conventions

Gen Con 2023

By / August 13, 2023 / 2 Comments

It is difficult to capture the complexity of my Gen Con experience in a single blog post. I wrote about some of the emotional arcs of it in my latest newsletter. I microblogged the road trip and collected that here in my prior post. Yet there is still something I’ve been trying to catch in words for weeks now. It is an amazement at how people will put so much love and stress and effort into creating an experience which requires the cooperation of others to also participate. Gen Con staff puts in so much work that would amount to nothing if the vendors did not show up to build their stores. The vendors put in so much work that would amount to nothing if the attendees didn’t show up to walk the floor and shop for wares. Each individual attendee also had their own logistics, planning, expenses, and challenges to come. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the people who run programming, the people who run games. The people who construct a giant balloon sculpture each year who must have spent months planning, calculating, purchasing, and staffing to make that happen.

This year we got a balloon version of the Apollo Lunar Lander made of 9000 balloons.

And then on Sunday afternoon they sell charity tickets to a popping party. All that effort turns into shared laughter, a pile of balloon shreds, and money for a good cause.

Gen Con is a community creation. It has to be. But then, so are our actual towns, our country, our writing groups, our families. All of these things depend on people showing up to cooperate or disagree, to negotiate over rules, to seek their own advantage, and to be stunningly altruistic in helping others. Humanity is beautiful and a Brigadoon-like event such as Gen Con helps me see that in such a joyful way.

We walk into the convention center to find an expanse of concrete.

Concrete floor with a few pipe and drape booths in the distance.

We find our individual space and then spend two days turning this:

A zoom in of our space from the prior image.

Into a miniature store that becomes our home for 4 days.

The Howard Tayler Jim Zub booth at Gen Con

That small 10×20 space contains so much laughter and exhaustion. From here we talk with attendees. We shuffle our merchandise each morning, picking a sales focus for the day. We have a runner who brings us food. We have Jim, Howard, and Stacy as “the talent” who are the people that attendees come to see. We have sales staff who run the register and keep things stocked on the shelves. Like the rest of Gen Con, the roles aren’t rigid, we all pitch in where help is needed. We shuffle around for the hour when Tracy Hickman joined us in the booth. We re-shuffle to make adjustments to Howard’s drawing chair. By the end of the show we have a long list of things that went well and things we’d like to change for next year. This year’s big winners were that spinner at the corner of the booth which let people find the Schlock books they wanted and the closet space in the back where we could put all our stuff and occasionally go hide for a few minutes of down time. The big change is that we want to figure out how to build around Howard’s drawing chair so that he and Jim can sit next to each other instead of having Howard off to the back.

But we still got to have some joyful moments where Jim and Howard riffed off each other and laughed.

Howard Tayler and Jim Zub

I particularly liked the moment where Jim pointed out that Howard’s reclined position meant he could eat food like a sea otter, with things just supported on his tummy. Howard leaned into the joke and Jim took video (which I haven’t yet gotten from Jim) But I did catch a photo of Howard pretending a pair of McDonald’s cheeseburgers were a rock and an oyster.

The chair, while at times awkward in the booth, really made a huge difference in Howard’s ability to manage the show. He would get into the chair and get energy back after the walk through the convention hall. We managed to set up a camera and monitor so that people could watch him draw. I love the moments when Howard’s drawings give people joy.

A woman delighted with the sketch in her XDM book.

I don’t have any photos of the time I spent away from the booth at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium. So that’s a note for next year: take more selfies with my writer friends when I get to see them. I got to re-connect with people I’ve known for a long time. I got to meet some new people. As usual, it was a little difficult to be split between booth and writer’s conference. I wanted to always be at the booth to help with Howard, sales, and lift the burden there. I also wanted to always be at the symposium, having more conversations with fellow writers both in the green room and in the hallways. I feel like I really stuck the landing on my Networking Despite Social Anxiety and Building Community Around Your Work presentations. The Marketing as Storytelling presentation needs some work still. Both of my panels were full of smart people with excellent things to say.

I do have a few photos of the hotel where we stayed, because it was a transformed train station. On the second floor there were actual train cars that have been turned into hotel rooms. We were glad to have a much more spacious room on the main floor, but it was fun to walk past the trains on our way to the convention center sky bridge.

I failed to photograph the trains. Sadness. That is also I thing that always happens after conventions, getting home and realizing the portions of the event that I failed to capture. This hotel was a big win for us. It was the closest possible hotel to our booth. That was very helpful for not using up Howard’s limited energy on walking. He still arrived at the booth exhausted more often than not. But then reclining in the chair restored energy. A large portion of our stress and planning both before the show and during it, was trying to make sure that we didn’t over-tax Howard and cause him to crash. We also wanted to prevent a post-event crash that would keep him from working for weeks on end like last year. (Since I’m writing this more than a week after the show, I can tell you we succeeded! Yay!)

We also feel fairly good about our infection / safety protocols. We had several CO2 monitors and any time the numbers got over 1400ppm (Outside air is 400ppm, good indoor air ranges 400-800.) we would mask up. If numbers got over about 1800 we went elsewhere. Our booth had multiple air filters running and creating an air wall. In the dealer’s hall, even when completely packed, the numbers stayed below 1400. We masked through crowded hallways, and we came home uninfected as demonstrated by negative tests. I did hear some reports of infections, but this year I did not hear of many secondary infections. Last year the infection cloud continued to grow for more than a week post event (for all the events I tracked). This year the reports tend to be isolated to one or two people, most of whom can’t track exactly where their point of infection was. There were more masked people at Gen Con than I’ve seen anywhere else in the past year. Paying attention to all of this during the show was another layer of stress. But this is the world we live in, and Howard’s long covid has taught us caution, yet we still went to Gen Con. I should write a separate post about the safety vs. benefit math that goes into the decision to attend in person events. For our business and brains, Gen Con is a creative pillar, a huge supportive structure in the year and with the collapse of some social media, in person events gain a much larger importance. It is very much a Scylla and Charybdis situation. Pick your peril, try to navigate a safe path between.

At the end of the first day, it feels like the show will last forever. By mid-show we’re exhausted and sometimes counting the hours until it is done. Then suddenly it IS done. The lights go dim and it is time for us to take apart the store we built. The dealer hall that took two days to carefully construct is torn down and vanishes in mere hours. We’re back to bare concrete with pallets, packing cases, and the constant beep and roar of forklifts.

