WisCon and So On

May 28

Chicago O'Hare airport. This is one of the most surreal places I've ever been. I wonder if there's any other place on the planet that has a giant black skeleton of a brachiosaurus just across the corridor from a Starbucks coffee stand? It's a nice (enormous) airport. There's obviously been some thought given to the architecture. I can't find a convenient outlet for D's laptop, so I'm running down the battery. That's my only complaint.

The laptop is being terribly capricious today; it started up after about ten attempts, and I don't know for sure if it's going to hold out. It doesn't usually crash once I get it up and running, but such system failures are not entirely unheard of.

It's another hour and a half before I can board my flight to Greensboro. I've been here an hour and a half already. Ah, the joy of connecting flights. I shouldn't complain, though. My airline snafued things, canceled the return flight I was supposed to have. They kindly booked me on another flight-- one that didn't leave Wisconsin until 6 in the evening, that wouldn't have gotten me to Greensboro until midnight. Wonderful Meg called the airline on Saturday and bitched at them on my behalf, got me on an earlier flight. They bumped me up to "economy plus," too. Woo. Extra leg room.

Wow. This is going to be so random. Here we go.

I just finished Kelly Link's collection Stranger Things Happen. I bought it at WisCon. Kelly signed it for me-- "For Tim, who is dancing." I sometimes do a little wiggly-stationary-dance-- that's what I was doing when Kelly signed. Heather thinks my dance is cute. Usually, I don't even realize I'm doing it-- sometimes it's a manifestation of happiness, sometimes of nervousness. When confronted with Kelly Link (!), I think it was a little bit of both. I mean. Wow. I'd read four of the stories in the collection before, and that left seven I hadn't. "Flying Lessons"-- yum. "Water Off a Black Dog's Back." Woo. She's so brilliant. I wish I could write that way. Well, no, I wish I could write in my own way, but with a roughly equivalent level of control, a comparable mastery, something approaching her inventiveness. And she's so so nice. Heather spoke to her more than I did-- Heather hasn't read Kelly's stories yet, and so she didn't have heroine-worship hobbling her tongue, as I did. They chatted about things like coffee and such. I mostly just grinned. Ah, well.

Still. A thrill to meet her. And I managed to talk to Gavin Grant (the other editor of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet) a bit more coherently, though not at length.

So, the Con, WisCon. I loved it. A great first con for me. People tell me other cons aren't so good, are different, are annoying in various ways that WisCon is not. Tra la. I'm going to WorldCon in 2002, so I suppose I'll see. And I'm going to WisCon again next year, barring the unforeseen-- Nalo Hopkinson and Nina Kiriki Hoffman are guests of honor! Whee!

I bought Nina Hoffman's A Red Heart of Memories. I'd heard it was good. I didn't realize that it featured two of my absolute favorite characters in all of fiction-- Matt, protagonist of the story "Home for Christmas," and Edmund, protagonist of "Sourheart." Those are my favorite Nina Hoffman stories. I am muchly pleased. I haven't read this book yet. I'll read it on the plane to Greensboro, most likely.

Heather and I did attend some panels, though we also spent a lot of time alone, doing non-con-related things. Not surprising, since we hadn't seen one another for two weeks. Our friends were very understanding. They seem to think we're cute, but not disgustingly so.

Heather and I had such amazing talks, too, it wasn't all physical joyfulness (though the physical joyfulness-- oh, my). We talked about the function of writing. About what makes someone a writer. About hackwork, popular fiction, literary fiction, symbolism, organic approaches to writing, ugly first drafts, perfection, the subjectivity of greatness (already one of our recurring themes, something we can sink real teeth of contention and argument into), erotica, alien sex, taboos, anger, snoring, our bad habits, envy, jealousy, fairy tales. Talking to her, it's like dropping into a pool of water, completely submerging, nothing exists but that water, the outside world doesn't matter, it's all there in the water, it's cold, or warm, it covers you over, it's everything relevant.

It's like her mind is a room, and it's very similar in many ways to the room that's my mind, but it's different in lots of ways-- there's a skylight where I have a chandelier, there's an umbrella stand where I have a coatrack, there's a cellar door where I have attic stairs, there's a cupboard where I have a broom closet. The corners join in different ways. The corridors curve in different directions. Yet it's almost familiar, the floor plan, the dimensions. It's presque vu. The differences intrigue but don't unnerve me. I'm comfortable there, in that room, that different, familiar room.

Heather has big things inside her, big flashing brightnesses, dark rivers, vast gardens (which are jungles at the edges). There's so much to explore in her, to learn, to discover. I feel like a pochade sketch next to her, or a child's drawing, all simple lines, clear perspectives.

