Alright, I should just write this up and finish my convention report before life sweeps me away completely.<\/p>\n
Saturday was the main day of the con.\u00a0 To be honest, I forgot all the panels I went to, except this really awesome one by a guy at NASA on near Earth objects (NEOs).\u00a0 Holyfreakingcow there are thousands<\/em> of these objects AND WE ARE SENDING MISSIONS TO THEM!!!\u00a0 So cool!<\/p>\n I went to a kaffeklatsch with Nancy Kress, which turned out to be quite an interesting experience.\u00a0 She’s an extremely gracious person, much like Tracy Hickman, and gave some excellent\u00a0career advice: 1) no matter the obstacles or difficulties, always find a way to keep writing, and 2) always be true to the story.<\/p>\n Had dinner with some other Utah writers, and I wish I could say it was pleasant, but for some reason it got very antagonistic.\u00a0 I know it takes two to tango, but I honestly don’t know what I did to make it that way.\u00a0 Perhaps stress levels were running high, or people misread my tone, but the conversation at our table completely fell apart at least twice.\u00a0 It was very wierd.<\/p>\n Part of it might have to do with the fact that I’ve become something of a trailblazer for indie publishing within the SLC \/ Utah Valley writing community.\u00a0 Which brings me to another side note: everyone talks about how militant and polarizing self publishers are, when in my experience it’s the advocates of traditional publishing who tend to adopt an us vs. them attitude.\u00a0 To be sure, there are plenty of desperate to be published writers who take the indie path just to “stick it to the man,” but those people tend to fade away once they realize it isn’t a silver bullet.<\/p>\n Anyway, the Hugo Awards in the evening were great!\u00a0 Robert Silverberg presented the award for Best Novella, and for fifteen minutes he was my favorite person in the world.\u00a0 So hilarious!\u00a0 I’ve tried to find a video, but there doesn’t seem to be one up yet.\u00a0 Utah writers were nominated in six categories, and even though none of them won, the competition was pretty dang good, so I don’t feel so bad about losing.<\/p>\n All in all, it was a great convention!\u00a0 I had a lot of fun, even if I did feel a little exhausted by the end of it.\u00a0 I’m not sure if I’ll be attending future worldcons in my current capacity as a\u00a0beginning writer, but I most likely will buy supporting memberships in order to vote in the Hugos (and download the voting packet).\u00a0 It’s a good community, and I’m glad to be a part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alright, I should just write this up and finish my convention report before life sweeps me away completely. Saturday was the main day of the con.\u00a0 To be honest, I forgot all the panels I went to, except this really awesome one by a guy at NASA on near Earth objects (NEOs).\u00a0 Holyfreakingcow there are… Continue reading Worldcon 2011: Saturday<\/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":[1],"tags":[253,82,577,122,567,529,466,482,613,189,562,134],"class_list":["post-5879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-astronomy","tag-conventions","tag-ebook-revolution","tag-friends","tag-hugo-awards","tag-indie-publishing","tag-nancy-kress","tag-nasa","tag-robert-silverberg","tag-utah","tag-worldcon-2011","tag-writing-advice","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1wP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879","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=5879"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5882,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879\/revisions\/5882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}