Because I’m an 87 year old woman, I wanted to turn in before midnight. I even chose a quiet floor to cater to my wanting to sleep. When music came booming from somewhere and echoed throughout the entire hotel, I used my nifty Marriott app to inquire as to why I could hear blasting music on the quiet floor. Apparently, it doesn’t matter if you’re on a quiet floor if there’s an event  that goes until midnight. You have to wait it out.

Even so, I woke up early, did some dance aerobics to a workout DVD on my laptop, and then headed out to the Stop and Shop to gather food for the day. Yes, I’m a gatherer, not a hunter. I then wandered around until it was time for Plausible Impossible.

I’m getting a lot out of attending fiction-writing workshops. Though I don’t write fiction, I teach it in Creative Writing, so it helps to pick up these tips like 1. Create your own set of rules, and 2. Break the rules for conflict, and 3. You can’t know everything. This last one is a really good rule for life, too.

I went to the Lobby to pick up my stuff from Programming. I got a name thingie and a badge thingie, making me a pretty big deal. Thingie.

The woman who handed me my stuff asked me, “Did you dance last night?” I took a moment to think and then said it wasn’t me. I’m not sure why I had to think about this.

Clearly, I blog. I’m on Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat, though Insta and Snap are more for fun and not for promotion for me because I can’t really figure out the promotional aspects for my purposes. And I really can’t figure out Snapchat at all aside from sending funny filtered faces to people. Anyway, I figured I could get something out of the panel on Pop Culture and Social Media. The panel wasn’t well attended and two of the panelists were MIA. No biggie. I moved to the front and engaged in listening to everything the three remaining presenters had to say.

There was talk of Refinery 29 (that site that sends you lots of emails when you sign up for it and then you spend two hours reading everything and then you realize you can’t get anything else done in your day so you unsubscribe only to resubscribe when you come across it again and then it all starts all over). There was talk of saying yes to everything and being nice to everyone. I pretty much do that. What I don’t do is talk to people face to face, and that’s kind of why I’m here. I need to do that more as it seems to be key in, you know, life.

There was talk of blogging and friending and being a woman on panels at conventions where that is not the norm. There was the very brilliant idea of hashtagging and metatagging using words that are not traditionally for your own audience so that you reach a wider audience, whether or not they’ll immediately like what you have to say. Simply. Brilliant.

The moderator explained that Twitter will be gone very soon, replaced by Instagram. Hmm. IMHO, until you don’t have to write Link In Bio on Instagram, I don’t think Twitter is going anywhere.

Most of all, however, Things. Got. Weird.

The panel dynamic seemed to be someone who tells bad jokes and knows it combined with two very outspoken voices. I don’t think they knew each other prior to the panel, and it seemed like the moderator had a list of items to discuss but was thrown off by the two additional panelists not being there, and it also seemed that the list was not shared beforehand. This seems to be common at this convention, however, because there’s simply a lot going on all over the place.

So that wasn’t exactly the weird thing. This was the weird thing. Okay, not so much weird as really uncomfortable because sometimes people don’t understand boundaries, especially when they think they are half-joking in a friendly way but what they do is not funny and they aren’t your friend. The moderator basically attempted to cover the mouth of one of the panelists. Jeez. No no no.

The main reason I loved this panel was that the two panelists were simply fabulous at being confident people. Immediately, they were like, that’s not okay. Immediately, he was like, I’m sorry.  See? Make it clear and don’t get cutesy, and your point gets across.

Remember that song “The Bad Touch”? Yeah, that’s what this reminded me of. Not the entire song, just the title.

A bit later when the moderator was explaining something or other, the two panelists were whispering to each other. That was a bit distracting, true, but the moderator was like, I’m just going to stop because the thing that gets to me is people talking when I’m talking.

As someone who encounters that every single working day of my life, I get the frustration. I have even used that tactic in a classroom.

However.

I have never done it while on a panel in front of an audience. It was really, really uncomfortable.

So when asked if I was interested in promoting myself on social media, my response was, Well I’m not sure. I wasn’t responding to the question being asked. It was more of an I’m not sure what the hell is happening here. I wanted so very badly to explain to the incident-maker how to not make things weird, but I’ve been really good at not trying to micromanage strangers, putting my teacher-persona aside in situations where I’m not in charge. Plus, the panelists held their own. They did not need my help.

When it was over, I thanked both of the panelists for their insights and followed them both on Twitter. In fact, I realized that I had already started following one of them before the convention when she was retweeted by LunaCon. That’s serendipity.

Things got a little lighter at the Marvel Comics/TV/Film panel. It was billed as a panel of Glenns. All three guys were named Glenn with two n’s. Then another Glen arrived, with only one n, sent there by Programming to do a song about comics. Because his name is Glen.