Sunday evening is full of farewells. We had the full crew dinner on Wednesday night with our extended Gen Con Family, current booth crew plus the people who crewed for us for ten years. I was so glad to see friends I hadn’t hugged since before the pandemic. Sunday evening was a smaller crew dinner, just the exhausted few who were staying at the hotel with us and all departing in the morning.

After the show, there were two very long days of driving. We did a lot less chattering during the drive home. And we did a lot more stopping because the four of us (Howard, me, our daughter, and son-in-law who booth crewed for us this year) all picked up Pokemon Go again. We scattered pokemon at gyms all down I-80.

After the driving there was the unpacking, and the remembering what normal life feels like, and the collapsing in a heap. Today, a full week after the final day of the show, I am beginning to feel more normal. Just in time to dive head first into launching a Kickstarter next week.

Gen Con was lovely. I’m still sorting thoughts, making notes, doing accounting, and planning ahead because we’ll do all of this again next year.

The Days After the Events

By / March 28, 2023

The morning after the event that I spent six months planning, I woke up without a list. I lay awake in bed probing the lack of urgency to pull me from it. It was a stark contrast to how I’d regimented my life in tasks, alarms, and calendar reminders. I entered the day through that void and mushily thought my way through a formless mass of memory and experience that needed processing. I needed to unpack it all. And possibly also unpack my suitcase, and begin picking up the pieces of house tasks that were neglected on the run up to the events.

The second day after the event I slept late on purpose. I woke early and chose to dive back into sleep. I chose that again in the middle of the day when I took a two hour nap, my body choosing hibernation as a coping strategy for stress recovery. I did do some necessary tasks, orienting myself back into a post-event life. I began to form lists for post-event tasks. I wrote a page of highlights, fragmented sentences to catch moments, threads which I could pull on later to remind myself of the myriad of joyful stories. The events succeeded in all of the important and emotional ways. I saw my tasks through all the way to making sure that the last guest was able to board her much delayed plane on the day after the event. I also began making notes for next year, because there were gaps and moments which were managed and fine, but which next time I would like to run more smoothly.

The third day after the event (today) I rolled out of bed on my usual schedule and clocked in to begin answering email. My admin brain is still tired, but there are things to finish and I must start doing them. So we collect data and receipts and answer questions and begin talking about what is next. And I take time for a massage where the therapist’s experienced hands convince the muscles of my back to let go of all the emails, lists, charts, and decisions that have been stored in knotted muscles. I walk in my garden and toss clover seed onto the lawn I’m trying to replace with clover because the day is gloriously sunny and pleasantly warm for the first time in months. Then I return to my computer. I want to describe my events, share the joy of them. But apparently I must first describe and share the experience of recovery. Somehow this meandering description fits my weary brain while wrapping words around the events themselves feels harder.

Yet they sit in my brain, all those highlights glinting and tinging off each other like a crystal chandelier in sunlight, casting rainbows across my mind. I just need to find the words which allow me to display the unique beauty of each moment, because this chandelier is not made of identical crystals, more like crystal snowflakes, each one unique and worthy of admiration. Even the flawed ones.

I remember a conversation sometime during the Gala where the other person was describing a feeling of triumph, that I did not (in that moment) share. I was still making sure pieces were in place. I was doing work which was essential to the smooth function of moving large groups of people from reception to banquet tables and getting them all fed. I did the work well, and I am glad that I did it well, but I was always aware that my well-done work could have been done well by a number of other people had they been given the tasks. There was satisfaction in being part of a team that carried off the event. There was a lack of anxiety because any failure of mine was likely to be caught and compensated for by the work of others. My triumphs, my crystal moments were not in the events as a whole, they were tiny individual things enmeshed in the events.

It was seeing teenagers in their prom dresses and cosplay on the gala night being so delighted at coming to a fancy gala event that was designed to celebrate words and books, things that they love.

It was the moment when our Gala MC had the teenage poets and short story writers stand and I realized that nearly half the room was full of these fledgeling writers who are going to soar.

It was seeing the faces of guest authors on TABC morning as they saw how many writer teens we had gathered. And the joy on all the faces as we participated in a book dash to give every teenager a book to keep.

It was the opening skit of TABC which was exactly the right amount of cheesy to let the teenagers know that it is okay to be silly and joyful. And then having that mirrored in the closing skit where the audience participated in defeating the villain by shouting “My story matters!” which we all knew for silly theater, but which also has an impact and lingers in the hearts and minds of everyone who was in that room.

It was the quiet girl I watched out of the corner of my eye all through that closing ceremony because she was at a table by herself and I wondered if I needed to make sure she was okay. But the corners of her mouth tugged up at the jokes, and she drumrolled with everyone. And she shouted too. Sitting by herself because that was how she was most comfortable, but not lonely, and not alone. She had found her tribe and place of belonging even if she hadn’t talked to many people all day long. I hold that girl in my head. Her story matters and I hope that by telling it she learns to sit up straight and take space instead of trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

These are a few of my crystals. Moments I feel honored to have witnessed, but which I do not claim as my triumphs. I can’t take credit for them, no matter how many hours of work I put it. It is a shared magic that requires the sharing to exist at all. I am not triumphant, I am honored and awed. And pleased. And tired. And aware that the ground work for next year’s round of magic begins with the emails I need to find enough brain for in the rest of this week.

In the Wake of SIWC

By / October 25, 2021 / 2 Comments

I remember water skiing and how much attention I paid to the wake of the boat that was pulling me along. That churned up portion of water that was so full of energy and potential for me to lose my balance. I felt so brave the first time I dared to cross the wake, riding the waves instead of fearing them. I spent all last week giving every spare ounce of energy to the Surrey International Writer’s Conference. I taught three presentations and was a panelist. I reconnected with friends and met new people. I spent so much time on Zoom that my back and shoulders ache with exciting new tension knots. But just like those long ago skiing days, I’m discovering that while being in the wake requires every ounce of my attention, as I exit the wake, I get a boost of momentum imparted by the water-carried energy of the boat. I want to make good use of this energy, my first use of it is writing this retrospective post.

