{"id":167,"date":"2008-02-16T17:18:50","date_gmt":"2008-02-17T00:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=167"},"modified":"2008-02-16T17:18:50","modified_gmt":"2008-02-17T00:18:50","slug":"recap-on-life-the-universe-and-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/recap-on-life-the-universe-and-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Recap on Life, The Universe, and Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, BYU had its annual sci fi con<\/a>–er, symposium–this weekend!\u00a0 It was pretty freaking awesome!\u00a0 We had Brandon Sanderson<\/a> (Mistborn, Elantris<\/em>), Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted<\/em>), and Orson Scott Card<\/a> (Ender’s Game<\/em>) as some of the main speakers, plus Kevin Wasden who’s a famous illustrator, Eric James Stone<\/a> who makes it out to Quark writing meetings occasionally, and Howard Taylor, who writes the webcomic Schlock Mercenary<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 There were also all kinds of other cool LDS writers there who had some pretty awesome things to say–unfortunately, I didn’t recognize most of the names, but it was really fun to listen to them!\u00a0 Here are some of my thoughts and reactions from the symposium…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First of all, I have to say that I am REALLY pumped to write!\u00a0 I mean, I almost wanted to skip some of the big name sessions this afternoon just to go and write!\u00a0 The symposium was about sf\/f in general but it was especially geared towards writers, with sessions on writer’s block, how to create worlds with believable mythology and folklore, how to work believable space travel into a story, how to make sure that your romance isn’t too sappy, etc.\u00a0 Luny from Quark, who made it out to just about every session, said “yeah, if the writing vp wasn’t here, something would be seriously wrong!” But I was there, so there was order in the universe!<\/p>\n

Orson Scott Card had some very interesting things to say.\u00a0 He slammed Levi Peterson in his main address, calling him a Mormon literary writer who despises the everyday Mormon.\u00a0 He also slammed literary fiction in general (like he usually does) and examined the history of Sci Fi and the role it’s played in literature in the last century.\u00a0 Very fascinating stuff.<\/p>\n

Some of the more interesting things he spoke about had to do with why Mormons in particular lean so heavily towards SF\/F.\u00a0 It’s true: there are more LDS sf\/f writers per sf\/f writers than there are LDS per population.\u00a0 Why is that so?\u00a0 Well, it’s true that some of our beliefs tend towards sf themes–we believe in multiple populated worlds, faster than light travel, and we have this whole concept of intelligences that sounds like something out of a sci fi story.<\/p>\n

But really, the main reason OSC pointed to was that the LDS religion is both very practical and very scientific.\u00a0 We believe that God is bound within law–that he can’t just wave his hand and do anything, that he is constrained to be perfectly just, perfectly merciful, etc.\u00a0 Also, our heroes are very practical and solve problems logically without relying purely on divine intervention unless there is no other way.\u00a0 And the LDS religion is very receptive towards the idea of believing things because they are reasonable and tested.\u00a0 OSC pointed to Moroni’s promise as a sort of scientific test–loosely in the idea that you believe the religion because you’ve tested it for yourself.<\/p>\n

The romance panel was interesting–I didn’t catch it in person, but Drek was kind enough to record it for me on my iRiver (there are benefits to not selling out to Apple–benefits such as finding an mp3 player with awesome recording capabilities for only $15 on ebay).\u00a0 They looked at the romance in Star Wars and compared episodes 4, 5, and 6 with (blech!) episodes 1, 2, and 3.\u00a0 Basically, the romance in 1-3 was beyond hope when Padume said “oh, Ani, you’ll always be that little boy that I remember.” One of the panelist made the comment that she looks at every story as a romance on some level, and that was also interesting.\u00a0 Shared the concepts of prince charming vs. the rogue, what the differences are, how the two characters who shouldn’t get together almost inevitably get together, and other good stuff that I need to learn because I really don’t know very much about writing romance.<\/p>\n

There was a very interesting panel on writer’s block.\u00a0 Basically, their solution: sit down and write.\u00a0 They talked about what kind of people true writers really are–basically, people who are always coming up with story ideas out of everything they see (that’s me!).\u00a0 It was a good pep talk, saying that even though it’s really, really tough to get published, it can happen, and really it just takes work and determination.\u00a0 The biggest obstacle to your writing is really yourself–your own self doubt and self criticism–and you need to allow yourself to be imperfect and make mistakes.\u00a0 Good life advice as well as writing advice, but especially useful to writers.<\/p>\n

On that note, there was also a panel about the publishing realities of New York, moderated by Sanderson.\u00a0 It was very interesting.\u00a0 The odds are very bad–only about one in a thousand manuscripts ever gets published–but the good news is that publishers reject 50% of that before even reading the first page, it’s so bad (no SASE, colored paper, didn’t follow submission guidelines)–and after that, most of the remaining stuff gets thrown out after reading the first page due to spelling errors.\u00a0 It’s possible to get a novelist published out of the slush pile–one of the panelists actually did that–and the key to everything is networking: who you know and who they know.<\/p>\n

Which means that I’m in a really<\/em> good position because I’ve got the opportunity to get to know Sanderson really well from taking his class!<\/p>\n

There were all kinds of other cool stuff, but basically I just need to let it all sink in and maybe listen and re-listen to this stuff again.\u00a0 I recorded the following panels and speeches, so if you want a copy, just let me know and I’ll burn it to a CD or something:<\/p>\n

Orson Scott Card’s main address (Friday)
\nhalf of Realities of NY Publishing<\/em>
\nPutting Romance in Your Novel<\/em>
\nLDS Beliefs & SF&F
\n<\/em>Gail Carson Levinne’s main address (Saturday)
\nThe Myth of Writer’s Block
\n<\/em>Orson Scott Card: SF&F as a Legitimate Literary Genre<\/em><\/p>\n

And that’s all for now.\u00a0 It was definitely an awesome conference, and I’m glad I went!\u00a0 Next time I’ll have to make it out to one of the big ones like worldcon or dragoncon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, BYU had its annual sci fi con–er, symposium–this weekend!\u00a0 It was pretty freaking awesome!\u00a0 We had Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Elantris), Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted), and Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) as some of the main speakers, plus Kevin Wasden who’s a famous illustrator, Eric James Stone who makes it out to Quark writing… Continue reading Recap on Life, The Universe, and Everything<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-college-life","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}