This is why I’m loving this convention.

The discussion went in all different ways. I kept busy, jotting down snippets of super hero ideas and tidbits. My next collection is going to incorporate super heroes in some way, so anything that sounded like it could be a poem went straight into my notebook.  This panel ended in a song by Glen with the one n.

Moving on to the next session: Writing Social Change in SF. Again, the women from the character dialogue workshop was on this panel, so that’s three things I’ve attended that she’s been part of. I feel like I’m fanning out on her. The panel offered insights into diversity and building worlds. Mostly, I was distracted by the two people in the room who were coughing. Lately, I’ve been getting really bad with cringing at first cough. People cough for many reasons, not only because they are sick. Some of them even cough into their inside elbow as we are all supposed to. Still, I get germ-ed out and fixate on where the cough is coming from and my potential of getting sick from it. Then the panel was over.

I walked through the fair and this time bought stuff. Yeah, that’s right. I. Bought. Stuff. Me, the girl who hates shopping. I bought some spices from Auntie Arwin Spices. Then I bought two charms for  myself. Yes, that’s right. I bought stuff for myself. I couldn’t decide between the two, so I bought them both. And because I bought them both, I got two dollars off. Steal! Thanks, Geeks Bearing Gifts!

It was break time. I came back to my room to warm up. All the conferences rooms are about 20 degrees below zero. I’m keeping my room at a balmy 70something. I wrote. I ate dinner. I had coffee. I then headed back out into conventionland.

I first sat in on a panel about Cult Films. I thought they might show film clips because there was a projector in the room, but they didn’t. It was still interesting, listening to plots of movies that people watched in the 60s, 70s, and 80s on Channels 9 and 11 or on Mystery Science Theatre. A lot of cult films sound like horror movies. Then there was a guy in the audience who was participating as if he were part of the panel. Then a lot of people were participating. I had nothing to offer, and then I had to go to my own panel.

Erasing SF and Fantasy: Creating Found Poems! The panel/workshop in the room before me seemed to not want to end, so at 7, I walked in and started putting my stuff down on the panel table. Some people in the room saw me setting up–the folks from the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction thing because of course–and asked what was going on. I was like, It’s poetry! I showed them my book, prompted by my colleague who was attending. I didn’t sell one, but I gave away a space sticker. People like stickers.

There were five people. Two girls I’d met in the lobby. I was walking down the hall from Cult Films, and a guy pointed at me and said to them, She’s a poet so maybe she knows. I was like, Know what? He was like, There’s a workshop. I was like, I’m giving that workshop. So I had the girls follow me there. They were really awesome young women. I keep saying girls because they looked 12. They were, I believe, college age.

The workshop went exactly as I’d hoped. I talked a little about found poetry and then erasure poetry. We went through examples of different ways to erase. Then I let them pick up photocopies of different sources ranging from sci-fi novels to science textbooks. I put colored pencils, crayons, and pastels on their tables. Then they made poetry.

The room got quiet. Every so often, I suggested ways to spark new poems. They really worked at it. Time flew. I mean, we started late, but it still flew. They all shared what they wrote, and what they wrote was so fantastic. I told them if they wanted to send me their final product, they could. One of the young ladies asked if my email was on the handout. I was like, no but it should be. So I handed out my publicity postcards. Then I said I also had stickers but they could get one only if they bought a book. Both gals were like, Stickers! And I was like, I know, right? And they were like, Stickers are awesome. So I gave them each a sticker. See? People like ’em.

Then I sold two books AND I found out that there’s an old Solaris movie, one without George Clooney, that I haven’t seen and need to see. How did that come up? One of my sample poems is from Liberating The Astronauts, based on Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. Want to read the poem? Go here.

I went with my colleague to the masquerade. It lasted for maybe 20 minutes because there were only four entries. Then the emcee made bad book puns as a band that sings about fandom set up. This went on for much longer than it should have. My colleague tapped out after they’d sung two songs, and I thought I’d stay to hear the winners of the masquerade, but I tired pretty quickly and headed to the lobby for some semi-silence before the last panel.

The last panel was Real Bio-Apocalypse. Basically, we’re all going to die because everyone takes antibiotics too often when they shouldn’t like when they have viral infections AND because there are many of us who stop taking meds when we feel better instead of finishing out the dosage, which means we are potentially leaving behind bacteria that is now getting stronger because it hasn’t all been killed off.

I will point out that there was an incessant cougher at this panel.

I called it a night so I could go warm up from the ice den that was the last meeting room. My head is swimming from all the stuff of today. There’s more to come tomorrow, too.

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