Of my three presentations I had timing issues with two of them. I’d like to think I’m a more practiced presenter than that, but my presentation on Worldbuilding Communities was entirely new and the time slot was three hours which is a less familiar length for me. I had to rush the end of the presentation. I planned to be better for my Networking and Social Anxiety class, but the timer I set was on my phone. When I rejected a phone call mid presentation it stopped my timer and I didn’t realize the timer had stopped until suddenly I had two pages of material left, 7 questions in the queue, and only 20 minutes to get through it all. I had to skip an entire section and promise to put it up in written format for people to download from the SIWC website. I still feel like I delivered good content in both cases. I made myself available in during the social spaces for people to ask questions. I have some solid ideas for improving the flow of information in both of these presentations to help them better fit their time slots. I’m exceedingly pleased with the work I did to punch up the beginnings and endings of all my presentations. One bit of momentum I’m carrying away from the conference is a renewed excitement for teaching. I’ll fix up these presentations and run them as classes in Jan, Feb, March of next year.

In two of my presentations I reference Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I couldn’t help but notice the esteem level of the pyramid and recognize how very filling teaching at SIWC is for me. I was gifted a presenter role, which meant people showed up to listen to me and treat me like an expert. That happened in social spaces as well as the class times. That level of visibility is very validating, but over time it can also become exhausting. Higher profile increases my ability to accidentally do harm and I was very conscious of that as I moved through the conference. I loved the gatherings where I got to talk a lot and be an expert. Then I loved the gatherings where I got to step down a level on that pyramid and just belong to the group, a writer among other writers. It was a delight to be part of silly conversations about the poetic qualities of refrigerator contents, two sentence spooky stories, and the way that humans pack bond with inanimate objects. It was an honor to be in conversations where people spoke about their challenges and heartaches. All of it combines to impart some momentum to me as I exit the wake of the conference.

My anxiety would like to rob me of that momentum if it could. I’m hopeful that my success at anxiety management over the past week is indicative of personal growth and the stability of the coping strategies I’ve put into place. So that when anxiety reminds me that I taught an entire class on networking, but then failed to invite anyone to join my Patreon or my monthly Creative Check-In events, I can answer it with the fact (from my presentation) that networking is about personal connections rather than marketing opportunities. I made correct decisions to prioritize paying forward instead of paying bills. When my anxiety throws a social moment into the front of my attention along with a jolt of adrenaline to tell me that I was foolish/overbearing/hurtful/an embarrassment, I answer with “maybe I was, but that moment is over and not worth spending energy on.” It is, in a strange way, very cathartic to teach a presentation on social anxiety because it allows me to be very open about the ways anxiety has sabotaged my life in the past and the things I do on a daily basis to stop it from continuing to sabotage my future.

In preparing for my presentations I did piles of research, reading, watching videos, collecting resources for the people who want to learn more about my chosen topic. Right now I am looking at a row of tabs in my browser which are articles, videos, threads, and posts that people suggested to me during the conference. I’m excited by those tabs. I love learning new things. Yet they are homework. Each one will require mental and emotional processing. Since I’m mentally and emotionally spent from the past week, I’m not certain I should use today’s little push of momentum on them. I might be better served by turning the momentum toward creation rather than more information processing. On the other hand, information processing is where the ideas for creation come from. I have a similar problem in that I have thirty days to watch recordings of presentations from the conference. There are so many good ones, but I have to balance learning new things and taking time to do the creative work that I’m newly excited about. I’ll need to space out the tabs and the videos from conference. If I’m careful perhaps I can extend the wake, the momentum push from the conference, all the way through the end of the year. I would like that. Borrowed momentum is a huge gift.

This was the second year of SIWC being online only. The pandemic which drove us all into Zoom connections was a frequent topic of discussion. It was also a frequent topic to speculate what will happen next year. Not even the conference organizers can answer that question yet. Not fully. The world is still in flux and the pandemic continues to impact all the decisions. I know I want to see online conferences continue because I see huge benefits in accessibility and connection. I also really want to attend some in person writer events because some things are lost when the conference is online only. I’m starting to look forward to 2022 and think about how I will venture forth, what I will participate in, what I might like to host, and how to make sure that the people who were suddenly included with the move online don’t get excluded again as we move forward.

I have further thoughts about the conferences and my experiences inside it, but I’ve been sitting here looking at the blinking cursor for several minutes without being able to catch any of them. That means it is time to hit post on this set of thoughts and pay attention to non-conference things. I have a business and a house that have been neglected for the past week. As much as I’d like to just pay attention to post-conference writer momentum, my life will fall apart if I don’t tend to the other portions of my world.

When the Convention is Done

By / February 17, 2019

On the day after the convention my mind is a shadow play of overlapping thoughts in different colors that pass behind and through each other so that by the time I’ve discerned what one thought is, it has dissolved into something else entirely. Many of the thoughts are memory fragments condensed into a momentary flash of expression or a few words. Memories of me saying the right thing mix with moments when I misstepped. The moment when I said something kind that healed the heart of a friend dissolves into the moment when I attempted to reassure a fellow panelist and only later learned that I was “reassuring” the artist guest of honor whose depth of experience with the panel topic was oceans deeper than mine. Both are equally specific in my mind though I must be vague about my friend’s story as it isn’t mine to tell. I am fortunate that for the panel with the guest of honor I was the moderator and my usual moderatorial mode is to let the panelists talk, so I got out of the way and made no more missteps after the first one before the panel began.

That moment dissolves into remembrance of moments when another professional said or did something that showed respect for me and for the things I do. Those moments are contrasted with the times when I was in groups of highly intelligent, wonderful people and I was shut out of the conversation because the topic was not one I could add anything to. Moments of feeling large and valued versus moments of feeling small or invisible. A convention is all of these moments and a hundred more.

Some of the moments are more than a flash. One of my final panels was about literary fiction and genre fiction. It was one of those magical moments when all of the panelists were equally engaged in the topic, willing to passionately discuss and happy to give space so others could speak. We were all so excited by each other’s thoughts that our own opinions were re-evaluated on the fly. Such a joyful experience to debate and argue without antipathy. No anger or defensiveness, jsut the joy of engaging with new ideas. I loved every minute of it and was sad that I had to run off to another panel instead of lingering to thank my fellow panelists.