She is much more interesting than I am, I think.

She might disagree.

We (Heather and I, the soon-to-be-perennial "we") went to a panel with Midori Snyder and Terri Windling and a man whose name I cannot recall, I've never read his work but he is very quiet and articulate, his first name is Heinz. It was the Endicott Studio Living Room, and it was the best panel I attended (not that I attended many). It was almost not really a panel; all couches and chairs in a circle instead of straight rows of chairs and a table up front (which is really a very top-down approach to discussion, a tower rather than a net, and it seems to me very patriarchal, you'd think WisCon as a feminist convention would have nothing but circles of chairs, but then I suppose there are space constraints to consider, but still). It felt like a literary salon. I didn't speak at all, at all-- I know my thoughts, I wanted to hear theirs. The subject of the panel was how to use the old images and narratives of myth, fairy tales, folklore, fantasy, in fresh ways. The point, they say, is not to have a clever idea, a twist ending. The point is to figure out what parts of the old stories resonate with you, find out their relevance to your own life, make it personal-- it's not enough to simply retell, or even twist an old story (making the wicked stepmother the protagonist, or the Beast a woman-- you can do those things, but only with reason).

I am pleased, oh so please, to say that I do that. When I wrote about Behemoth and Leviathan, I made them into something new, something that resonated with me. When I wrote about werewolves and princesses and the Wild Hunt, I transformed them, I made a story about losing innocence, losing stories. When I wrote "Unfairy Tale" I didn't simply decide to set Sleeping Beauty in the desert, I wanted to write about the fundamentally differing assumptions in the deep myths of different cultures.

And yet it's not as if I learned nothing new from the panel-- they had good suggestions for opening yourself up, for running at things from different directions, for strengthening subtext, for looping your narratives. And Terri Windling is a beauty, and kind. And Midori Snyder is charming. Mmm. I left that panel so excited, delighted about my future as a fantasy writer, charged with the possibilities of the genre, wondering honestly "Why would anyone want to write anything but fantasy?" I've felt that way before. It's always a good feeling.

After the panel, I went upstairs and wrote the first thousand words of a new fantasy short story. I read it to Heather. She loved it (and no, she doesn't love everything I write, not even close). It's going to be a good story, a very good story, I think. I'll tell you when it's done. I think it will be done soon.

Favorite thing said to me at the Con, by an editor who is considering one of my stories: "God damn you, Tim Pratt, for making me like a story about gay superheroes and Nazis."

Hee.

I told Karen Fowler about Rangergirl. She thinks it sounds like a wonderful novel, and great fun. Heather and I bought her new book, Sister Noon. I can't wait to read it. Karen is so wonderful.

I met oh so many grand great cool people, I can't begin to say. And I got to spend time with Jenn! Not enough time, but with Jenn, I can probably never have enough time. I saw Hilary and J. Simon, my other fellow '99 Clarionities. I played Mafia at two in the morning. I wore a silver headband and went without shoes. I got drunk on a bottle of wine. I met Jody Scott, author of I, Vampire, a very strange book (Jody Scott has incredibly unnerving eyes, but was quite nice). I had a good dinner with Heather and Jenn and the lovely Susan Groppi-- that's a group I'd like to dine and chat with in the future. I enjoyed the Strange Horizons Tea Party, and the opportunity to see Mary Anne and Jed a bit. These are such good people! There are so many grand things going on now, now, now!

I probably should have done more schmoozing in my capacity as a poetry editor. I didn't have business cards. I didn't even go to the open mike poetry function (fearing, I must admit, long rhyming epics about mages and dragons). I think I talked to one person about submitting work to me. Mary Anne did her best to help my non-networking self, introducing me as a poetry editor. I'll get the hang of this eventually, I suppose.

Madison is a really cute town, y'all. Delightfully lovely, good bookstores, a pleasant downtown, a farmer's market, lots of restaurants, a big lake. A good venue. The hotel was very nice, too, though the maids seemed to hate us, and took our "do not disturb" sign away, and didn't give us any new washcloths, and I suppose that's the total of their transgressions, but that's enough. The hotel restaurant had a really killer Sunday brunch buffet. Mmm.

Michelangelo's coffee shop. Right around the corner from the hotel. Great lattés (well, I thought they were great, but I admit I'm not a terribly demanding coffee-drinker). Good atmosphere. I like it. I'd hang out there.

Just thought y'all'd be interested in my coffee-shop opinion. Since I talk about such places often herein.

Is this entry long enough yet? It doesn't begin to cover everything. Ah, well.

Three days of love and friendship and hero(ine)-worship and feminism and writing, in no particular order, mixed well, mixed thoroughly, beautifully, to my delight.