing job chronicling most of our adventures already.
I also won't comment here about the organisation of the event; this was my first big convention and so it's a shame to read reports about all the negative aspects of the event.
What I will share with you is what I learned from attending the event, one of the main inspirations to my sudden burst of writing drive.

1. Most people are lovely.

I think I can truthfully say that every person I spoke to was wonderfully welcoming and friendly to me. I went with the preconception that it might be a bit cliquey, especially as I'm new, but people were happy to engage in conversation, and even the famous authors I met were really generous with their time. I know this experience was not shared by all who attended the Con, and so I count myself lucky that I was surrounded by amazing people and didn't encounter and of the dross.

2.  No one knows shit about upcoming literary "trends"

This is something Neil Gaiman talked explicitly about at the World Fantasy Awards ceremony, but the theme was visible throughout the event. With medias changing and the "word of mouth" phenomenon growing (aided by the internet), no one can really predict what's going to take off in the next few years or even in what format or media it will appear. This hit home for me as I was reminded of about 4 years ago when I was told by an agent quite bluntly that girls don't read dystopian fiction and that no one would buy my book because there was no market for it, so why not try my hand at Steampunk instead?  Fast forward, post-The Hunger Games, and "dystopian SF" is the latest, hottest genre in the YA category. Don't get me wrong, in no way am I saying my novel would have been the next Hunger Games, but it did make me think: actually, people can be wrong, and that leads me into my next point...

3. Write what you love and write it well

This is advice I'd read or heard before, but after realisation number 2 above, it became much more apparent to me that now there is more of a free market, you should spend your time writing those stories that you love and with all the new publishing options out there, if it's good enough it will find its market. Be the trailblazer! Buck the trend! Create good art! That is the only way to combine creativity and personal happiness. Do what you love, and hopefully it should resonate with others who will love it too.

I was surprised by how happy I was at the convention - hungover, tired, yes, but happy - and rejoining the real world was a jolt. Attending the convention has strengthened my resolve from "wannabe" to "will be". I will finish Banshee and seek publication. It will be accepted and published and read. I will write a sequel, and a standalone, and another, and I will go to more conventions where I hope they will continue to inspire me and thousands of other "will be"s, way past the point where we become "I am"s.

My First Convention!

I'm going to my first SF convention in June. I recently bought a ticket to Alt.Fiction, which takes place in Derby. Apparently it's a good one to start off with, so I'm pretty excited to go. I only really got in to Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2008, after I was told that that's what genre Inter Vivos was. I grew up reading Roald Dahl, Point Romance and Point Horror (back in 1993 when they were popular, so don't scoff!), and children's versions of classic novels - Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, Stories of Edgar Allen Poe. It wasn't that I was snobbish against Science Fiction, but those SF stories were always marketed as "Boys' books", and I was never exposed to them. I was aware of Sci-Fi only through Star Wars (a film I didn't watch until I was 17). I first heard of The Hobbit at age 15 and I'm sad to say I probably didn't know anything about Lord of the Rings until the first film came out. So I've been playing "catch-up" since 2008. It's important to know about the genre that you're writing in - not just what's current and what sells, but the history and roots of the genre. I think I'm doing a pretty good job at catching up. I don't like the hard Sci-Fi stuff, as I tend to find most that I've read is not character-focused enough for me. I'm reading Octavia Butler (Wild Seed) at the moment, and she is brilliant in the way she crafts a story - she doesn't mess about, just gets on with it, somehow seamlessly filtering in the back story so she doesn't have to worry about exposition. I wish I could do that.
If anyone has any suggestions of good SF/Fantasy books to read, then please let me know. I'm on to either Ursula le Guin or Orson Scott Card next.

Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Bloke

Right, had an exciting (read: boring) couple of days in the Portsmouth area, and then had to work all day Saturday until the skin began to peel off the bottoms of my feet (too much detail again, right?). So I'm pretty tired now, and the writing isn't going very well. Inter Vivos's second draft isn't going. Full stop. Though I'm thinking about taking it back to basics and trying to redraft again. It's just quite daunting having a whole novel to correct, and I hope I can get my head around it. I have to anyway, as it's almost NaNoWriMo time, and I want it finished by then.

When I visited Waterstone's on Sunday, I was saddened to find that one of my new favourite authors, Caitlin Kiernan, had been placed in this sad little section called "Paranormal Romance". It wasn't even a proper shelf, it was made of cardboard, and had the types of books in it that looked like the books Mills and Boon would produce if they introduced Vampires into them (had to do a quick check and they don't). If you haven't read Caitlin Kiernan (and you should!), she doesn't write "Paranormal Romance" at all. She writes Sci-fi, and horror. Really good horror. I have a feeling that this is the section where they are dumping women's sci-fi/horror/fantasy now. I was surprised, however, to find that Stephanie Meyer's books weren't in this section, which is strange, as she is the Queen of the paranormal romance (well, her and Anne Rice). I guess if you're a bestselling author, you transcend genre and Waterstone's can't afford to segregate you.

I've been thinking recently how hard it is to be male in this society sometimes. That sounds a bit weird, I know, but it's true. I know a bloke who got beaten up last week, just because some other bloke thought he had looked at him (he hadn't). I'm kinda glad I live in a society where women are still kinda protected and don't frequently get head-butted in the street after finishing work (well, not as often as men do anyway). I am a feminist, and I consider this to be an important issue within feminism. Equality is a two-way street in my book. Yes, I am very pleased that I can work, and vote, and that I earn the same as my male counterpoint (though I know that some aren't so lucky, and support campaigns to even the balance), but men should be equal to women too. They should have longer paid paternity leave, and have the freedom of choice that women now have, without living in danger of losing a tooth. By pitting one of the sexes against the other, it doesn't do anything to ease the burden on either party, or make life better for anyone. We're all human after all.

To Sci-Fi or Not to Sci-Fi

Saturday was spent productively at the Writing Industries Conference in Loughborough. It's all a little bit intimidating thinking about marketing my book and the long slog I will have once I've finished the damn thing to actually get a book deal (if that ever happens), but I'll worry about all that once the writing's finished.

The agent was a lovely bloke who said he liked my writing, and recommended some Sci-Fi authors for me to read. Yes, dear readers, unbeknownst to me, my story is of the sci-fi genre. "But surely you knew what you were writing?" you may ask. Well, not really. I just wrote the story that came into my head, without really thinking of genres as such. I mean, there are lots of authors I admire, most of which are of the sci-fi/fantasy persuasion, but I'm a bit wary about launching myself into this genre. Why? Well, firstly, because it seems a little bit constrictive to be 'labelled' as one thing. What if Inter Vivos is my only sci-fi book, and everything else I write hereafter is erotica, or western romance, or something? What if sci-fi doesn't sell? Second on my list of doubts is that I don't really know of any female sci-fi writers (or any who would care to admit it). So perhaps the market is ripe for a great female sci-fi writer, or perhaps the market isn't ready at all. Thirdly, I don't really know anything about science, let alone science fiction. As I mentioned, the agent was really nice and recommended some sci-fi for me to read, with the promise to send me names of more authors, so at least this last point is something I can do something about.

I think now that playwriting is not so restrictive as book publishing. I mean, you can write plays about anything, without people expecting your next one to be exactly the same (but different) as your last (think Dan Brown as an example). But if Inter Vivos does get published, then it probably means I will have to write Munitionettes as a play or TV drama instead (not necessarily a bad idea).

So yes, the conference gave me lots of food for thought. Was nice to meet people and hobnob and all of that, and learn more about the 'writing for a living' side of writing and how to go about making that happen. Good, but daunting. Will get the book finished first though, and try to push all of this to the back of my mind until then. (I feel like Scarlett O'Hara with her 'I'll think about that tomorrow' attitude).