This year at LTUE I was more focused on being at the booth. I spent more than a week in advance planing and preparing the booth. I only did a few panels and no presentations. One of the booth changes we made was to only have a few featured items rather than trying to display everything equally thus overwhelming shoppers with too much choice. The work paid off. Especially combined with the fact that we had three new Schlock books since last year. It was the most profitable sales year we’ve ever had at LTUE. We don’t measure the value of the show in dollars, but being able to pay bills always allows us to enjoy things more. And the fact that people buy is evidence that they value what we create, which is even more of a boost than the dollars. Today I am wishing I was not so tired, because I want to dive into creating new things to share with all the lovely people who enjoy the work we do.

Keliana ran her own booth this year. On the first day she was low energy and apprehensive. She’s been having trouble believing in the value of her work. Then people came to her table and were excited by what she was doing. by the end of day one she could believe that all was not doomed. By the end of day three she was energetic and bubbling over with plans for the months to come. LTUE rejuvenated her in ways I am incredibly grateful for and I can only hope to repay that by paying forward.

Like my daughter, I also struggle to believe in the value of my creative work. It is easier for me to believe in and promote my collaborative works (Planet Mercenary, Schlock Mercenary, Hold on to Your Horses) than the works where mine is the only name on the cover. I’m consciously and carefully working to change that. I’m trying to reach out and claim worthiness rather than hustling and hoping someone else will bestow it on me. Right now our sales table does not contain any of my solo work. Over the next year or three I want to change that. Slow and steady, bit by bit, I will claim hours to work on my solo efforts in tandem with further collaborative ones. I won’t let the collaborative crowd out the solo. I’ve already begun, I just need to continue.

So much more happened than I’ve written down. Friends from out of town. Friends who helped at the booth. A hundred small conversations. LTUE was amazing. It always is. For today and tomorrow I rest. On Tuesday I pick up again and get back to work.

The Valuation of GenCon

By / August 6, 2018

The value of GenCon is hard to measure, because so much of both the benefits and costs are made up of intangibles. The costs are measured in time, stress, and money. That last one makes it tempting to let money be the deciding factor, because it is easy to quantify while the other things are not. But a profit and loss sheet does not accurately represent the value of GenCon. We’ve never yet had a financial loss, but many years we don’t hit a hoped for dollar mark. That can be hard mid-show when we can see that we’ll miss. At that moment anxiety gets loud, fed by fatigue. It wants to spin tales of doom. When that happens we have to stop and recalibrate. We have to pull our heads out of the spreadsheets and focus on the intangible benefits.

What are the intangibles? Here is a list from this year:
Connecting with friends, catching up, hugging them, hearing about their lives.
Meeting new people who may become part of our expanding network of friends and business contacts.
Getting a line on a potential new printing partner.
Two contacts that might help me get Planet Mercenary distributed into game stores.
Seeing amazing cosplay, all the creativity and cleverness that is on display. All the mashups that delight.
Getting to play games for charity.
Reconnecting with a friend who has changed jobs and now works in a field where he may be able to greatly assist with a behind-the-scenes admin burden for the Writing Excuses cruise in 2019.
Figured out how to reconfigure our booth and business model to optimize next year.
Had ideas for at least three new creative projects.
Got information about applying for creative writing grants.
Got to teach and pay it forward.
Got to talk to people for whom our creative work made their lives better in some way.
Got to witness the ambient joy that is 80,0000 adults who understand that play should not end with childhood.
Got to see how the administrative work I do is critical to make this event happen for my team.
Got to have conversations with people who understand our business model and could sympathize with all the joys and frustrations.
Got to compare notes with others who ship products to customers and point each other at resources to make that job easier.
Participating in conversations where I learned interesting trivia that may someday inform a story or conversation.
Receiving creative respect from people who are supremely professional in their fields. That respect helps me recognize that I have become good at the jobs that I do even though I don’t have formal training for many of them.
Being told by my booth crew that we are worth investing in. That they willingly and enthusiastically build, haul, and sweat because we matter and what we create matters. This is from people I know are highly intelligent and who I know do not suffer fools lightly.
Listening to a comparison of how the RPG/game industry functions in ways that are fundamentally different from the literary publishing industry.
Got to be amused at Science Fiction and Fantasy publishing being called “literary publishing” but that is how it looks from the outside, all novels and stories are literary. Whereas from the inside “literary” is a specific sub genre of fiction writing.
Going out to dinner with groups of writers where we talk plot, travel, food, life, and then laugh uproarously at each others jokes.

I’m certain there are things which should be on that list, but which have slipped out of my brain.

Howard and I have this concept of the ten thousand dollar conversation. It is a conversation that opens a new possibility or improves a creative concept so that business revenue is improved by ten thousand dollars or more. We can never schedule these conversations. They always arise unexpectedly from the pool of intangibles. We figure out which things were critical only in retrospect. But I’ve gotten better at spotting which ones might be the ten thousand dollar conversations. This year at GenCon, I had at least three. They may not pan out, but the potential is there if I do the post-convention work that is necessary to make them happen.

I have six pages of closely written notes on the post-convention work I need to do in the next months. I said in a prior entry that GenCon prep begins in February. I’ve realized that is inaccurate. I’ve already completed the first preparatory task for GenCon 2019, I reserved our booth space. In the coming weeks I’ll have series of follow up tasks. Then there will be a lull. This coming year the lull will still have tasks in it. I’ll know more once I’ve had time to decipher my notes and assign deadlines for the associated tasks.

For today, I traveled home. I’m now trying to remember what my home tasks are. I’ve created a small to do list for tomorrow and a slightly larger one for Wednesday. These are only things that must be done, nothing that can be pushed off until I’ve recovered from the convention. By Thursday I hope to be back up to speed. I have shirts to ship, kids to launch into their school year, and notes to turn into tasks.

Onward I go, continuing this creative career that feels exhausting and frightening as often as it does exhilarating.

GenCon The Day Before the Show Begins

By / August 1, 2018

It is only when I arrive at GenCon that I remember why the stress is worth it. I arrive and my people are here. First and foremost my booth crew, who have done nearly as much preparation and advance work as I have. This year they had the booth completely set up before I even arrived.

