Vicarious exhaustion

[caddyman]

I have just read –and spent a long time doing it – Paul Cornell’s blog about his experience at this year’s Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. If ever I was tempted to go, I think he’s talked me out of it. It really doesn’t look like my cup of tea in the slightest. Admittedly as a delegate and member of many, many panels, Cornell had his time sliced thinly, but cripes, I feel knackered just having read the write up.

The nearest I’ve come to anything like that was back in the 90s when for 8 years I went to the annual Spiel event in Essen, which I believe is (or was) the world’s biggest games convention. It was certainly Europe’s biggest. Spending four days a year there was generally more than enough for me and I only went as a punter who happened to volunteer to help with a stall for SFC Press because my friends appreciated the help (I think) and I appreciated having a base to operate from and return to when wandering around the place got too much. I didn’t have to deal with panels or any of that nonsense.

I have one friend who makes a living from writing comics and he works damned hard at it. Through him, I am peripherally acquainted with a few other people in the industry. These conventions are an integral part of what they do, because quite apart from working like a slave all the time getting the stuff down on paper, the written and drawn product is only part of it. As a writer (and presumably, too, as an artist), you are part product, too. So you have to sell yourself in order to sell your work. You may write the best things since Shakespeare, or draw the best pictures since Da Vinci, but if you can’t make people notice you, well, you’re doomed.

I can’t tell from his stream-of-conscious blog entry whether on balance Paul Cornell enjoyed himself or not at Worldcon. I suspect that when he wrote it he wasn’t sure, either. But man, he was busy. I think I should have gone postal through mental and physical fatigue if I’d been in his place.

If nothing else, the write up has given me a closer view of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of geeky fandom, particularly when it’s in a concentrated form, and confirmed my healthy respect for the people who have to do it for a living.

Comments

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

I've been to a few fantasy cons now. From my, very limited experience they vary widely in level of accessibility to people not intimately involved in 'the scene'. The weird thing is with the particularly insular family affair type conventions (only seen one like this), those peeps do not sustain the gengres they allegedly support. In fact I'd go so far as to suggest, bit like Mr C, that they actually hold back the growth of that which they profess to lurve, in an almost: "If I cannot wield Excalibur, then no one shall!" -Kinda way. it's odd, but fascinating.

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

Gengres?!