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Ad Astra 2010

This was my first con ever. On Friday I went and Ed came with me, and that might not have been a good idea, because what he wants out of something like this and what I want are completely different. I went back on Saturday morning and attended two panels:

"Editing your own work". Concluded here that I might be doing too many drafts. When I make a second draft, I don't think I'm working with the expectation that the next draft should be better and more readable than the first, and this is why subsequent drafts get worse and worse until the story is completely unreadable. Starting today, I am revising my process with Bezoar and Dolphin, which I would like to have "done to me" (send to OWW or somewhere) by the end of the month. Then I can move on to Zombie, which I would really like to not ruin.

"Young adult novels". Heard the concept "new adult novel" to refer to books about 18-21s, the black hole of fiction. This was the most packed room I was in all weekend, I think. All it did was confirm that I need to finish Zombie.

Sunday I attended three panels:

"How to get an agent". I liked the fact that the four people on the panel had all got agents in different ways. Adrienne Kress is clearly very passionate about this topic. Apparently I need to learn to be polite and professional, like all the time.

"Crossed Genres". I asked a question. That was very exciting for me.

"Time Management for Writers". Yeah, the conclusion wasn't that there was a trick, but that if you want to do it, you'll find the time. And that's completely fair.

The location worked great for me. I rode my bike down both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe next year I'll try to go to a reading or a book launch or something. Or maybe at Polaris, which I guess I can't ride my bike to.

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