This year our hotel is farther away than we prefer. This is a direct result of a brief mistake on my part on the day hotel booking opened. Thanks to the kind folks at the GenCon housing company, I was able to correct most of that error, but we’re further away. Because my crew did most of their work yesterday, Howard and I had time to teach me the route from the hotel to the convention center. The learning is necessary because something about downtown Indianapolis messes with my internal compass/map. I have to carefully learn my routes rather than trusting my instincts. One advantage of our hotel is that it is located on “The Circle” which is a beautiful historical section of downtown Indy. My learned path takes me past dozens of restaurants and interesting shops. Despite being further away, I’m glad I get to stay here at least once.

Another thing I did with my mostly free day was get extra sleep. I needed it after our 2am arrival at the hotel. Our plane got delayed four different times. The afternoon was spent on administrivia. I had to assemble and deliver the materials for our Game Chiefs who run the Planet Mercenary games during the show. I also had to double check the stock at the booth against my cash register to make sure everything matches up. There are always updates to make and things to do in order to optimize for each particular show. Then I had an hour or two to go over my presentation materials for the presentations I have ahead of me on Friday and Saturday.

Each thing completed is the culmination of tasks that have been hovering in my attention for months. I’ve fulfilled my obligation to my game chiefs and to the players who purchased tickets to our games. I’ve succeeded at providing housing for my crew, and merchandise for the booth. In the morning when we begin making sales I’ll have succeeded in preparing for the booth. Each thing done is a stress lifted. By Sunday evening I will feel lightweight. By then I will have traded those stresses for fascinating conversations, friends greeted, new people met, things learned, sights seen, and moments of joy. The net balance will be distinctly in the positive. It is every year. Sometimes when I’m paying out the stresses in advance I lose track of that.

The doors open tomorrow.

My GenCon Indianapolis Schedule

By / July 31, 2018

I will be spending the next week in Indianapolis to attend GenCon. If you’re also at GenCon or at the GenCon Writer’s Symposium, I hope you’ll make time to find me and say hello.

I have a lot of scheduled events, but in between them the best places to look for me are either in the Writer’s Symposium common areas or in the Dealer’s Hall at booth 1649.

Thursday
5pm Freelancing Life
A panel discussion about freelancing that takes place in the Ballroom of the Marriott Downtown.

Friday
9am Breaking Through the Blockages
A solo presentation on overcoming writer’s block. Austin room in Marriott Downtown.

3pm Cover Design Principles
A solo presentation about the basics of cover design intended both for people who want to create their own covers and those who are working with design professionals on covers. Austin room in Marriott Downtown.

4pm Public Face, Private Life
A solo presentation about balancing the need to be public online as a creative professional vs maintaining privacy and emotional balance. Austin room in Marriott Downtown.

6pm Worldbuilder’s Party
Howard and I will be hosting a game of Munchkin Starfinder as part of the Worldbuilder’s party. We hope you’ll stop by and play with us.

Saturday
9am Structuring Life to Support Creativity
A solo presentation about ways to arrange your life to allow time and support for your creative pursuits. Austin Room in Marriott Downtown.

12pm AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Howard Tayler
Howard and I will be sitting in a room ready to answer questions. Hopefully some people will be there to ask questions. Atlanta Room in Marriott Downtown.

3pm Schmoozing 101
A co-presentation with Elizabeth Vaughn. We’ll be talking about social skills, introductions, starting conversations with strangers, tools for keeping conversation going, and how to gracefully exit conversations. Among other things. Austin room in Downtown Marriott.

How to handle a harassment complaint at your event

By / June 25, 2018 / 4 Comments

Alternate title: Good practices for organizational management of a harassment complaint

Note: This document is not exhaustive and may be updated with additional suggested policies. I am not a trained harassment manager and there may be more detailed documents that you should reference when planning your event.

Step 1: Have a harassment policy
You can call a Code of Conduct, or some other name, but you must have a policy that clearly states what behaviors are not allowed at your event. The policy should state that failure to follow it can lead to expulsion from the event without refund. It should also have clear instructions for how to report a violation. All of your attendees should be asked to agree to this policy if they want to attend your event. If you do not have a policy, stop running your event until you do. This is for your own legal protection as well as the protection of your attendees. You need legal grounds to remove disruptive people from your event.

Step 2: Safety Committee
You need some people who are designated to handle any violations of your behavioral policies. They need to be trained and given a detailed instruction set (like this one you’re reading) for how you expect them to handle any issues. Having set up your committee, TRUST THEM. If you do not trust their judgement, then you have an organizational problem. You as event organizer have enough things to handle, don’t spend time second guessing your committee. There may be situations where you need to be involved in the decision process, but for the most part let your committee have the power to handle things.

Step 3: The victim comes to you
When someone comes to you to report a violation of your policy, the first concern of the staff member should be to make the victim feel safe. If there is an imminent danger or ongoing disruption, that must be managed first. The victim should be brought into contact with a member of the safety committee as quickly as possible. Either walk them there (if in person) or perform an email introduction (if online). Any staff who are not on the safety committee should step out of the process at this point. Helping the victim feel safe might include finding a private location, getting a friend to sit with them, switching to a safety person of similar gender. Always thank the victim for coming to report the incident. Reassure the victim that you want to know what happened.

Step 4: Listen
Listen to an account of the incident. Have the victim write it down, or write it down as they tell it to you. Be sympathetic to the victim. Validate their feelings. Ask for clarifying details. Find out if there are corroborating witnesses who are also willing to report. At the end of this step you should have a document signed by both the safety person and the victim that states what happened. (and additional reports from any witnesses) Both the victim and the safety committee should get a copy of this document. This document becomes a critical legal protection to both you and to the victim should things get complicated later. In a case of false reporting, this document also functions as a protection for the accused. Do not promise the victim any specific outcome from the report.

Step 5: Help the victim process
As part of listening to the victim and validating their feelings, discuss with them what they feel would be an appropriate consequence for the incident, ask “what would you like to have happen?” Document this answer in the report. It can help your committee’s decision making. Thank the victim for making the report. Give them contact info for the person who will be case manager for this incident. (Probably the person they reported to.) Tell them they can reach out and add to their report as needed. If they do reach out, note that on the report with date and time. Tell the victim that you will confer with your safety committee to make a decision about what is to be done and that you will get back to them within 24 hours with further information. (A longer timeline is acceptable if the victim is informed about why the longer timeline is needed.)

