Conversion Part 3: Sunday (a Monday retrospective)

Too busy yesterday afternoon and evening to blog about the final day of ConVersion, but here I am now to fill you in on the finale.

Sunday began with the brunch that all ConVersion members were encouraged to buy tickets for because it helped the con meet the food and beverage requirments set by the hotel (as did the Arrogant Worms cabaret on Friday night). I treated myself to the heaviest breakfast I’d eaten in a while, figuring I wouldn’t eat much for lunch, which I didn’t.

The 10 a.m. panel was on “Writing from Different Points of View.” The panelists included myself, Dave Duncan, Ann Marston, Marie Jakober and Minister Faust, and our conclusion was eseentially that the story dictated which points of view should be used, and that while all characters in a story are, after all, really the author, with sufficient imagination any good author can imagine him or herself into any body (or thing’s) mind, or at least well enough to create a successful illusion. The one exception: a couple of people mentioned it was very hard as a young person to write from the POV of someone much older.

After that, I was panel-free until three. I went to the Guest of Honour speeches at 11; there were only two of them, one by Artist GoH James Beveridge (who mentioned my impromptu rendition of Old Man River at last year’s ConVersion as one of the highlights of his con memories) and one by George R. R. Martin (which I wrote about in some detail in this week’s science column, which will follow this post sometime later today or tomorrow). After that, while Margaret Anne and Alice were off with some college friends of Margaret Anne’s and their two kids, I walked downtown, bought a couple of books at Coles (one of which is The Gilded Chain by Dave Duncan, which I’ve been meaning to read for a long time–and then, of course, I didn’t see Dave for the rest of the convention to get it signed), and spent a relaxing 45 minutes or so reading at Second Cup while enjoying my beverage of choice, a Second Cup Icepresso Chiller.

Back to the con at 3 p.m. for the panel for Editing: the 10 Percent solution, with Randy Schroeder, myself and Renee Bennett. The talk was of how best to cut stories, why to cut stories, and also of the difference between editing and revision; there was some difference of opinion over the latter, but the majority opinion was that editing is the careful consideration of the work sentence by sentence and word by word (motto: “Be As Anal As You Want to Be”), while revision deals with the broader strokes of story arc, climax, exposition, etc., and finding the right balance of all these things. My biggest recommendations: let things get cold before you try to edit or revise them (“Write Hot, Edit Cold” as Dr. Schroeder put it); and try reading your prose out loud–some things that look just fine on the page as you type them sound dreadful when you read them out loud.

At 4 p.m., I was part of the panel on Small Press, with the founder of Green Magpie Press, Donna Lee Ost, Robert J. Sawyer, who is now editing his own line of books for Red Deer Press, Karl Johanson, editor of Neo-Opsis, a new Canadian small-press SF magazine, and Derryl Murphy, who is currently art director of OnSpec, Canada’s best known SF mag, and has been involved with it for a very long time in various capacities. I was there as an author who has been published by small press. I didn’t have too much to add; the focus was more on the publishing side of things than the author’s side of things. Generally, everyone agreed that there is a need for small press to present the books that otherwise can’t find a home–and that it’s very hard financially to keep a small press operation operating.

And that was the con. After that, the IFWA crowd and various hangers-on like Rob Sawyer and us went out for supper and conversation, and that really was the end of the con.

My science column has more; watch for it soon.

Once again, a great time. ConVersion continues to be my favorite con of all.