Step 6: Immediately contact your committee
They should be on call for exactly this sort of thing. If any committee members are close friends with either the victim or the accused, they should remove themselves from the discussion. If the entire committee is friends with either the victim or the accused, then seek out someone who can be impartial about the incident and hire them to arbitrate. Share the report, the victim’s requested consequence, and any observations the safety person may have. Compare the report with your policies to see if the consequence becomes obvious. Decide on a course of action. This can include anything from taking no action at all, to immediate expulsion from the event for the accused, to contacting the accused for more information or their own report, to contacting law enforcement, to consequences for a false report. Get a counter report from the accused. Have one of your staff advocating for the accused. The step-by-step process you are reading does not cover what actions are appropriate as consequences. That is a separate and nuanced discussion that is outside the scope of this document. Hopefully you had that discussion in detail while writing up your policy. Deciding what action is appropriate is tricky. Impartiality is critical. Part of your decision is choosing who will confront the accused (if confrontation is merited) and what back up they might require to keep everyone safe. Also who will advocate for the accused.

Step 7: Report to event managers
This step may take place between Step 6 and Step 8, or it might be something that just comes up at the next business meeting depending on the severity of the incident and how empowered the safety committee is to make decisions. Do not allow this step to be a blockade that prevents action. The key is to make sure that event managers know that an incident happened and have enough information to not be surprised if they are asked a question about it.

Step 8: Take the action
You may cycle through steps 6 to 8 multiple times as you gather additional information and reports. The key in this step is to act decisively and in a way that ensures safety of everyone involved. Make sure your action matches your stated policies. Also make sure that you extend as much courtesy and kindness toward an accused person.

Step 9: Inform the victim
Within 24 hours of the report (or on the previously agreed timeline), the victim should be contacted with either an update or the resolution of their issue. Make sure you assign a safety person who knows it is their job to keep the victim updated and to relay any ongoing concerns from the victim to the committee. Document those contacts and concerns in the report. Maintain contact with the victim until the incident is officially closed.

Step 10: Appeals and press
Someone is likely to be unhappy about the decision your safety committee made. They may post angry things to social media. They may outright lie about the events that happened. The only answer you give to any questions about the incident from people who were not directly involved is “For confidentiality reasons, we do not discuss any harassment complaints.” This is the answer that protects everyone. It preserves the confidentiality of both the accused and victim. It saves your event from legal liability and ongoing drama. The only time you ever release information from your harassment reports to anyone outside your safety and event management committees is if there is a legal case in which those documents become evidence. You do not need to prove you made the right choice. You as event organizer have the right to expel anyone from your event. At least you do if it is in your written and posted policy. Both the victim and the accused have the right to go to a court of law to challenge the decision you’ve made if they so wish.

Step 11: Post Mortem
The safety committee should meet periodically to discuss any incident reports and make sure appropriate follow up actions are taken. Equally important is that they examine their own handling of the incident to identify any weaknesses in the process or in the written harassment policy that need to be addressed. Make changes so that the next incident is handled as well as this one or better.

Structuring Life to Support Creativity take 2

By / February 22, 2018 / 2 Comments

A week ago I got to reprise my presentation on Structuring Life to Support Creativity. Unfortunately I heard from people who had to miss it because of conflicts or space issues. So I’m putting up the notes from the presentation here. They are rough notes rather than a fully flowing blog post. If I were to write this out fully, it would need to be 10,000 words or more. I first gave this presentation in 2013. There are some differences in information that I covered, so reading the original version might also be worth your time, you can find it here.

I always begin this presentation by saying that creative pursuits are patient. They will wait for us until we have time to get back to them. It is important to remember this when we are in a period of time where we need to do other things. I’ve had long spaces of time where I had to set aside fiction writing because I needed to focus my creative energy on business, or family, or health management, or grieving, or emotional processing. I lost nothing by taking care of these things first and then coming back to writing. Usually my creative efforts are better for taking time out to manage life events.

Know your goals and priorities
The first task to do when trying to fit a creative pursuit into your life is to step back and examine which things are the most important to you. For me family and loved ones are more important than creating books, even though I love both. This is the major reason that I sometimes spend long stretches without writing fiction: I am spending energy on the hugely creative task of raising children. And any creative task you undertake will interfere with any other creative task you want to do. A lot more occupations are creative than are generally considered creative. We create friendships, orderly homes, art projects, parties, etc. Service that we do for churches, schools, or communities can be hugely creative. Sometimes the work we do for a day job is also very creative. Grieving and emotional processing of life are when we re-create ourselves. Stepping back and analyzing what is most important so you can spend your creativity on that will help you be happier in your life, even if it means you’re spending a bit less time on the thing you thought was your one creative pursuit.

Recognize the pillars of your life.
Many creative people have a day job that literally keeps a roof over their head. Often this day job is viewed as a frustration or a distraction. However the ability to pay bills actually supports creativity. Maslow described this in his hierarchy of needs. We are less able to put energy into creation if we don’t know where our food will come from next week. Household tasks are another pillar that many people resent as a distraction from creativity. However if your surroundings are chaotic, the clutter in your physical space and clutter of undone To Do items in your head may make it difficult to accomplish the creative work you want to do. Social relationships are a third pillar. There is significant variance in the human need for company, but most of us do best, and are most creative, when we have emotional connections with others.

I mentioned before that things like grieving can interfere with creativity. The same is true of frustration or resentment. Any energy we spend on resenting a necessary life task subtracts from the energy available to create new things. Time spent maintaining your pillars creates a space where your writing or art can happen. I become much happier about doing maintenance tasks when I can see how they make the creative tasks possible.

Know your supports and emotional drags
Figuring this out starts with looking at the people in your life. Think about them.
Who supports you in ways that energize you?
Who claims to support you, but somehow you always end up discouraged after being with them?
Who doesn’t support you or actively interferes with your creativity?
You may want to adjust the quantity of time you spend with people who sap your creativity. Or you may want to re-frame that time so that it is further away from your creative spaces. Go to a movie and then talk about that movie instead of going to lunch and end up explaining why you want to be a writer.

Also look at your pillar maintenance tasks. The things that keep your life structure stable. This is when your family/housemates/friends become very important. Because some of those maintenance tasks do drag on your creativity while others are neutral or feed into creativity. If laundry sucks your soul, perhaps make a deal with others in your house so that they manage the laundry while you manage something else. Communication with the people in your support network is crucial. As you are building space in your life for creativity, they also have to give space for that creative effort. Make sure that these discussions include the sacrifices you will make to meet their emotional needs right along side the sacrifices you need them to make for your creative pursuits. (IE, you get one hour of uninterrupted writing time each day, but on Saturdays they get to go out to do their hobby thing.)

Consider what blocks of time and what physical space you can devote to your creative pursuit. Having a physical space can be helpful, even if the space is only contained inside a laptop or notebook. Entering your creative space can teach your brain to open up your creative thoughts, helping you to get in the zone faster. In order to create that space I’ve known people who depend on the smell and flavor of a favorite beverage, others light a candle, or have turned a closet into an office, or have an actual office. Some go to a coffee shop or a library. Some just put on headphones and particular music. The key is that at the schedule time you enter your creative space and train your brain to open up your creative thoughts. Then when you exit you can carry the thoughts with you or close them up as necessary to face the next task of your day. If you haven’t organized a space or made a schedule for time, then that is likely a significant drag on your creative efforts.

Plan your creative effort around your pillars
There are scientific studies done about willpower and how it is a limited resource. Anecdotally, I know this is true for me. Every decision I make is an exercise of willpower and makes following decisions more difficult. This is one of the reasons that decision heavy tasks, such as parenting, can be a huge drain on creative energy. Knowing this can help you as you structure time in your day to make room for creativity. It takes a large amount of willpower to stop playing a video game and go write. It takes less willpower to start writing right after you have finished lunch. In fact if you build a habit of lunch-then-writing the transition to writing takes no willpower at all. And the transition to lunch is helped by the biological imperative of hunger. I call this process setting a trigger.

I rely heavily on triggers. The routine of getting kids off to school in the morning triggers me to get out of bed early. Then once they are out of the house, the quiet reminds me that I need to get to work. Using an externally impose structure like a school schedule is very helpful in scheduling creative time. Our schedules go very mushy in the summer when we don’t have that external structure. In the absence of kids or school structure, I know creatives who sign up for classes, make writing date appointments, use a day job, or use scheduled volunteer work to provide external structure in their day. Using an external structure reduces your willpower load.

It is possible that some of your pillars will absorb creative energy for a time. If you’re struggling to pay bills, then the best use of your creative energy might be to go back to school and get training, so you can get a better job, so that you can be less stressed by bills, so that you have more room in your brain for creative things.

Analyze your blocks
Some things will interrupt your creative time. Other things will prevent you from starting. A challenge I regularly face is that if I know an interrupt is coming, say I have an appointment in an hour, there is part of my brain that doesn’t want to get started on a creative task because I know I’ll be interrupted. To combat this, I had to teach my self that five minutes is enough time to get something done. This is where visualizing my creative thoughts as existing in a cupboard in my brain has been very helpful to me. I open the cupboard and use those thoughts for five minutes then close up the cupboard again and move on with other tasks.

Alternately, you can rearrange the other parts of your life to defend large chunks of creative time. I know many writers who do this. It works best if your support network understands the need for those large blocks of uninterrupted time and participates in helping you defend them. If your support network doesn’t do high-focus creative work, it might be good to spend some time helping them understand creative flow. Because a two minute interrupting half way through an hour of writing time means that you don’t have an hour of writing time, you have two half hour writing times. Minus the time spent putting away whatever thoughts were opened up by the interruption. It often helps to have a visual signal to tell people not to interrupt you. We set up a string of flower lights at the entrance to my office. When the lights are on, my family knows to only interrupt if absolutely necessary.

The list of mental/emotional things that can block creating is a presentation to itself. I called that presentation Breaking through the Blockages and gave it at LTUE in 2015. Clicking this link will lead you to notes from that presentation. In addition to the points covered in that presentation, I add the thought that if you are doing emotional processing of grief or a life change, that emotional process is a creative one. It will absolutely interfere with your other creative efforts. We don’t usually think of grief as creative, but the process of grief is frequently one of letting go an old way of being while creating a new self that no longer centers the object of the grief. Self re-creation and grief are messy processes that slop over into unexpected spaces and pop up at inconvenient times. If at all possible don’t layer guilt for not creating on top of these processes. Remember the very first thing in this post, creativity will wait for you. This can be tricky to remember if one of the things you are grieving is lost creative time.

In my first iteration of this presentation I spent an entire segment on biological rhythms. This time I passed over it lightly, mostly because an audience question reminded me. We all have times of day where we’re energetic and times when we feel sluggish. Pay attention to your patterns, and if at all possible, schedule your creativity for the time of day when you feel energetic.

Transformations vs. incremental changes
When people come to a conference or creative retreat, they sometimes leave filled with energy and plans for renovating their entire life. Take a moment to consider how you want to manage that renovation. A massive effort to change everything often fails for several reasons. Habit is strong, and if you want to create a new pattern, you need to create structure that makes falling back into the old habits difficult.

The example I used was deciding that I spend too much time on facebook. If I declare that I’m going to spend no more than an hour per day on facebook, but don’t put any structure around that declaration, I’m likely to fail inside of two days. If I decide that any time I get on facebook I will set a one hour timer, that is better. I have a trigger to remind me to exit facebook. However I have to use willpower to set the timer and then I have to use willpower to turn off facebook when the timer beeps. It is very easy to forget the timer or distract past the alarm. If I install nanny software that automatically limits my facebook time to one hour per day, that has a better chance at working. I only have to decide to install the software once instead of once per day timer setting. And if I want to extend my facebook time it requires a decision and effort to do so. If I wanted to be even more certain that I’ll stay off facebook, I could delete my account entirely. This puts a significant logistical barrier to returning to facebook. An even more thorough method would be to completely cancel my internet. This last option would forcibly change many patterns in my life, and would have a signifcant impact on other members of my household, which brings me to the next reason that huge transformational life renovations often fail: transformation is hard on your support network.

Making sweeping changes all at once will make other people in your life uncomfortable. Because they are uncomfortable they may (consciously or unconsciously) pressure you to “return to normal.” For this reason massive life transformations can seriously disrupt relationships, which is why communication is critical during transformations. Also critical is disrupting old habit paths and putting road blocks to getting back to them. Certain life events make some level of transformation inevitable: Moving, getting married, getting divorced, birth, death, new day job, diagnosis, adoption, etc. These events inherently make some old habits impossible and provide an opportunity to build new habits. Building new habits is a creative process that will interfere with your other creative process until the new habit is established.

In order for a transformation to work, you have to be willing to let go of your old way of doing things. This may mean letting go of things you like in order to fix something you want to change. An example: I’ve long wanted to switch my online store software to a new system because the one I’ve been using is out of date. I began the process and then discovered that the new store system connects smoothly to my accounting software, but only if I switch to the online version of the accounting software. In order to fix my broken store system, I have to let go of an accounting system that was working just fine and re learn how to do my accounting. I have to be willing to change the thing I like to fix the broken thing.

The alternative to massive life transformation is incremental life change. This is transformation in pieces and at a small scale. It allows you to change a portion of your life and to let that change settle in before changing something else. Small changes can have significant ripple effects. For example: setting up a physical space for your creative efforts is not hugely disrupting to your regular life patterns or to your support network, but having it suddenly enables you to signal when you’re busy, allows you to set up creative triggers, and helps you open up your creative thoughts. Small changes can be significant. And accumulation of small significant changes will, over time, result in life transformation.

Health and Spoon Theory
If you have not heard about Spoon Theory, I recommend reading the linked article. It is a handy metaphor for understanding that we are not all granted the same quantity of energy each day. Some people can make 1000 decisions (or exercises of willpower) per day, others can only handle ten. Sometimes just managing ill health uses up 3/4 of your available energy, pillar maintenance uses up almost everything else, leaving only a sliver of energy for creativity. Being a caretaker for someone else can have the same toll. This is hard and not fair.

Unfortunately grieving (or raging) of your limited supply of energy also uses up the supply. Grief is often a necessary process in relation to ill health or caretaking, but pay some attention to moving through those emotions mindfully. Process them with your support network, with a therapist, with the help of books dealing with your issue. It can be easy to just sit with grief instead of moving through it. Resist the urge to shove it aside so you can focus on other things. “Shove aside” can be a necessary short term strategy, but unless you process that emotion, you’re stuck with it. And it accumulates. And it leaks into every aspect of your life.

Be aware that diagnoses almost always trigger grief (and a host of other emotions.) If you or someone you love gets a diagnosis, you’ll need to process it. The amount of processing depends on you, your past experiences, the pervasiveness of life change, how others around you are handling it, and a host of other factors.

If you are a healthy person, be aware that you know someone who isn’t. Take time to be part of a support network for someone who struggles. Solid support makes all the difference in being able to carve out creative time.

Break your patterns / get out of your box
As you are renovating to make room for creativity, be careful not to remove from your life all of the “distractions” that filled up your creative aquifer. Creative minds need rest. They need time to switch off from all the thinking. This is why you often see creative people diving into binge watching TV or playing video games. They need a comfortable retreat. That is important. However be on the alert for dysfunction in your habits. Eight hours of sleep is necessary for health. Fifteen hours of sleep is a sign that something is wrong. Two hours of video game may be refreshing. Ten hours of video game has almost certainly passed the point of diminishing return.

When you discover that your habits keep you contained in the same round of things, take time to do something new. Try a new activity. Go to a new place. Talk to new people. Get outside your comfort zone. Even if the new experience is uncomfortable and/or unpleasant while you’re going through it, you’ve still filled your brain with new material that you can draw on when you’re creating. Also, many times new experiences end up being enjoyable.

As a suggestion: donating time to helping others is a brilliant way to have new experiences and to fill up your creative/emotional energy.


Expect iterations
As you’re making changes whether they be incremental or transformational, you should expect a try/fail cycle in figuring out your life structure. Even if you do figure out the absolute perfect system where all the parts are working smoothly together, something in your life will change and that system will fall apart. If you know in advance that this is inevitable, you make be able to skip the part where system failure feels like a personal failure.

The example I often use for this is laundry. When Howard and I first got married we had one laundry basket. It was simple and effective. Then we had a baby, and another, and another. I discovered that adding a baby managed to triple the amount of laundry. The basket was always mounded and there were mounds on the floor. I always felt buried under laundry and overwhelmed by it. Then one day someone (probably Howard) said “Sandra, you can have more than one basket.” And he was right. Purchasing one basket per person suddenly changed a massive mound into neat baskets where clothes were sorted by person. All it took was recognizing that the system which worked great for two people was a complete failure at trying to handle five people.

When creativity is getting squeezed out of existence, stop and take time to figure out why the system that used to work isn’t working any more. Salvage pieces that are still working and rebuild.

I close the presentation with questions from the audience. Often the answers to specific questions generate some of the best insights of the presentation. Frequently this happens when one audience member has an answer for another audience member’s struggle. So I close with the reminder that if you’re struggling, you’re not the only one. If you ask your support network, online friends, family, odds are good that someone has exactly the words you need to help you move forward.

Best of luck in your creative efforts.

Slower Post Convention Recovery than Expected

By / February 20, 2018 / 1 Comment

It always takes me a few days to recover from a convention. LTUE ended on Saturday and by the end of it I was so tired I was not entirely coherent. Fortunately I had a good friend to help me make sure all of the things went into boxes and all of the boxes went into my car.

Sunday and Monday involved extra sleeping, staring at walls, and losing track of thoughts. Today is the first day where I feel back on track, but still not up to speed. I have a long list of post convention tasks and tasks that piled up because I couldn’t pay attention to them during the convention. One of which is a write up of the notes from my Structuring Life to Support Creativity presentation. I promised them to people who couldn’t attend because the room was too full. I’ve got the notes partially done, but the process is slow because that sort of post is very thinky and my supply of thinky is still limited.

How was the show? It was good. I never had a moment that felt big or personally pivotal, but I got to watch several friends have that sort of moment. I love seeing people I love make agreements and be excited about the things that are coming up for them. And I got to have dozens of conversations to catch up with people I care about deeply, but only get to see very occasionally. I got to teach a class and got feedback that it was useful to others. I got to participate in some amazingly fun panels with fellow panelists who taught me new things about their areas of expertise.

…and I know I have additional thoughts about the show, but I’ve just run out of brain for wording them. I’m going to post this as is for fear that if I don’t I’ll never get back to finish it up. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be able to catch those additional thoughts and get them down.